Elderly needy parents + young needy kids - arghhh!!

[PlumPudd]

What do we owe to our parents / what responsibility do we have to them and what do they in return owe / have a responsibility towards us and our little kids?

I expect this is a common issue in my age group (mid 30’s). I’ve got little kids, who I love more than life itself, but who need most of my and my partners time / care / worry and attention. I also have a job, a partner, a mortgage, health worries, friends who I’d sometimes like to see, the need to occasionally have five minutes to myself to read a book etc.

However at the same time I’m raising my tiny kids my parents have been switching from relatively independent adults, to querulous, feeble (their words) old folks who want me to show them how to use the internet and book appointment for them, spend endless hours listening to their fears and grumbles about each other, their health, politics, media bias, how awful young people are today, how expensive their heating bill is (not as bloody expensive as mine) etc. and seem to feel that their time to look after has ended and their time to be looked after has begun and that it’s my responsibility to do this.

All this at a time when I’d really value still getting a bit of support and a listening ear from them as I look after a baby and a toddler, struggle to afford life, balance work, manage my own health etc. I know they got this support from their (admittedly slightly younger) parents, my grandparents, and that in theory they’d like to give it to me, but they seem unable / unwilling to.

In principle I agree that your parents should look after you and you should in turn look after your parents when they get old. But what are we all supposed to do when (because everyone is having kids later and living longer) our parents get old, grumpy and in need at the same time that we ourselves need their support in the difficult years with very young kids, or don’t have the time and energy to look after them and our kids together?!?!?

Not really looking for an answer to this (hypothetical) question, just offloading…

The reason I'm banging on about personal interactions even with banks and train stations etc and that going, is because I think just these small interactions with people helping us can remind us how most humans are ok. Again, in a bubble relying too much on the news and online for your sense of other people, it's possible to get a very negative view of humans. I find it myself - i look at the internet and the news and its a catalogue of misery and tragedy and it's easy to start brooding about how horrible humans are. But then going out and about interacting with real people in everyday life, having a nice interaction, you see people living lives, having fun and helping each other. It could be they are not getting enough of this now as they are older and have retreated somewhat.

Absolutely.
What else are our savings for at that point?

I ask, because OP is of the generation where its harder to buy your own home, some haven't planned for retirement and so on.

So there will be alot of people who won't have enough money.

I like your dad’s attitude. Obviously health apart, I don’t agree with older people happily taking on the role of child. It’s not good for them. I’m determined to be of the same mindset as your dad and behave and be treated like an autonomous adult and be in charge of my own life for as long as possible.

It is a mix of all sorts of things. My husband is a moaner but he always has been, we can be generous and say he's pushing 80 and not in good health but I'm in my 70s and had a horrible time with covid and long covid (just getting back to normal) and I'm a cheerful soul and like to take the positives from things even if I'm not well. I'm very independent and do lots of childcare with my GC, look after DH and I'm bringing up one GC due to various issues with his parents.

I think our own personality is the main issue but obviously it is hard if you aren't well and struggling for money but lots of people with decent health and not hard up can still be miserable.

Even with the news you can focus on the good, I know there has been lots of negative stuff on over the last few days but I rejoiced when I heard the little girl who was stabbed in France is ready to be released from hospital and finding the four children in the jungle is just truly amazing. I'm determined to live long enough to see their story made into a film as I'm sure it will be.

This could just be a one off generational issue, the generation that didn't grow up with tech and those that have. My mum has learnt a lot, my dad less so. He is also at 74, showing signs of dementia so it will be harder to teach him as time goes on and it progresses.

My parents won't use online banking, they are worried about pressing the wrong thing and scams. They have a language barrier too, being Asian. They know English and get by well enough but when it comes to online stuff its just harder.

I don't mind helping them out, they scarified alot to raise us, they were the generation with 15% mortgage rates and they mentioned once or twice how they had to choose between feeding themselves or us when times were hard.

I don't think we realise how hard it is to get old. And you'll unfortunately only find out too late. It's no fun to have to ask for help with everything. Your parents remember being independent and now they also hate having to ask and losing their confidence. It's not easy! And now their own children get annoyed with them. Its sad because I think we should have more patience with the elderly. I get that we're all busy, but we realise now why delaying kids maybe has more repercussions than we initially thought.

While I do (did) what I can for my parents, when push comes to shove my DDs come first, and I think it has to be that way.

My DM will be 84 this year and is quite good with tech though.

I get that we're all busy, but we realise now why delaying kids maybe has more repercussions than we initially thought

DPs were 36 and 38 when they had me, I had DDs in late 20s/early 30s- I wasn't the one who delayed having kids.

Yes delaying children has consequences it means that you don't have time or energy available to help your parents because your first duty is to your children but having children in your early 20s tends to severely limit your earning capacity.
As with many things we have to weigh it up and choose the least worst option 🤷

Agree.

It would have been ridiculous if my parents included us in their care plans when they urged us to go beyond our area and out into the world. My sister and I did just that, her living 12 hours away and me an ocean away. Add in that they work full-time and had to do caring responsibilities for my maternal grandparents for years before they eventually passed (including my sister doing some when she was meant to be enjoying her years before uni and me taking over some after she went to uni), they wouldn’t want to put that on us again knowing the stress especially when I already have children of my own, one with autism and my sister having her own business and still considering children.

