Aging Parents - by Darylynn Starr Rank
February, 2005

Do you remember the day you first noticed that your mother or father was getting older? (This may not yet have happened for many of you, so let’s call on your imagination.)  Either their hair was greying more than a little, or the lines on their faces were suddenly more conspicuous than the color and texture of their familiar complexion. Maybe they were standing just a bit more curved over than you were used to, or moving a tad more awkwardly.

It’s one of those moments. A quick double-take, an invisible gasp, a silent jolt. And your world shifts. Not dramatically, probably. Not overwhelmingly. Maybe not even with a conscious thought. But it changes. It starts a new journey.

Thanks to improved life style knowledge and better medical care, it’s possible that baby boomers will spend more time taking care of their aging parents than they spent parenting their own children. Imagine.

We’re only really beginning to understand the enormous and varied impacts of that. Everything from dealing with a range of health concerns, caretaking issues, and economic concerns, to demands on time and resources, to guilt and emotional family dynamics, to name a few. Let’s take a quick look at just one of them.

You know how it is after you’ve left home, perhaps you’ve been away from your parents for a year or a few years, and then you return to visit for the holidays. One of the most familiar complaints I hear from practically everyone I know, goes something like this. 

“I can’t believe it. I live my life as a perfectly competent adult the whole rest of the year. And then the instant I go home I feel like I did when I was thirteen years old. My parents treat me like a kid. And even worse, I start acting like one. It’s the same exact patterns. Even with my brothers and sisters! My dad still thinks my brother’s perfect and I’m practically invisible. And I actually start hating my brother all over again! Hating myself, too, for being such a baby.” Or whatever the dynamic is in your family.

When we start taking care of our aging parents all of those same old patterns and feelings can kick right back in again.  The same resentments flare, the same jealousies, old angers, old hurts all start rearing their painful heads again. And with so many other important issues to deal with, also having to deal with old emotional wounds can be far too difficult. 

One way of coping is to make a real effort to be aware of these dynamics ahead of time so you can place them in their proper context. Know that they’re going to occur, and that you have ways of coping with them now that you didn’t have when you actually were a kid. Maybe you don’t actually have to feel furious at your kid sister right now, as opposed to thirty years ago...  

And, of course, getting all the support you can is often both useful and crucial.

Take care all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

Back to Article Index