How a 10-Year-Old in a Caregiving Role Inspired Pinkie’s Turnabout (Guest Post by Sue Lloyd-Davies, author of Pinkie’s Turnabout)

When my mother was in her mid-80s, she surprised us by deciding to come live with our family.

We had offered many times over the years, but she had built a full life in Aberdeen, South Dakota. She had lived there for more than forty years, surrounded by close friends, quilting and craft clubs, an active church community — and even a boyfriend. Leaving all of that behind was no small decision.

When she arrived, she was thriving. In her first month with us she organized her room, helped with cooking, and potted plants on our deck. She quickly became a joyful member of our household.

Then everything changed.

Within a month she fell and broke her hip. And within another month, dementia had taken hold.

She no longer knew who I was.

Even harder, she believed I was someone from her past — someone she had disliked deeply. Overnight, I became the enemy. Yet I was the one bathing her, helping her dress, cooking her favorite foods, and managing her diabetes.

And she hated me.

I was completely unprepared for the emotional whiplash of dementia caregiving, and I made plenty of mistakes. My feelings were hurt constantly. She would hide money in her shoes, forget where she had put it, and accuse me of stealing five dollars from her purse. I would prepare dinner at six o’clock, and she would insist it was too late to eat because it was already ten at night. No amount of pointing to the clock could convince her otherwise.

Eventually I learned one of the hardest lessons dementia teaches caregivers: her perception was her reality.

She believed she had lost the person she loved and was now living with a stranger.

In many ways, I felt the same.

That experience first pushed me to share my story with others who were navigating the confusing emotional terrain of dementia caregiving. But the real spark for my middle-grade novel Pinkie’s Turnabout came from an unexpected place — a ten-year-old girl.

I began mentoring her at Gulfport Elementary School. Her parents were not in the picture, and she lived with her grandmother and great-grandmother. The responsibilities she carried at such a young age affected her deeply. She often missed school because of the caregiving demands at home.

What struck me most was who she was despite those challenges.

She was bright, an avid reader, and wonderfully open and curious about the world. Yet there was no one available to support her learning at home. It felt as though the opportunities available to her classmates might pass her by simply because of her circumstances.

She inspired me more than she could ever know.

As I began researching children who take on caregiving roles, I discovered that roughly 1.5 million children in the United States live with someone who has Alzheimer’s disease, and many more have a loved one living with dementia.

These children are caregivers too.

They want to help. But they often don’t understand why someone they love is changing. When that person becomes angry or confused, children may assume they’ve done something wrong. They struggle with hurt feelings and emotional turmoil without fully understanding what is happening.

And they rarely have anyone to talk to about it.

That realization is why I wrote Pinkie’s Turnabout.

Pinkie, my eleven-year-old protagonist, is very much like the young caregivers I was learning about. She’s funny, impulsive, and full of heart. She also makes mistakes — just like real kids do.

Her great-grandmother, GG, sometimes mistakes Pinkie for her daughter who died years earlier in a car accident. Pinkie longs for the days when simply being Pinkie was enough for her GG. She worries about bringing friends home because she never knows what her great-grandmother might say or do. And explaining dementia to other children can be difficult and embarrassing.

Many young caregivers feel isolated. Because their parents often work outside the home, these kids go straight home after school. They miss dances, football games, and time with friends because they are the quiet sentinels watching over their grandparents when others cannot.

Yet these children also bring immeasurable comfort to the people they care for.

Pinkie brings her GG a blanket when she’s cold. She helps her work the television remote, fixes her snacks, and plays games with her. Sometimes she simply sits beside her and holds her hand.

These small acts of care matter enormously.

Children step in when the primary caregiver is overwhelmed or unavailable, but their contributions are rarely recognized.

They may feel sad, resentful, frustrated, or even angry — the same emotions adult caregivers experience. But children especially need permission to talk about those feelings without guilt.

Pinkie’s Turnabout was written as a family story for exactly that reason.

My hope is that it opens the door for conversations between adults and children about dementia, caregiving, and complicated emotions. And perhaps it will also remind adults to pause for a moment and thank the children who quietly give so much to the people they love.

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Sue Lloyd-Davies is the author of the middle-grade novel Pinkie’s Turnabout. She lives and writes in an old cottage in quirky Gulfport, Florida, where fuzzy cat, Arlo, loafs beside her keyboard and occasionally types an extra space or two into her stories. Caring for her mother, whose life—filled with friends, quilting and church—drifted into dementia, inspired her novel about Pinkie.

When she’s not writing, Sue can be found under the oaks handing out hazelnuts to rescue squirrel Owen or careening around the community center in a line dance. Visit her at Suelloyddavies.com.