Lynn Coady
Group Therapy is a relationship advice column that asks readers to contribute their wisdom. Each week, we publish the most lively responses, with a final word on the matter delivered by our columnist, Lynn Coady.
A reader writes: My two siblings hardly visit my parents and never offer to help. When they do speak to them, they are abrupt and even mean (my sister often yells at my mom).
My parents are elderly and need assistance with medical appointments, errands and overall care-giving. I have been taking on this role by default because I love my parents and they are kind and sweet people. However, it is exhausting (emotionally and physically) and my health is not great.
When I do ask for help from my siblings, they are grudging or too busy. What else can I do?
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Open yourself to blessings
I faced exactly the same issue in my 40s. Our parents, too, needed support and I, too, have two siblings.
My experience says that no amount of coaxing or moral lectures will change the attitude of siblings. There is a saying: You can wake up a person who is asleep, but not the one who is awake. It is not that your siblings do not know what they should do; they want to shirk.
I took on the responsibility for my parents, and on me they showered blessings. I still feel surrounded by those blessings. So open yourself to give and receive.
- Sneh Mahajan, Etobicoke
Stay away from blame game
Ah, the hard truth: Buried or not, issues between children and their parents don't disappear when the elders start needing help. Whether you solved yours or decided to put them aside, you can't impose a similar solution on your siblings.
So a conversation with them is a must, but stay away from the blame game. Instead, assess your parents' current needs and make a realistic, guiltless appraisal of the moral, physical and financial resources you are willing to invest. Your siblings may be more willing to invest money and ideas than face time.
Tell your parents they can't expect you to fulfill all their needs, and be upfront about your siblings' attitude and the impact it has on the situation. Chances are they have their share of responsibility in the current state of their relationships.
- Danièle Blain, Montreal
An eldercare planner
This situation can quickly destroy your family relationship.
Contact the social-service agency in your parents' neighbourhood and arrange for a professional assessment of their housing, care, social, activation and cognitive status, and expectations for their future needs. Obtain information from all sources, starting with locally subsidized services, to estimate the future costs and plans for implementing what they'll need.
Gather your sibs to have a clear-eyed look at the time and cost commitments, and hammer out a plan to divide up the tasks. Given the family dynamics, consider using an eldercare planner. It's time to get over yourselves and focus on your parents' needs.
- Pat Irwin, Toronto
The Final Word
I'm going to let you in on a little secret. In situations like these, when aging parents begin to require more from their children than help setting up e-mail or programming the TV remote, there is always one sibling like you: a default caregiver, known in less kindly circles as The Sap.
You're the one who lives close by, who has always been closest to your parents, who gets along with them best. Don't kid yourself: Your siblings have been counting on you all along to do precisely what you've done - passively allow the mantle of Parents' Keeper to fall upon your shoulders.
They will deny it to high heaven, your sibs, exclaiming that no one asked you to take on all this responsibility yourself. And they have a point. But what would they have done if you didn't exist?
These two are well aware of their responsibilities, but as long as someone else is knocking herself out tending to the old folks' every need (that would be you), there's no reason they can't go on their merry way with clear-ish consciences.
Sneh in Etobicoke is correct: They want to shirk. Why wouldn't they? The current set-up works out pretty damn well - your parents are well looked after, and they remain free to enjoy NBC's stellar Thursday-night lineup.
You need to make it clear to your entire family that this situation is untenable.
Danièle recommends talking with your siblings and avoiding the "blame game," and I'd agree. Don't talk about what they haven't been doing - talk about all that you have, and stress that it can't continue.
Don't have this conversation with your parents around, by the way - you and your siblings need to talk honestly.
Tell them: Here's what I'm prepared to do for mom and dad, and lay out what you feel is reasonable. Then look at what remains to be done and ask them how they are going to address it.
If your sibs can't handle one-on-one time with your parents beyond birthdays and holidays, then Pat has some wonderful suggestions for availing themselves of outside assistance.
Lynn Coady is the award-winning author of the novels Strange Heaven and Mean Boy, with another one currently in the oven.
Next week's question
A reader writes: In the past year, my boyfriend decided to open his own website business to help with his huge debt (which he had before I came into the picture, and he continues to mismanage his money). Although I have been very supportive for six months, we now spend our vacations with him working, evenings with him working, and whenever he is not working he talks about work. He hasn't talked to me once about the impact of this on our lives. The only time I complained, he screamed at me, saying I was being unsupportive. Please help.
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