How to Talk to Your Elderly Parents
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- ID:
- 3304
- First Published:
- 30-Aug-2007
- Summary:
- How to Talk to Your Elderly Parents. Tips on talking to your elderly parents to help you avoid conflicts and misunderstandings.
Posted by Anonymous about 1 month ago
Helpful article but pretty basic. In our situation, Dad had made a late life marriage to a lady who was very hard to get along with and jealous of his past marriage and children. He had been lonely and was also looking for someone who could run the household as he was in failing health and unable to live there alone. They refused, in spite of several health crises, to discuss "Plan B": what they wanted their life to look like once living independently was impossible. We had to finally take Dad's license away as he was having blackouts; he kept trying to drive anyway. This left his wife under considerable pressure to drive in spite of poor skills, worsening cataracts. Her children refused to ask her to stop driving. Dad began skipping doctor's appointments to avoid hospitalization, and they were both were hiding high blood pressure and TIA's. Finally, she crashed the car, mercifully without killing herself or anyone else. With her injury, their world fell apart...Dad could not live alone, and she was not eligible for a hospital bed in our area. We ended up bringing them both home to our house to recover and plan their next steps. In the middle of that, Dad had a heart attack and passed away. In spite of her considerable confusion, her children began badgering her to get the house and wanted to know what she got in Dad's will...but they left her with us. After two weeks we asked them to come up with a plan for their mother's future, and by this time she was having tantrums daily, insisting she was going to move back to the house and buy a new car. They finally came and picked her up, but one of them moved into Dad's house (which was not left to his wife) and refused to leave. The house was strip mined. She wound up in a care facililty she had never seen. It was a really painful experience. I wish now we had been more assertive about how they needed to address their advancing infirmities and pushed harder on them moving to more manageable circumstances nearby, where we could support them. Then, if one of them had passed away, the other would not have been left to face all these tough transitions alone. It was an outcome they never imagined, but it happens all the time.
Posted by Living in hope 4 months ago
Very helpful in caring for my parents I am incline to want to organise them. I tend to be so work focused that I am trying to run the situation like a business implementing process and procedures. I need to remember that even if they do not express their feelings it doesn't mean they do not have any.
Posted by Anonymous 5 months ago
helpful but most direct communication will be met with resistance