Changing Roles With Your Difficult Aging Parent

Why is this so hard to do?

The notion that we have to tell aging parents what to do, and take care of them, and be in charge of their lives is very uncomfortable for most people. Our Mom and/or Dad has always been in charge. He or she was always a difficult person to deal with when we were kids. We don’t think of ourselves as able to switch roles with them. I know...I have been living this role for almost two years.

Each and every day adds more stress to my life.

We are born into a family in which we are totally dependent. We may be blessed with kind and loving parents, or be unlucky, and have an elderly aging parent who is absent, less than loving, or worse.

Our relationships with our aging parents are shaped by the way they behave as parents, and by our responses and reactions to the way they behave toward us. Patterns of conflict can go back as far as I can remember.

As I have noticed, difficult parents don’t stop being difficult because they age. I have two parents that are only 72 and 75 and they are making themselves older than they really are.

My Dad has been addicted to pain medication for the past 40 years and for a man that is only 75, he is the poster child of looking 110 from all the over usage of pain medications.

Aging may bring out some of the worst qualities in certain people who were difficult to begin with. Such things as complaining, criticizing, resisting help, making unkind remarks, and the like can be habits. Those who have those habits may indulge in their unpleasant behavior even more as they slowly lose certain abilities they once had, and feel upset that they have to rely on anyone else.

I am reaching out to others. It can make all the difference in your ability to manage one of the toughest jobs you can have. This job doesn't pay; this job takes up a lot of time on a daily basis.

What hurts the most is when someone says to you that what do you do all day? You don't work. Excuse me but this is a FULL time job without pay and without benefits.

Perhaps the government should set aside funds for those that have to give up a full time paid job, and now take on the full time role of caregiver for TWO aging parents at the same time.

What is your opinion? Please email me at mmorris358@aol.com