Are You Too Certain About Your Aging Parent?

Are You Too Certain About Your Aging Parent?

When you’ve known someone your entire life, it’s easy to believe you know exactly why they do what they do.

That’s especially true with an aging parent.

You know your mother is stubborn. You know your father will refuse help. You know she’s trying to manipulate you. You know he won’t listen.  You know things are only going to get worse.

And maybe you’re right.

But when it comes to supporting an aging parent, there are two little words worth becoming very careful about:

“I know.”

One of the things I’ve learned after decades of working with older adults and their families, and during the seven years I spent supporting my own dad, is that sometimes the things we’re most certain about are exactly the things we need to become curious about.

Not because our conclusions are necessarily wrong, but because they may be incomplete.

Why We Crave Certainty When a Parent Is Aging

Supporting an aging parent involves an enormous amount of uncertainty.

You may not know how quickly your parent will decline, whether a recent change is temporary or the beginning of something bigger, whether they will eventually need more help, whether the decision you’re making today is the right one, or what life will look like six months or a year from now.

That uncertainty can be uncomfortable, so our minds naturally look for explanations.

Mom is stubborn.

Dad is in denial.

She’s manipulating me.

He doesn’t appreciate anything I do.

My sister doesn’t care.

Assisted living is the only solution.

An explanation gives us somewhere to land. Once we have one, it can feel as though we finally understand what’s happening.

Unfortunately, certainty can also cause us to stop looking.

We ask fewer questions. We become less interested in information that challenges what we already believe. Sometimes we don’t even notice contradictory information when it’s right in front of us.

Most importantly, we can begin responding to our conclusion as though it were a fact.

When an Assumption Changes the Relationship

Imagine that your mother repeatedly refuses help.

You’ve suggested hiring a housekeeper. She says no. You offer to have someone help with groceries. No again. You suggest having someone come into the house for a few hours each week, and she wants nothing to do with that either.

Eventually you conclude:

“My mother is just stubborn.”

The next time you approach her, you probably aren’t entering the conversation genuinely curious about what she thinks. You already believe you know.

That certainty may affect your tone before the conversation even begins. You might push harder, explain less, become irritated more quickly, or even begin making decisions without including her because you assume there’s no point in discussing them.

Your mother senses your frustration and pushes back even harder.

And there it is.

“See? I knew it.”

But what if there’s more to the story?

Accepting a housekeeper may mean something completely different to your mother than it means to you. You see someone cleaning the bathrooms and vacuuming the floors. She may hear, “My daughter doesn’t think I can take care of my own home anymore.”

Perhaps having a stranger in her house feels intrusive. Maybe she’s afraid accepting one small amount of help will eventually lead to everyone taking over. Perhaps she doesn’t completely understand what you’re suggesting.

Or maybe she understands perfectly well and simply doesn’t want it.

And yes, your mother might actually be stubborn.

Curiosity doesn’t require you to invent a nicer explanation for everything your parent does. It simply asks you to consider whether the explanation you’ve chosen is the whole story.

The Same Behavior Can Have a Completely Different Explanation

I once worked with an adult son who was convinced his mother was developing dementia.

He would ask her questions, and she would respond with answers that didn’t make sense. Understandably, he became increasingly concerned about cognitive decline.

Except dementia wasn’t causing those particular conversations.

His mother was hard of hearing.

She was answering the questions she thought her son had asked.

Same behavior. Completely different explanation.

Imagine what can happen when we never become curious enough to investigate our conclusions.

Once we decide, “Mom has dementia,” every forgotten word can become evidence. Every strange answer becomes evidence. Even disagreements can begin looking like evidence.

Sometimes dementia absolutely is the explanation, and concerning cognitive changes deserve appropriate evaluation. But sometimes something else is happening.

Certainty can make it difficult to see anything other than what we’ve already decided is true.

We Become Certain About the Future, Too

Our certainty isn’t limited to understanding our parent’s behavior. We also become remarkably certain about things that haven’t happened yet.

“This is only going to get worse.”

“I’m eventually going to have to do everything.”

“We’re going to have to move Dad.”

“My siblings will never help.”

