How do I tame my frustration toward my aging parents?
My parents are 57 and 63. My mother is erratic, forgetful, and when she gets mad she sometimes screams and throws things. My father is slowly going deaf, getting slower and more stubborn and forgetful as well. They can be infuriating sometimes, but I know that they're aging and I can't be mad at them. How do I deal with this, especially early on in preparation for further down the road?
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Aging seems to have a backwards effect. Elderly act more childish the older they get.
So try to think about how frustrated they may have been with you when you were a child. Now its like the roles are reversed. Its up to you to take care of them, to pay them back for the care they gave you, as it were.
Or, instead of the progeny taking care of parents, professionals could.
Yeah, if they can afford it. Personally, I feel that not taking care of your parents is disrespectful if you have the money and capacity to do so, but there is nothing wrong with paying professionals. But that is pretty expensive in my area. I feel the same way with parents who are entirely absent from their childs lives, keeping them in a daycare or under a nanny or even home alone at all times.
Extremely relevant Steve Hoffstetter: https://youtube.com/shorts/TPb7pd4UnXo?si=sYifsgGWAiYea5M3
Well you’re either too busy to take care of your parents because you have to make the money to look after them and so you pay for a professional
Or your too busy to take care of your parents because you have to work to make money in order to barely keep a roof over your head and still can’t afford to help them.
Pick one.
I'd rather a mix of both. Most affordable homes suck (my mom's getting there so I've been doing some precursory looking), so I'd rather have my mom living with my wife and I and having a nurse (nanny if you will) do the routine functions when that time comes.
This is so weird to me. In so many countries outside of the west different generations live with each other and take care of each other. I only think it’s fair for people to give back the same kind of care to their parents they received as kids
My wife was horrified to learn that we put our parents in a home when they get old. She's from Colombia and such a thing would be unthinkable.
Having said that I would never want my children to look after me. It's not fair on them.. they have their own lives to lead.
probably because where she lived probably doesn’t have the same housing/living wage/ economy crisis where you’re expected to work 14 hours of the day just to struggle to put a roof over your head let alone have absolutely no time to look after someone who is incapable and failing cognitively
Probably because of housing costs not driving up the need to work for 14 hrs a day in which no, you cannot look after an elderly person who is struggling. That is a full time job. You can’t expect a person already working two full time jobs to also fail at that.