When Family Members Disagree

Conflicts Regarding Parental Care

Photo by Yuri Bohatyrov on Unsplash

I talked with our children as I decided to place Dan in a memory care facility. They lived close by and saw the deterioration, knew that after four years of caring for him, I could no longer handle the situation by myself, and agreed that we needed to take additional steps. First, we managed the problem as a family, but pandemic restrictions altered our plan. After much discussion and anguish, the three of us took him to a memory care facility under the guise of looking for a new apartment.

The decision-making doesn’t go that smoothly for everyone, though. I was talking with a friend recently who is experiencing it differently. Her divorced Mom has lived alone in an apartment complex for years. She has some memory loss and confusion but also clarity.

For now, my friend wants her Mom to stay home and has established a schedule for long-time neighbors to stop by and visit regularly - thereby keeping an eye on the situation. Her Mom is familiar with the neighborhood, knows her way around, and is comfortable in her environment.

Her sister wants to place their Mom in a facility - now. Mom recently signed a contract to move into a retirement community but is having second thoughts. So, the family is experiencing contention and frustration with the situation and each other.

I can’t say what the best decision for any family is, but it occurred to me that others may encounter similar conflicts. So, I wanted to share information that might be useful as you make those decisions.

• A person’s early relationship with a parent can impact their willingness to provide care in later years. If the earlier relationship was contentious, the adult child may be angry and resentful about providing care. If the early relationship was loving, the adult child may willingly choose to care for the parent.

• Years of resentment and anger build. When further ones arise around caregiving, there is no room to absorb them.
  A strategy that worked for me was to write down the words “I am angry because” and then write everything that came to mind. When I finished, I rewrote the words and did it again until I got all of it out. This practice got my feelings out of my mind, let me separate from them, and sometimes allowed space for new ideas.

• If adult children have current health issues, they may be emotionally unable to take on caregiving duties.

• As long as Dan was mentally competent, he had the right to make decisions for himself - even if I disagreed with them. However, as his memory failed, a power of attorney was in place, and I could legally make them.

• My daughter and I visited three or four facilities. He didn’t go - the visits were too upsetting. Because of the pandemic restrictions, I didn’t see enough to get a clear sense of the place or meet the staff. Today, I would visit several times until we both felt comfortable with him being there.

• The facility I chose was expensive and had a good reputation - a wise choice, so I thought. However, the staff made promises they didn’t keep. I wanted them to care for him as I did, but my expectations were too high.

• Dan went ballistic when we moved to my daughter’s home briefly. He was disoriented and wanted to go home - to what he knew and what felt right.

Conflicts Can Arise Over

• disagreements about the senior’s condition

• financial conflicts

• arguments about fairness

• exclusion from decisions

• end-of-life decisions

• medical philosophies

• long-standing resentments

Ideas Worth Exploring

Family Disputes Over Care of Elderly Parents: Common Problems and Solutions -Common issues that may arise among family members and possible solutions.

How to Deal with Conflict When Caring for an Aging Family Member - Four rules for effective communication “paving the way towards finding common ground on which you can begin to find a solution.”

Coping With the Decision to Put Your Parent in a Nursing Home - One of the most contentious and guilt-inducing decisions that many family caregivers face is whether nursing home placement is in a loved one’s best interest.

Those were the hardest of decisions and the worst of times for me. Would I make different ones - no - but maybe if the pandemic had not played such a significant role and knowing what I do now - we could have kept him home longer.

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