How to deal with elderly parents?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m all for respecting our elders but I was abused and ignored by my parents. And now that they’re both gone, I’m at peace.

You mother could have aborted you but. Instead, chose to go through 9 months of all that pregnancy involves and gave you life, didn't she? Ingrate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m all for respecting our elders but I was abused and ignored by my parents. And now that they’re both gone, I’m at peace.

You mother could have aborted you but. Instead, chose to go through 9 months of all that pregnancy involves and gave you life, didn't she? Ingrate.

Eh. Not convinced, no matter how many times you post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m all for respecting our elders but I was abused and ignored by my parents. And now that they’re both gone, I’m at peace.

You mother could have aborted you but. Instead, chose to go through 9 months of all that pregnancy involves and gave you life, didn't she? Ingrate.

Whoa! What an achievement! It sure gave her the right to abuse the kid. Maybe should have kept her legs closed instead. Hopefully you kept your legs closed as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m all for respecting our elders but I was abused and ignored by my parents. And now that they’re both gone, I’m at peace.

You mother could have aborted you but. Instead, chose to go through 9 months of all that pregnancy involves and gave you life, didn't she? Ingrate.

DP. I was unplanned. The only reason my mom didn’t abort was that she already had a girl and hoped I would be a boy.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t a boy and she was disappointed. Not only was she disappointed, she read and heard that it was okay to ignore me when I cried, that crying infants didn’t need to be tended to.
So she didn’t tend to my needs from day 1.
To boot, she told me all of the above when I was old enough to understand, probably in elementary school.

She was emotionally neglectful and forced me to be her helper as soon as I was physically able. I was scrubbing pots and pans and floors n my hands and knees as a child while she went out shopping with my other siblings. She was neither loving or caring. It was, and still is, all about her.
Later as a preteen, my father sexually abused me. He was also extremely verbally abusive.

As soon as I could be independent, I distanced myself.
Now they’re elderly, demanding I help out. Even when I had helped out on the past, it was never good enough. No, it’s not going to happen. My brothers can help out- that’s the tradition in my culture.

I wish my mom would have aborted me instead. She didn’t, so I’m stopping the cycle of abuse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m all for respecting our elders but I was abused and ignored by my parents. And now that they’re both gone, I’m at peace.

Ok but that’s not OP’s situation so what is your point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As we were when we were growing up. Now it’s our turn to show grace.

Yup. And model this for your children because you will be elderly before you know it too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They aren’t toxic and overall good people that sacrificed their lives for their children’s future. But g-d if they aren’t annoying AF.

Respect them and treat them with dignity. Remember that your children will learn from you how to treat elderly parents. I suspect that they already find you super annoying.

What about grandchildren who learn that their parents were aggravated and exhausted by mean, self-centered bullies. My kids are learning about having enough self-respect to build boundaries.

OP’s parents aren’t bullies.

[Anonymous]

Outsource what you can, for example you can have prescriptions and necessities delivered, even arrange doc visit transport.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They aren’t toxic and overall good people that sacrificed their lives for their children’s future. But g-d if they aren’t annoying AF.

I just keep telling myself that I will be an annoying old person and am modeling behavior for my kids!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish more people thought of this. I'm a doctor with lots of elderly parents and I am shocked at how uninvolved most adult children are with their parents. It is difficult to age: appointments, insurance, finances, health care decisions, are more complicated now. Elderly are so often targeted for financial scams, it is awful. Please have the difficult conversation with your elderly parents about: health care and financial power of attorney, where they keep essential information (especially since they will invariably forget every password ever created), who their doctor is, what their expectations are for the future. They will resist this conversation, as most are in denial about the loss of independence, and they need a gentle push to just get over it (I would suggest a trust attorney to help navigate this if it's possible). They are definitely annoying, but so are most people in different ways. They don't want to stop driving, don't want to downsize to an apartment, don't want to move closer to you even though you need to stay where you are for your job, but maybe they should. They should know how to use an Uber app, order groceries online, put a freeze on their credit accounts, etc.

And how do you exactly imagine having someone give up their information on health, money etc. when they're unwilling to do so? My parents have never shared any information. For them, conversation like this is a non-starter. So I do nothing. I'm not going to twist myself into a knot if they don't want to approach aging like normal human beings. I honestly think a lot of this generation of elders have mental health issues, are super selfish (have been their whole lives) and cannot take their adult kids for adults. I say this as someone who had a grandma living with us and pretty much raising us kids (read: selfish parents) and there were none of those issues.

