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Reply to "If you have 1 elder living w- family, do you take them on vacation w/ you?"
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[quote=Anonymous]NP and not of Asian heritage. I took my early 80s mom to Paris last year on a vacation with husband and two teens. She's been wanting to go on vacation with us for a long time so we agreed to it as an experiment. We did not take my dad because he argues with everyone in the family and makes everyone late and generally doesn't care about urban attraction types (dining, museums, churches, etc.) We got through the vacation pretty well considering she fell down on Day 3 (tripped at the front stoop of a metro station) and got a fractured arm (undiagnosed until return). During this incident, a "helpful" passerby distracted me enough to steal my cell phone. We also had to listen to a lot of complaining about walking speed, pace of our visits, the attractions we chose and didn't choose within Paris, a little about the meal plan and schedule, the temperature of the apartment, etc. Even though we were lucky enough to find a great AirBnB with a completely separate queen bedroom for her and a full-sized bathroom to share just with the 2 grandkids. And we had grocery store food plus a full kitchen so we could control breakfast and dinner choices. I think this was close to the most negative scenario we expected to frequently occur (elderly person gets injured or sick plus mild constant complaints). We chose not to go to the ER for practical reasons...it was a judgment call and my mom chose one path because she thought she had just a bad bruise. (I would have supported any decision.) If we'd gone to the ER, we probably would have lost two days of vacation to health care (finding, waiting, following up) plus time spent on insurance paperwork. My mom is used to high-cost packaged tourism for seniors with hotels, tourbuses, and luggage delivery. My nuclear family is about cheap hotels on high floors or Air BnB's, walking/subwaying everywhere, and each person brings only what they can carry. So now she's seen how we travel and what it requires. And she knows it's not a perfect match for her wishes. And we had a somewhat less fun vacation with a little bit of disaster on top. It is unlikely that we will agree to do another foreign trip again with this kind of arrangement. My mom still liked the trip though. She would do it again, we would prefer not to. Vacations need to be relaxing and stress-minimizing to help us unwind from our work and school problems. I don't think elderly parents have the right to expect to vacation with children even if they can keep up with them. It's just an understandable wish. That's all. For reference...she had been to Paris several times already, I had been twice before, and husband and kids had never been. We chose the destination for the ones who had not been there before. I think it's equally selfish to beg to go as to say, "I'm sorry but you can't go because you can't keep up or are not healthy enough". A courteous elder would understand their limits and not try to impose. A compromise solution would be for the elder to finance a more supportive or appropriate vacation for all. In our case, that wouldn't work because we really dislike heavily-scheduled package tours and the cost difference is enormous across 5 people. Like about $10k minimum.[/quote]
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