Loving Your Parents When They Can No Longer Love You

This book has helped me through some very difficult times. I also bought a copy for my siblings to help them. Very well written, insightful, and helpful.

My mother recently passed away after being very ill for six years. Although I am the eldest of six, most of the responsibility fell to me. There were many dark days for me with various siblings as well as with my parents, but this book was a great help to clarify my mission, adjust my attitude, and continue what I knew I had to do. All matters emotional & practical are addressed with no sugar coating. I have ordered several copies to share with friends dealing with elderly parents.

Taking on a tough and timely issue for millions of Americans, Terry D. Hargrave's book is much more than the title would suggest. It is about more than dealing with aging parents with Alzheimers or another mental problems where they can no longer express affection for you the way they once did. It also examines the problems of how the need to care for aging parents may disrupt your life and plans. How do you deal with dependent parents? How do you deal with forgetfulness, not taking medicine, doing things they should no longer be doing, etc. The book and the advice it contains is both practical, such as finishing up family business, and enlightening. The author deals with this problem in part by changing perspective and viewing the process of caring for aging parents as a spiritual journey that you undertake. He also looks from the perspective of the parent - trying to deal with declining health, a lack of independence, and other normal changes that come with age. One particularly valuable aspect of the book is that it provides a clear vision of areas that need to be discussed and dealt with as parents age. These areas include legal and financial decisions, how much care is needed, when it needs to be done, by whom it should be done, various living options, depression, dementia, alzheimer's disease, dealing with a parent who has been unkind, and accepting and planning for death. Loving Your Parents When They Can No Longer Love You is highly recommended for anyone dealing with aging parents and the life changes that come about as a result.

Despite the misleading title of LOVING YOUR PARENTS WHEN THEY CAN NO LONGER LOVE YOU, this is an excellent treatise on caring for aging parents at any stage of their decline. Author Terry Hargrave (FINISHING WELL, FAMILIES AND FORGIVENESS) offers competent, concrete, and compassionate help for adult children specifically addressing the spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental ramifications of caregivers and their aging parents. Hargrave acknowledges that caring for an aging parent can be a wearisome, seemingly thankless task. "When we give care to an older person, however, we sacrifice for one who grows weaker, interacts less, and eventually will die," writes Hargrave. "It is a service and sacrifice for which we see very little --- maybe even nothing. Caregiving for an older person is purely about servanthood." In providing care for the elderly, we care for our own souls, he believes. For those whose parents are in the early stages of decline, Hargrave offers a simple chart, the "Instrumental Activities of Daily Living and Activities of Daily Living" that allows adult children to assess how much care the parent requires. Can he cook a meal safely? Is she capable of unassisted walking? Can he take his medications unassisted? Once it's established that some sort of intervention is required, he explains the four ways an aging parent might respond. There is the "make lemonade" type who makes caregiving pleasant; the "pretend it's not happening" type who insists he doesn't need help; the "poor pitiful me" type who acts helpless to do anything on her own; and the "whatever" type who is passive and possibly depressed. Hargrave offers suggestions for responding to each type with compassion and firmness. He points out three areas that must be addressed: Medications, incontinence, and driving, and ideas for sensitively assessing and confronting each issue with the parent. A whole chapter is devoted to housing: Where should the failing parent live? What modifications can be made in the home so the parent can stay independent as long as possible? What are the positives and negatives about hiring a caregiver? What options are available when full-time care becomes necessary? Another chapter helps the adult child open up conversations about finances, and avoid disagreements and misuse of the family's money by ill-intentioned siblings. His illustrations are firmly grounded in reality --- not all families will agree on how a parent should be cared for, and not all stories end happily-ever-after. However, his practical advice will help a number of readers avoid many of the common conflicts in caregiving. There's a specific chapter on the warning signs and the implications of caring for elderly parents who have dementia and Alzheimer's. "No one can quite describe the pain of having your parent, who has loved you with all of his or her heart, look at you and not have the slightest idea who you are," writes Hargrave, who is a caregiver for his mother-in-law,