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Here are some tips to help you do that and start a positive conversation."Child sex offender" redirects here. You’ll both be glad you did.īonus tip: If you think you need to raise the topic of moving to a senior living community, make sure you take these parental desires into account as well. So if trying to take care of your aging parent is causing some friction between you, it may be worth talking about. And your happiness also means they can know they did a good job raising you. When you’re happy, they really are happy, too - because they love you. And while they still want to be part of your lives, most don’t want you to worry too much about them or sacrifice your happiness for them. If you have kids of your own, think about what you really want for them in life - to be happy. It will make your relationship a healthier and richer one. Take a step back and try to appreciate who they’ve become. But sometimes we fall into old family patterns and respond to the person they used to be. They’ve changed and grown, just as you have. Your mom or dad isn’t the same parent they were when you were a kid or teenager living at home. Unless there’s a health or safety issue, you might not need to intervene as much as you think. Get their input on solutions, and respect their wishes. Talk about what you’re seeing and why it’s concerning you. So instead of jumping in and acting on a perceived need, ask them about it. Or it could be a symptom of something else. What you think is a problem might not be one at all. Parents are adults with opinions, preferences and lives of their own. When you boil things down, three themes are common to what aging parents want from their children: If you find yourself in this situation, what can you do? So sometimes our love and concern can manifest in ways that are frustrating or even demeaning to our parents. I think they just want to keep us alive as long as possible.” And I think sometimes our children don’t mean to treat us like children. The most telling response was this one: “We want to be treated like an adult. “I need your help, but not for all things.”.If I need you, you would be the first person I’d call.” In our survey, we asked senior parents what they would like to say to their adult children about what they want from them at this point in their lives. But those assumptions can put tension into your relationship. Have you stopped to think about how your parents feel about your efforts to help? It’s easy to assume we know what they want or what’s best for them. And as with most things in life, there’s some room for improvement. How does their overprotectiveness make you feel?Īs you can see, our results were similar to the feedback in The Atlantic article. Here’s what they told us:ĭo your adult children offer to do things you feel you can take care of on your own?ĭo you feel they’re coming over to check up on you instead of just to visit?
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We wanted to get more insight into this, so we did a social media survey of some senior parents about their adult children. They sometimes felt their adult children were being unnecessarily overprotective - and it both annoyed them and made them feel cared for, which can explain the friction that can arise in their relationships. The author’s discussions with her peers revealed an interesting dynamic. We’re just trying to help, right? So why are they making it hard? This article in The Atlantic highlights a perspective we don’t always take into consideration - how our aging parents feel about us helping them. I’m just trying to take care of her, but she’s making it hard. She’s 80 and can’t do everything she used to. She complains that I’m fussing over her too much, and I think she’s starting to make excuses for me to not come over. Mom and I have always had a pretty good relationship, but lately it’s getting strained.