A Sure-Fire Strategy To Calm Family Conflicts 
Carolyn Rosenblatt Contributor We know helping aging parents can be a heavy load. There's a lot to share with each other. I'm taking the expertise gained over 10 years of geriatric nursing and thousands of patients, and 30 years of legal practice and putting them together to help you feel less stressed. This blog is dedicated to you, the one with the aging parent, and your feeling overwhelmed or burned out. Let's talk about solutions. My husband, Dr. Mikol Davis, a psychologist, and I put our efforts together at AgingParents.com. We've got 2, 20-something kids and an 88 year old mother in law. Helping Mom is a big part of our lives. Lots of our friends are going through the same things we are: parents starting to decline in health or alertness, putting time in with all we can do to help out. You're invited to share your challenges here. We know you've got them every day. You'll find practical advice and tips in this blog. They're part of our collective experiences.
The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.
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The struggles we have with aging parents are coming up for more of us Boomers because we are getting older. Our parents are living longer and longer. Research shows us that most Boomers still have at least one living parent.
Often, we see that they need some help. It can be expected in advanced years. How many people do you know in their late 80′s who don't need any kind of help whatsoever? My mother in law, Alice, is 89. She's still on her own, but she needs help with a lot of things, and pretty much every day, she gets some help with something.
But a lot of other aging parents often don't think they need assistance. They are used to deciding what is best for themselves and they are not too pleased with the idea of giving that up. The switch to having you, the adult child tell your parent what to do is not an easy switch. It's often called "role reversal" when you have to parent your own parent.
Role reversal creates conflict. Some of that conflict is within yourself. No matter how old you are, you don't want to displease your parent if you can help it. You need to assert yourself to keep your aging parent safe, but you are afraid of upsetting him or her. For example, you may know that Mom or Dad is not safe to be driving any longer, but you are fearful of asking or telling your parent to give it up.
Sometimes, the feeling of frustration and even anger at your aging parent can overwhelm you when you are only trying to help. How can they be so stubborn?
At AgingParents.com, we often hear the complaint that an adult child can't get the aging parent to accept help at home. Accepting help for aging persons is symbolic. It means giving up their independence and accepting their limitations. It creates fear. The parent's resistance is not about what's reasonable. It's about their emotions.
You may be trying to reason with them about what is safest, what is best, and pointing out all the logical reasons for getting someone to come in and help with bathing, cooking, or cleaning. You keep pointing out the benefits. Your parent keeps saying "no". Why can't you persuade them? Why won't they listen to you?
They don't want to accept help or take your suggestions because emotionally, it feels as if they are losing control of their lives if they do. The most effective way around this is to stop trying to make logical arguments. Stop using reason. Just stick to a different strategy.
The most successful strategy to use is to say that you want what is best for your parent, and they need to do this for you. Avoid talking about the benefits. Skip the warnings about what can go wrong if they don't do what you suggest. Help Mom or Dad remember that they taught you a basic value: to do what you thought was best for yourself. Now you're trying to do what you think is indeed best for yourself. They need to do it for your sake.
You need to say how not accepting help puts an increased burden on you. That's not what is best for you.
When you cease arguing with your aging parent, and stop trying to address an emotional subject with the use of reason, your conflicts will calm down and your frustration level will dramatically fall. This can apply to just about anything you want your aging parent to do. Try it out.
Essentially, you're asking your parent to humor you and go along for your sake, not theirs. The parent can still feel in control. You are appealing to an emotion: their care and concern for you. That has much better odds of success than trying various arguments on your parent. In other words, you are using emotion to deal with emotion.
See if this works for you. And let me know. I would be happy to learn that there is even one less- stressed person among us trying to get a parent to accept help.
Until next time,
Carolyn Rosenblatt
Aging Parents.com
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