When Talking to Aging Parents About Their Health – How Makes All the Difference
As our parents or spouses age, and their health challenges increase, what used to be normal activities often become much riskier. The challenge for family members trying to help is how to discuss these issues without making our loved ones feel like we are being paternalistic or threatening their sense of control over their own lives.
Whether it’s driving when they shouldn’t; walking without their cane or walker; eating or drinking what is clearly in conflict with what they’ve been told by their doctor; their decreased interest in doing things or seeing people; or their resistance to being more physically active – it is a serious challenge to persuade them to make what we feel are needed changes.
We love them dearly, and like their love and guidance for us over the years, our love for them drives us to want to influence their behaviour to keep them safe.
The reality, however, is that many if not most family members don’t want our input or resist it. They often get annoyed and further stressed by us telling them how to act and behave.
What we must keep in mind is that as we age and our health declines, we all fight to maintain three hugely important interrelated values: our identity, our dignity and our independence – and every time others tell or ask us to stop doing something, or do it differently, it makes us feel as though these values are being attacked and that we are being treated like children.
More often than not, instead of looking for a better approach, we just repeat the same message and get more frustrated and angrier with them because they won’t listen or change.
As caring and loving family members who are key parts of their support system, we often fail to recognize that our goal is not to tell them what they need to hear. Our goal is to try to find a way for them to actually hear us and consider changing their approach. To that end, how we say what we say matters more than ever.
We also fail to recognize that what we are suggesting to them means sacrificing their identity or dignity or independence – for safety. To us it is obvious – to them not so much. In fact, for many seniors, they are okay risking their safety to maintain their sense of self, as long as they are able to make their own decisions and not put others at risk.
Our bodies often fail us faster than our perception of what we are actually capable of. It takes time and a lot of self reflection to accept that we aren’t capable of what we once were – and we frequently come to that realization kicking and screaming.
Without exaggeration, I have two or three discussions every week with families facing these issues (parents/spouses who resist good advice). Unfortunately, the conversations tend to end with the acceptance that change is not likely until an event occurs – typically a fall – that makes the needed change obvious to everyone – but only after a serious price has been paid.
So what can be done? I would suggest that one of the only other strategies is for us to change our approach first.
We need to find different ways to talk to our parents or spouses about these risks and issues. We need to turn down the heat, and turn up the empathy for the intangible values we are asking them to sacrifice. We need to find calmer ways to share how we feel and why we are concerned, and try much harder to avoid being perceived as paternalistic and oblivious to the inner psychological and emotional struggles that go hand in hand with their physical struggles. We also need to invest much more time trying to understand how they feel about what they are facing.
We need to find ways to help them see that sacrificing a few elements of their sense of self (for example using mobility aids, limiting or stop driving, or increasing social activity) will facilitate the continuation of the more important elements of who they are that allows them to continue to flourish.
Our loved ones can certainly be stubborn and hard to talk to at times. But, our goal isn’t to be right – our goal is to affect change.
You can’t change people with blunt force verbiage. It takes empathy, finesse and time.