Taking Care of Mom and Dad: Emotional Factors
In the U.S., children aren't legally responsible if their impaired parent drives, but many adult children feel morally obliged to their parents and to others on the road. Many children worry. Parents going senile don't always grasp that their driving ability is impaired or will sometimes forget that they have agreed to stop driving.
How do you get a person with a weapon to stop pointing it at himself and everyone else? You reason with him. You show him love and support. You point out the damage a serious or fatal accident would do to his family -- and other families. You hope this works.
Families everywhere will recognize the dilemma: How can you help your parents yet respect their autonomy? What if the parents resist help? How do the children know when to step in, when to step back? The answers involve a renegotiation of parent-child roles that happens in every family whose members live long enough.
Many emotions coalesce when it comes time to take the keys away from a parent. You realize in a basic way that dad is getting older...and weaker...or that mom can't be the same mom anymore. Some adult children resist these realities until a crisis emerges -- mom hits somebody or dad hurts himself.
Other adult children fret and nag long before they need to. Most psychologists agree that the height of death anxiety occurs when you are in your forties and fifties. You begin to calculate how many years you've got left -- and you begin to look at your parents, if they're alive (and your children, if you have them), in a whole new light.
Before you can confront a parent about something like driving, you need to confront your own emotions and be ready to deal with your mom or dad's emotions when it's time to tackle the tough issues.
Acknowledge that you're probably more worried about losing your parents than about their driving. If you're in regular contact with your parents, it may be easier to broach these tough topics. But you might also consider bringing in a third party -- a sibling, friend, doctor, neighbor, lawyer or religious figure (priest, rabbi, etc.) to help move the conversation.
Before you attempt to convince a parent of anything:
- Understand your own emotions;
- Know what you want to get out of the conversation;
- Pick your battles (i.e., don't mix a conversation about giving up driving with one about how to hire a gardener);
- Think about how to best approach the topic(s) and under what circumstances -- keeping in mind the option of having someone else there to help you through it; and
- Be aware of the difference between autonomy and safety.
This last point deserves some attention. There's a clear difference between not letting your parents make decisions for themselves and allowing them to do what they want, as long as they're safe and don't pose danger to anyone else. You may want to stop the way they let junk mail pile up in the house or let the garden grow weedy, but these matters may be trivial as long as your parents are paying their bills and watching their health.
In most cases, as long as your parents are safe with their decisions, you need to let them make some decisions for themselves. It's critical to make a parent feel in charge. They can let the garden grow weedy and do their best to maintain it; they can let the mail pile up. These things won't hurt them or anyone else for that matter -- and they get the feeling that they are in control of their own lives.
Balance the need to take control of some facets of your parents' lives with the need to let them make certain decisions for themselves. So long as they are safe and pose no danger to others, they should be able to make the choices they want.
Even if you have a parent with mild dementia, you don't need to dictate everything that goes on in his or her life. The challenge for you is to find a way to take charge of the essential things (making sure they don't get swindled out of their retirement savings) and let go of the things that won't affect their well-being...but enhance their sense of self-determination (the increasingly odd way they dress).
