When Aging Parents Argue

Mediation is a useful tool for helping aging parents resolve their conflicts. Whether the conflicts are about big decisions like where do we want to grow old or who will take care of us when we can’t do it all by ourselves anymore, or more routine issues like accessing online banking, buying groceries during a pandemic or when to dine in a restaurant and take our masks off, having a confidential, neutral professional available to facilitate conversations between aging parents, or between aging parents and their adult children can smooth the way to an agreeable resolution for everyone while preserving and protecting important relationships that would otherwise face a breakdown during these challenging times.

As we age our challenges shift and change in ways we might not have anticipated when we were younger. As with any life cycle changes, especially the ones we never anticipated, anxiety and fear can follow close behind the need to make decisions.

As aging parents with grown children the stresses of making decisions are completely different than the stresses we experienced while our children were growing up.  Where we once argued over discipline and boundaries for growing children, or perhaps about money, schooling choices, friends or the way our kids dressed, our conflicts as we age take on a completely different, perhaps more self-centered, self-caring quality.

Added to the mix as we age are our changing needs for our own health and financial well-being. Where once our choices involved how and when to support our growing children’s decisions and lifestyles, as we age our greater concern may be our own safety and well-being, even at the expense of lending support to our growing or grown children.

Now there may be support people involved in our decision-making as well and we may need to take their opinions about our choices into consideration before making big, life-cycle choices.

All of this can be fertile ground for conflict, between aging parents and between aging parents and their adult children.  While it’s not uncommon, parents of adult children may tend to fall back on their old ways of resolving conflicts between themselves when those old ways no longer offer enough resources for the challenges they are facing.

Turning to a professional, neutral, confidential person to facilitator when these conflicts arise is a tool that every family with aging parents should keep in its toolbox.