A few weeks ago I received a call from someone I hadn’t seen in 20 years. She wanted some advice about her 90 year old mother. She was distraught because her mother seemed depressed and was no longer actively involved in previous activities. The 20 minute conversation boiled down to whether she was upset because her mother wasn’t performing as she thought her mother should or her mother was shrinking her world to make it more manageable as she aged?

Many of us are experiencing, or have experienced, or will experience, taking care of our elderly parents. Depending on when we were born in our parents’ lives and how fortunate or unfortunate their health is, we often become the sandwich generation, caring for our own children and our parents.

The call peaked my curiosity and I researched the topic caring for elderly adults to find out what is out there. Not that much and not that much interest. Amazon doesn’t list any current books and previously maybe there was a book for the adult child every two or three years. Even a keyword search showed little interest in terms of searches for that kind of information.

This lack of interest intrigues me. Caring for elderly parents and all the emotions it encompasses would seem to make it such a juicy topic.

It doesn’t make sense to me yet. Think about it. There are thousands of books out about parenting your kids. You would think that because we’re now living longer, which means parenting our parents for longer periods of time, there would be more interest. There is not.

If you have any possible answers to this question please let me know. Type them up in comments and I’ll collect your solutions.

To your healthy aging,

Ruthan Brodsky

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Filed under: Family and Relationships

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