Unlock the Communication Code of Aging Parents

The real work of families is recovery. In the volatile landscape of family systems, everything is exaggerated, both good and bad. One of the predictable “bad” events in the drama of aging parents is sibling infighting. It can be triggered by anything, but it is mostly about money, power, and affection. Once provoked, it extracts an emotional toll on the entire system that resists recovery.

“What’s so important about saying it out load?” I was asked a few months ago during a Q&A session at the end of one of my presentations that talked about “creating an organic legacy.” Good question I replied. What is so important about trying to get our aging parents to speak openly to us about the story of their lives? The short answer is “in the nick of time” insights.

My wife Janet shared with me a very moving article about end of life conversations from a doctor’s perspective entitled: Talking Frankly at the End of Life.

A woman in her early sixties was dying of a terminal illness. Her parents were gone, which left a younger sister as her only means of family support. But there was long standing disagreements between the sisters that had left them distant and disconnected.

Alzheimer’s disease extracts a toll across generations. Its diagnosis in an aging parent creates an immediate crisis for the offspring who must come to terms with their increased risk of winding up with the same affliction.

Here is the When The Bottom Falls Out Mind Map ™ that I created for a family where the aging parents told their adult children they were going to wait until they “needed to plan”.

Aging creates complexity and emotional burden. Aging parents find themselves facing situations and decisions that are hard to figure out and even more challenging to manage. They feel overwhelmed and understandably look for ways to simplify complexities and ease burdens. One of the quickest and most effect techniques is magical thinking.

Much has been written about the brain issues of aging parents. Less has been written about the brain issues that impact middle age adults. Given that the majority of caregivers of aging parents are middle age, it is important to know how middle age brains are changing and how this impacts the demands of caregiving.

Last June I was interviewed by Nell Bernstein, Senior Editor at Caring.com about what “I would have done differently” in caring for my mother based on what I know now. Below is my response:

We wished things had turned out different. They didn’t. History and personalities brought the drama of our aging parents to its only logical and painful conclusion. But as Linda Kriger points out in her heart felt article entitled Seeking Forgiveness, the death of a parent hardly ends the trauma or internal dialogue that haunts us following a “bitter ending.”