Your Parents Aren't Stubborn—You Are

Many pieces of advice on how to help your aging parents often resemble standardized checklists—do's and don'ts designed to assist THEM. These lists tell us what to do:

• Communicate openly.
• Arrange all legal matters.
• Help with their finances.
• Encourage socializing in the community.
• Organize important phone numbers.
• Increase their activity level.
• Conduct a home safety check.

And what not to do:

• Exclude them from decision-making.
• Neglect self-care.
• Forget to set boundaries.

Seniors and their adult children receive this advice and often interpret it differently. Our parents view it as suggestions from people or institutions who can't understand their experience. Adult children see it as a guide to being dutiful and responsible, sometimes feeling overwhelmed by the responsibility. Both parties dance around decades of relationship patterns ignored in this conversation, which lie between generations and siblings. How does one even begin with such uncharted territory? There are so many potential challenges to navigate—siblings, finances, distance, parental relationships, history, forgiveness, trauma, medical conditions, emotions, fear...the list goes on.

The mantra I use to guide me is quite unique. No lists, no bullet points, no fixed structure; just a few words that resonated with me, urging me towards an extraordinary yet daunting purpose—change not my aging parents, but myself.

Understanding My Journey Before Supporting Theirs

I aimed to understand my role in their journey and unpack my baggage of beliefs, fears, and expectations. I didn't aim to change their views, emotions, or behaviors; I aimed to understand mine better.

I encourage you, whether a dutiful child, a senior navigating aging, a compassionate service provider, or a well-meaning friend, to join me in unraveling the complex narrative of aging. It's time to acknowledge and challenge our perceptions. If you are older, please help us understand by sharing with us openly the experiences, feelings, and freedoms that come along with aging.

Why Are We Afraid of Aging?

Navigating the shifting tides of intergenerational interaction starts with an uncomfortable reality—we are all, to some extent, tainted by ageism. It is a silent, pervasive framework, repeatedly thrust upon us by businesses and societies, and is not based on fact but perception and fear.

Ageism is the unfounded prejudice against older people that each of us has imbibed with the culture, expectations, and advertisements that shape our outlook. It is us feeling they are less than what they were before. It’s in the way we knit our brows when an elder takes a tad longer to reply, the sudden shock we cast upon someone who dares to display both gray hair and vitality, the feigned empathy as we shout our words to the hard-of-hearing. We are doing a great injustice to ourselves more than we are to those we are caring for, and we are doing a greater injustice to our kids. With every assumption, raised eyebrow, and sigh, we are hating our future selves. We are dreading our own story and journey and teaching our kids the same. We are making each day we spend today worth less than the day before.

Learning from Those Who've Lived Longer

Why do we not look at an older person and assume they know so much more? More days, more lessons, more experience, more failure, more time, more healing. We look at movement as slow instead of measured. My husband is a wonder. We have been married for 17 years, over 6,000 days, and in each of those days, I have learned something new from him. Being at his side has completely changed my approach to my parents as they begin to show signs of advanced years.

I have learned that deterioration happens differently for each human and external indicators do not mean much. I have learned that physical mobility deterioration is not necessarily correlated with cognitive decline. Humor is timeless and seems to sharpen with age, BONUS!  For every one thing he cannot do as well, there are about 30 things he can do better or understand better. The understanding of human nature and the patience to accept and deal with people is far greater, even if the temperament is shorter. He is less surprised about how people act than I am. Above all else, I remember that he is motivated the same way I am—by how he feels. Regardless if those feelings are insecurity, pain, happiness, or success.

Addressing Our Behavior

Why are we never focused on how older people feel or what they know (the unseen)? We just focus on how they look and interpret what that means. Don’t misunderstand—I am still blindsided by my ageism often, but I try to hear it in my head and get a hold of it. Lean into the fears I hear in my unfounded belief systems.

Here's the checklist I give myself. I run it over in my head when there is a new incident (diagnosis, fall, change in behavior or activity):

1. What am I afraid of? Is it real? Is it death, caregiving, uncertainty, managing the emotions of our twins? Do I think I might fail at this? Judgement of others?
2. What might my older loved ones be feeling? If I do not know at all, I will ask to understand. I am usually way off on this. I have assumed often in the past that they have the same fears I do. FALSE. They are rarely afraid. And sometimes I get an "I don't know", then I ask myself, how would I feel after all those years lived?
3. What does my older loved one wish to do? What choice do they want to make for themselves? This is hard folks, buckle up. As we are about to lead from main actor to best supporting role.  I will give you an example. I am terrified each day he might fall. I DO NOT want him to wear a sarong (a traditional long skirt-like pajama bottom, that tucks and rolls at the waste to stay in place). I want him to wear trouser PJs. For a time, I would insist and unhappily he would oblige. I used to get infuriated and keep reminding him he was going to fall until one day it hit me. He knows he may fall. He is choosing to wear them anyway and take the risk. He has worn this attire his whole life and would rather fall if that is the price for wearing what HE IS COMFORTABLE and HAPPY in.
4. Am I assigning false meaning to his actions? Him continuing to wear a sarong does not mean he does not love me enough to wear the trousers and want to live longer for me. Just because our older loved ones do NOT want to adhere to what we think is best does not mean they do not love us. Presenting this conclusion is both unfair and manipulative to both of us.

My role as a caregiver is not to tell him how to live, it is not to be responsible for his happiness, it is not even to extend his life at all costs. It IS to try and understand, to the best of my ability, how he wants to LIVE and support him in doing just that.

Conclusion

I challenge us not to combat our instinct to judge but to question it. To look beyond the veil of stereotypes and confront the dynamic individuality of every person, regardless of the years they've accumulated. To speak to our elders as our peers and seek insight and advice. To laugh with older people—it's its own vibe. It is in stripping away these layers that we can engage with our aging loved ones, or individuals in our community, with genuine respect and awe for the journeys they've lived.

If you are from the sandwich generation, a new caregiver, or starting to think about aging parents, find an older person, preferably one at least 30 years your senior and not family. Ask them if they have any worries, what the best part of their day is, what they look forward to, who they laugh the most with, and what is the one thing they could have reassured their younger self about.

You will be relieved and calmed by what you learn.