Family relationships, even within the most functional families, can be tricky, to say the least. When parents begin to get older, family relationships can become even more complicated (believe it or not!). Siblings can turn against one another, in-laws can disagree with each other, and aging parents are often at the center of many heated discussions.
The good news? If you’re in the middle of a complicated family relationship due to disagreements about your aging parents, you’re not alone. The bad news? It can be quite unmooring to feel so disconnected from your siblings, and your stress levels can increase as your parents require more support.
Navigating complex family roles and experiences while also trying to support aging parents is difficult. But, there are some common family disagreements that you can solve by trying a few tried-and-true interventions.
Disagreements About Family Caregiving Roles
When your parent needs more assistance and support, that responsibility can often fall on just one person in the family. Sometimes that person is the adult child who lives closest to the parent, the eldest adult child, or the female adult child. In any case, it can feel exhausting to be the only person who is in charge of the day-to-day caregiving tasks. This can quickly lead to disagreements and feelings of resentment toward the siblings who are not doing as much for the parents.
How to Solve It
Adult children who are not involved in the day-to-day caregiving, or who live far away, often do not realize how much the main caregiver is taking on. If you are the main family caregiver, do not wait until you are exhausted and burned out to ask for help or to inform your family of the tasks you complete on a regular basis. Instead, delegate and ask for help with tasks so that everyone can do their part in caring for your loved one.
If you’re already in the middle of a disagreement because of a lopsided caregiving load, you can still save your relationships. Take a moment to write down all of the tasks you complete for your loved one on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Show this list to your siblings so that they can understand what you take on regularly, and then use the list to ask them for help with specific items on your task list.
Financial Disagreements
Money is often at the center of family arguments, especially when adult children disagree with one another about what their aging parents should, and shouldn’t, spend their money on. Financial disagreements might include clashing over if a sibling should accept payments from their parent for caregiving tasks or whether siblings should all pitch in their own money to support aging parents with limited resources. Money makes everything more complicated.
How to Solve It
First things first: understand who has been designated as the financial Power of Attorney (POA). This person will be the one making the decisions if your aging parent no longer can. Ensure everyone in the family is aware of this designee, as laid out in your loved one’s estate planning documents. If someone isn’t named, it’s time to get your loved one to the lawyer’s office to complete that task.
Other ways to de-escalate financial disagreements can include:
- Being transparent with spending. Forbes suggests keeping your loved one’s accounts and funds separate from anyone else’s. If you’re out and about purchasing groceries for your loved one, take it out of their account and give everyone else in the family a heads up on the purchase via a group email chain.
- Have regular family meetings to ensure everyone is on the same page when it comes to your aging parents’ finances. This can feel uncomfortable at first, especially if you were raised not to talk about money, but it can be helpful in avoiding a financial crisis.
- Leaving major decisions to the financial Power of Attorney, and choosing to respect those decisions even if you disagree.
Disagreements About Care
Another common source of conflict among family members is care and support. One sibling might not believe that the aging parent needs home care or senior living support, while another sibling might believe the senior would benefit from it. These disagreements almost always center around looking at the senior’s health in a realistic way versus an optimistic and more hopeful way. It can also become more complicated when one sibling sees the senior more often and watches their decline happen in real time, while another sibling is not as involved, not realizing how much support the parent requires daily.
How to Solve It
This is an ideal disagreement in which to get the professionals involved. Your loved one’s primary care physician understands their medical needs as well as what the future holds for their particular medical conditions. It is completely valid to request a family meeting with your loved one’s physician (involve your loved one, too, if they are up for it). Hearing recommendations from an expert who knows your loved one can often be the neutral opinion that gets everyone on the same page.
Similar to financial decisions, your loved one should have a designated healthcare Power of Attorney who is there to make decisions about health care needs when they no longer can. Ensure that the person leads the conversations about care and that everyone understands that their decision is final, whether the group agrees or not.
Tips for Keeping Relationships In Tact
Watching a parent grow old and need support can be scary and unnerving for the adult children who once saw their parents as unstoppable. It can also be complicated for families who have strained relationships or even shared trauma. If you’re looking to keep your relationships civil and healthy, try any of these tips:
- Understand that everyone is feeling worried, stressed out, and confused.
- Resist yelling when having a family discussion. Instead, give your points and opinions in a calm voice.
- Take a deep breath before responding during a heated conversation.
- Look for solutions and be willing to compromise.
- Keep your loved one’s health and needs at the forefront of all conversations and decisions.
- Listen to other perspectives from your family members. Remember, everyone has a different experience and is looking at the situation from a unique lens.
- Consider working with a family mediator who can provide structure for difficult conversations.
- Don’t be afraid to stop a conversation when it becomes defensive or unproductive. You can always take a break and approach the topic again at another time.
- When possible, don’t gossip or talk about the situation with other family members who are involved. Instead, speak to a therapist or a group of friends who are not involved in the situation.
- Give everyone the benefit of the doubt; everyone is trying to do their best in a difficult situation.