“I’m not going to be able to handle this.”

Those thoughts can feel completely true, particularly when you’re already overwhelmed, but they aren’t descriptions of what’s happening today.

They’re predictions.

When you believe those predictions with absolute certainty, you can find yourself sitting in a perfectly quiet living room on a Tuesday night emotionally experiencing a crisis that hasn’t happened.

Preparing for the future is wise and important when you’re supporting an aging parent, but preparation and prediction are not the same thing.

There’s a meaningful difference between:

“This could happen, so what can I do now to prepare?”

and:

“I know this is going to happen.”

One allows you to prepare while remaining open to possibilities.

The other can have you suffering through tomorrow’s problems today.

Try Replacing Certainty With Curiosity

You don’t need to start second-guessing every thought you have, nor do you need to become naive about your parent.

Instead, begin noticing the moments when certainty closes the door on curiosity.

Listen for phrases such as:

“She always…”

“He never…”

“I know exactly why…”

“There’s no point…”

“This is the only way…”

When you notice one, ask yourself:

What am I so certain about right now?

Then follow it with another question:

What else could be true?

Notice that the question isn’t, “What else is true?”

You may not know.

Maybe Dad isn’t refusing your help because he doesn’t care about his safety. Perhaps he’s terrified of losing control over his life.

Maybe Mom isn’t calling you repeatedly because she’s trying to manipulate you. Perhaps she’s lonely, anxious, or forgot she already called.

Or maybe she really is trying to get you to come over.

You don’t have to immediately choose another explanation. Ask another question. Listen a little longer. Look for more information before building an entire story around what happened.

Sometimes You May Never Know Why

There is another possibility that may be even more important:

You may never know.

You may never know exactly why your mother reacted the way she did or why your father refuses something that seems completely reasonable to you.

You can ask questions, listen carefully and genuinely try to understand what’s underneath a behavior and still never arrive at an explanation that completely makes sense.

That’s okay.

Part of becoming more emotionally steady while supporting an aging parent is learning to become more comfortable with uncertainty.

We don’t like the empty space of not knowing, so our minds rush to fill it. Sometimes we grab onto an explanation simply because having an answer feels more comfortable than having no answer at all.

But “I don’t know” can be a much wiser place to stand than being absolutely certain about something that isn’t true.

You don’t always have to fill in the blank.

Sometimes you can simply leave it blank.

You can still decide what needs to happen next. You can set a boundary, make a decision, address a safety concern, have a difficult conversation or take whatever action is necessary without understanding exactly why your parent is behaving the way they are.

You don’t need certainty in order to move forward.

And sometimes, after you’ve remained curious, asked questions and looked at the situation from several different angles, you’ll discover that you were right all along.

That’s okay too.

The purpose of curiosity isn’t to prove you wrong. It’s to make sure your certainty isn’t preventing you from seeing something important.

What Are You Certain About Yourself?

There’s one final place worth looking because our certainties aren’t always about our parents.

Sometimes we’re certain that we have to fix everything.

We’re certain we should be handling things better.

We’re certain that if Mom is unhappy, we must be doing something wrong.

We’re certain a good daughter would never say no.

We’re certain we can’t possibly allow Dad to make a decision we disagree with.

These beliefs can feel every bit as factual as “Mom is stubborn.”

Some of the greatest relief I experienced while supporting my own dad came when I began understanding that just because a thought appeared in my head didn’t mean I had to automatically believe it.

I could notice it, look at it and become curious about it. I could ask whether it was actually true, whether it was useful, or whether there might be another way of seeing what was happening.

That small amount of space between what happens and what you decide it means can change so much about the experience of supporting an aging parent.

So be careful about what you think you are so certain about.

You may be absolutely right.

Stay curious long enough to find out, while becoming comfortable enough with uncertainty to accept that sometimes you may never know.

Because sometimes the thing making aging parent care harder isn’t what you don’t know.

It’s what you’re absolutely certain you do.

Want to Take This Work a Little Deeper?

If you recognize yourself in this and would like to understand more about how your thoughts and interpretations affect the way you experience aging parent care, I created The Emotional Relief Guide for Adult Children of Aging Parents for you.