Reply to Feedback on letter to my siblings re helping out with elderly mom

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, you're clearly a wonderful daughter, and your mom is lucky to have you.  I would not send this letter though.  You need to specifically ask for what you need and strip the letter of all judgment.  Better yet, pick up the phone instead.

Your whole letter puts them on the defensive and gives them a ton of reasons to react with push back instead of hearing you.  I get it, and I don't disagree with you - you've got a lot going on and feel unfairly burdened by this.  You feel strongly that it's the childrens' duty to take care of their parents and you're willing to go that extra mile for your mom, which is awesome.  But you're lecturing them with this - they know how you feel at this point and they don't agree with you (clearly, or else they would have stepped up).

Your letter contains a lot of "shoulds" as in you passing judgment on your brothers for not meeting your personal expectation on how they should be acting.  People have different opinions on how they should act in these cases, and unfortunately, no one gets to dictate to others what they "should" do.  It also includes a list of reasons why you think your life is harder than theirs - I get that what you want is for them to go "oh yeah, she has young kids and a special needs kid, so she's busier than us and we should step up," but that's not what the reaction will be.

If I were your brothers and I got this, I could imagine a host of reasons why I might not agree that I "should" be doing anything additional - maybe your brothers are the type who are saving for their own old age and feel like your mom made bad life decisions with her money and now they're stuck covering for her.  Maybe they have anger about some childhood issues.  Maybe they have anger at you.  Whatever it is, they don't agree with you that they should be paying thousands of dollars and spending a ton of time.  And no amount of you telling them they "should" do this is going to change their minds.

And also, be careful about assuming that they will agree that your life is harder and so they need to step up.  People don't take kindly to that.  It's not a contest, and you honestly don't know what they've got going on in their lives.  As a full-time working mom, I privately got annoyed with my 23-year-old sister who complains all the time about how tired she is.  I'm like - you don't know what tired is.  But I don't expect her to understand my position or to help me a ton.  She's tired.  It's not  contest.

It doesn't matter why and you're not going to be able to convince them to see it your way.  Just ask them for what you need.

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