Persuasion - not pride and prejudice

It's about talking with our parents, not telling them what to do

Welcome to Care-full, a practical guide to caring for aging parents. Here, you’ll find my tips about how to juggle your caring responsibilities, where to find support, how to navigate government bureaucracy, and how to keep parents safe at home or find the right care facility for them. And – perhaps, most importantly – you’ll realise that you’re not alone during what’s probably your biggest role (reversal) yet!

The art of persuasion is an elusive thing. Most of us chase it at some time in our life - who hasn’t wanted to influence friends, a boss, or a life partner? But for those of us who have become carers of our aging parents, this most difficult of skills takes on added significance.

Our parents - who have lived independently for decades, raised their families while working, attended parent and teacher nights, cheered from the sidelines at weekend sports events, helped us with homework, offered a shoulder to cry on when we experienced our first heart break, were at our side when we were sick - now need our help.

But maybe they aren’t asking for assistance. Maybe - despite illness and infirmity - they still want to live in their own home, under their own steam, for as long as they can. And they don’t want to be “bossed” around by their children.

But we can see the signs. Perhaps, our parents are having trouble with their finances; maybe it’s clear that it’s time they stopped driving; or they could need help around the house or in the garden.

But as I wrote in last week’s column, talking to our parents about the inevitability of their increasing dependence on others is not easy.

I chatted to a close friend of mine yesterday about his parents. One has dementia - they are forgetting names, having trouble using the telephone, getting lost at the shops - and the other is in denial about the couple’s ability to continue living independently at home. “We aren’t moving!” “Don’t treat us like children!” is the riposte from any attempt by their child to get them to accept help.

I doubt my friend is treating his parents like children and his fears about their safety are justified - why oh why do elderly men insist on climbing ladders? But he is finding it so difficult to find a circuit breaker. Should he keep having the same conversations with his parents, knowing they won’t change their position? How does he ease his own worries about their safety? He can’t just pretend they are okay.

It’s a painful dilemma many of us face.

Not long after I published last week’s post, I came across a great article by another Substacker - Cindy Martindale - about these difficult conversations with our aging parents. The power of what she wrote, combined with my friend’s situtaion prompted me to revisit the issue in this week’s Care-full.

Cindy is a former director in senior living communities in the US, a carer for her parents and now author of the “Smarter Caring, Smarter Living” newsletter on Substack.com. In her most recent article, she writes with compassion and elegance about “a gentler way in to these discussions” that “doesn’t make the talk painless, but can keep it from exploding”.

Her first piece of advice is that we shouldn’t think that just because we feel trepidation broaching these issues with our parents, that the fault lies with us.

“The discomfort is often the first thing caregivers question. ‘If this were the right thing to do, I wouldn’t feel this awful … would I?’ But the dread you feel isn’t a sign of failure. It’s a sign of love colliding with reality.”

Cindy reckons our hesitation is because our roles have shifted. “You’re no longer the one being guided or protected. You’re the one initiating a conversation that touches independence, dignity and loss — all at once.”

“Avoiding the talk doesn’t preserve peace; it simply delays the reckoning. And the longer it’s delayed, the more fragile everyone becomes.”

It’s a great article that deftly walks through this ethical minefield. You can find a link to it below.

I stumbled across another interesting take on how to conduct difficult conversations, this week. Robert Greene writes about strategy, power and seduction. A lot of his work is aimed at the corporate world but one little video snippet seemed very apt for this topic. He says that in the art of persuasion, the first thing to do is to stop thinking of yourself.

“When you find yourself in a moment where you want influence … whether it’s your boss, your child, your spouse, your first reaction is ‘my needs, what I want, who I am’. If you can train yourself - and it takes time - to stop that and to think of them and to put yourself in their position, to think of their psychology and of how they think about themselves, you’ve already come a very long way towards having the ability to persuade them.”

More reading

Having “the talk” without blowing it up (what actually works) by Cindy Martindale

Relationships with ageing parents - Relationships Australia

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Wendy Frew is an Australian journalist, author and community broadcaster whose work has appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and the BBC, and on 2SER and Radio Northern Beaches. She is the primary carer for her beautiful nonagenarian mother. She wishes she could fly like a Peregrine falcon.