Being carers for the maternal grandparents made them take their own health and future more seriously. My sister would help when we can but being there physically, not really.

*My sister and I would help when we can

My grandpa died a couple of years ago in his mid 90s. He used a computer all the time- all his banking etc, was on email. He hadn’t got onto phone apps but I think we can give him a pass on that.

@verdantverdure we use TeamViewer for remote access stuff. It works well. I've not used it for Apple tech though.

To be fair I should say he was an academic, not a bricklayer.

I didn’t ‘delay’ having kids - not everyone has the option. As I alluded to, I spent a fair bit of my 20s and then again in my early 30s caring for my parent, then dealing with bereavement, whilst also having been royally fucked over by the man I’d been with since my teens and thought I was going to do everything ‘right’ and have kids nice and early with.

By the time DH came along and we were grappling with fertility issues it was a given we were going to be older parents to a child with older grandparents.

Of course there’s implications but it’s not like most of us have been twiddling our thumbs hoping it takes till we’re in our very late 30s/ early 40s, we don’t all get the option.

Yeah that's what we use. It doesn't work with Apple.

Dear Christ.

You have the patience of saints.

Well it’s obviously not a full verbatim transcript of a conversation - I usually would spend longer listening to him talking about his favourite topic “bad stuff that is happening in the world as reported by the daily mail.” But if I typed out a full conversation it would have been pages of him going on about media bias, Boris Johnson, immigration, Sadiq Kahn, heating bills, how badly young people behave, knife crime in big cities, terrorism, free speech, cultural appropriation, gay marriage etc etc. I sometimes listen to him and sometimes try to steer him towards other topics that he enjoys - music, gardening, books - that are less relentlessly negative. Partly because going on about negative things doesn’t actually make him feel better, it makes him feel more angry and helpless, which he’s told me himself in one of his more self aware moments. Partly because sometimes I just cannot take the relentless negativity, and nor can my mum.

But it is 100% not reciprocated. He shows no interest whatsoever in my life, his grandkids, my partner, my interests, my job, any news I have read, Tv I’ve watched, books or music that I like etc. He couldn’t tell you what I do for a living or the name of the company I work for - but he does think that I don’t have a proper job because my job involves writing things rather than making things or farming or nursing or being a folk musician or something. He pretends he cannot remember where I live (a big city) and says big cities are inherently corrupt and full of crime and woke people (despite him living in a big city when he was my age and needed to work and send us to school as I now do), because he wants me to live closer to them, despite making it as difficult as possible for me to visit. He is also not speaking to one of my siblings and in the past once didn’t speak to me for eight months because I was going to vote the wrong way.

I love him, I want a relationship with him, I want to take care of him but my god he exhausts me

Can you ask for help? Your local Good Neighbours organisation will probably have befrienders who can visit, activities they can join with and a digital drop in to help them get the hang of appointments etc. You're doing a lot, reach out for what help there is. Will do them good too, to have friendly non relatives to talk to.

However, the world is getting harder to negotiate for those who weren't brought up with high-tech everything-having-to-be-done-online

🤣 that includes those of us in our 40s!

I don’t know. I hope that when I’m old I’ll be a little bit healthier, more positive, better prepared and independent than my parents are. But if I’m not and if my kids do end up helping me out a lot at the same time as having young kids themselves, then I think they will also find it a bit tough and I wouldn’t ask them to pretend otherwise or expect them never to have a grumble about it.

You can love people and want to help them but also find them a bit frustrating and hard work at the same time - it’s not all one way or the other.

Your dad sounds difficult, getting older or not. Often people get more set in their ways and if their ways were already difficult then it can be even more frustrating. I don't know that what you describe is all about getting older though. It sounds like you want a better relationship rather than he's so very needy. You are complaining he's showing no interest in you, not that he is being needy with you.

I am totally sympathetic incidentally. I just wonder if you're lumping in a lot of things together that aren't totally due to the being older parents issue. In a way it sounds like you are the one who is needing something. Needing to be seen and have interest taken in you and the things that are important to you from your dad in particular.

Getting a relationship better with someone you find difficult is always tricky and maybe needs a bit of longer and better thought than people like us lot on the net can help with. If he's going to the lengths of cutting people off or not talking to them for voting the wrong way, then you can easily say look we can't discuss politics - it leads to arguments. Let's agree to disagree on that. The relentless negativity sounds very difficult. The only thing I can think of is to try and have humour about it. Sometimes just having a game of bingo on all the things he'll inevitably say can just help distance from it a bit and stop you feeling so fed up.

I have a friend whose response to moaning is a sympathetic but exaggerated agreement. Oh I know everything's awful! What can we do with all this awfulness? People are absolute rotters etc. It usually makes the moaner laugh eventually due to her good humour and the funny language they use. But this person is very good at this and charming and funny and not everyone could pull it off.

You could try writing a letter or if you are brave enough trying a serious face to face discussion and just simply express that his relentless negativity is getting you down and could you find some more positive things to connect on?

At the end of the day if he's that difficult and uncompromising you just have to engage less. It will drag you down to have someone going on and on and on about the terribleness of the world. It's not right for him to impose it on everyone else and have zero sensitivity to them.

Very likely they did as most do have parents and parents do age at some point needing more care. Parents probably spent all their effort looking after their kids not everyone has equal finances to make provision for their old age if they are struggling to feed the children that then become selfish adults who say tough you should have neglected me