This is my in laws. If my husband tries to discuss anything, he’s told to F off. Meanwhile they live in a house we own and we pay all their bills. Three times in the past year my MiL has called to say FIL is at hospital dying, all three times he’s recovered and been sent home. They won’t give any info about what is going on other than calling for emergencies, won’t discuss anything, won’t consider assisted living.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You all reap what you sow.

All of you disrespecting your elderly parents, not helping or caring for them, your children are watching and learning. Good luck

You reap what you sow is right. It goes both ways. Honestly, I'm not worried about my kids at all as I don't expect them to arrange their lives around me. First, I'll plan for my old age, it's not a surprise when it comes. Second, I'm fine with getting old and understanding that I'll die. Third, I've lived my life in a way that if I die tomorrow, I'm at peace with it. With problem parents usually none of these points are there, in addition to having been nasty parents in the first place. So they'll reap what they sow. Interestingly, the problem parents are the ones that are very much afraid to die.

I think a lot of us plan for this but life happens. Especially anything involving cognitive decline. It can be hard to recognize and people can and do change their minds. My mother always insisted she wouldn’t want any kind of life support or similar interventions. Well when the time came, she did. And selfishly I’m glad of that because we eked out another couple of years together. But there’s no doubt it was a profound change from what she intended when I was a kid and a young adult. I asked her once in her last year if she felt the quality of life - wheelchair-bound, assisted living, incontinent - was worth it. She said it was. It looked awful to me, especially remembering how fiercely independent she’d always been. I can only assume her mental decline played a role in her feeling it was a reasonable quality of life. But it was still her life and she wanted to live it. I respect that. I don’t think most of us can really know how we’ll choose. Future us may be quite different from current us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I think a lot of us plan for this but life happens. Especially anything involving cognitive decline. It can be hard to recognize and people can and do change their minds. My mother always insisted she wouldn’t want any kind of life support or similar interventions. Well when the time came, she did. And selfishly I’m glad of that because we eked out another couple of years together. But there’s no doubt it was a profound change from what she intended when I was a kid and a young adult. I asked her once in her last year if she felt the quality of life - wheelchair-bound, assisted living, incontinent - was worth it. She said it was. It looked awful to me, especially remembering how fiercely independent she’d always been. I can only assume her mental decline played a role in her feeling it was a reasonable quality of life. But it was still her life and she wanted to live it. I respect that. I don’t think most of us can really know how we’ll choose. Future us may be quite different from current us.

This has not been my experience at all. Did she have anything in writing? There are usually no surprises in life. If someone lives a fulfilled life, or as kind and considerate as possible, they're not afraid to die of old age. We, people, know when the death is near just like all other animals. But with people who have left behind broken relationships, have done a lot of damage to others... they don't want to let it go. Perhaps they hope they can salvage something, perhaps they want to do some more damage... difficult to say. There've been studies that before death, people mostly say one of four things. Two of them are in the theme of "I love you" or "Do you love me?". It's not difficult to imagine which type of person would say what. Another frequent one is "I'm sorry". As to the PP about throwing abortion in the face of adult kids... you know there's euthanasia, right?

[Anonymous]

Bare minimum. That’s my strategy and it’s not perfect but what else can I do?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not easy. Raising three kids to adulthood was a piece of cake compared to dealing with my elderly parents.

100%%%

Kids ideally grow up and learn new skills and become more independent each year. It’s the opposite with the elderly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m all for respecting our elders but I was abused and ignored by my parents. And now that they’re both gone, I’m at peace.

Ok but that’s not OP’s situation so what is your point?

This PP and here’s what I did; I turned my attention to my own family (at that time 3DC preteen and teen age). Also resumed FT work. My one parent was in skilled nursing so there was little that I “needed” to do.

My mom took more effort to manage. She was entirely focused on keeping my dad alive and so kept vigil at his bedside and wanted me to do the same. I couldn’t because of family and work.

You do what you can and what you’re comfortable doing. I assisted with getting my dad hospice care and dealing with my mom. She expected daily phone calls.