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[quote=Anonymous]How do you do it? My father is in his early 80s, and over the last 20 years, has become increasingly combative and nasty. When DH and I got married a few decades ago and moved about three hours away for work, my father was pretty much pissed off that I had the audacity to leave without his blessing (he's always been more or less of a chauvinist who thinks he has a say when it comes to his daughters). He ragged on our first house and for a while, we had to reduce contact with my parents because of his behavior. So, we tried again when we had kids, and they were nice grandparents, but now that the kids are older, things are getting difficult again. My mom knows his behavior sucks and that he's basically showing the same mean a$$hole streak his own father had, but she ignores it or weakly tries to defend him or rationalize his crap behavior. It's toxic, but as always, it's everyone else, not them. They were verbally abuse when I was a kid, yelling at me into the night over slights (I was a pretty good kid, great grades, did well, did not cause trouble, but yikes, they way they got after with with the verbal assaults you'd think I lived on the street corner doing drugs and calling them for bail money).

Well, I'm going to have to start traveling probably at least once a month on weekends to assist my sibling who lives near them. They refuse to move into assisted living (they can afford it) and are being very stubborn. We'll help with groceries, light clearing, pay a neighbor to look in on them, stuff like that, but it's going to get more intense. I expect one or both will have a fall within a year or two, and then they will have to go into a home. We don't have the time/bandwidth/financial situation to care for them. My sibling travels quite a bit for work and can't leave her job. I also work, am managing life with teenagers, and frankly, do not like my parents very much as people.

So, what's the best way to handle this? What have those of you done in the same situation? [/quote]

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