Anyone have an elderly parent who...

[ha98ed14]

NEVER listens to them? My parent is in a very precarious situation. Multiple situations actually. I have researched and spoken and advocated and talked myself blue in the face, but it does no good unless it comes out of my sister's mouth. Thankfully my sister and I agree on this most recent development, but she is sick. and. tired. of having to bear this burden, of being the only person our parent will listen to. She is done, and rightfully so because our parent has burdened her beyond measure. I would like to assume some of that burden, but our parent thinks I am wrong by definition. Unless my sister agrees with me, I might as well be telling her to take a rocket to the moon to escape the situations! My sister is reasonable, but very reactionary because she is so over dealing with this. The totally crappy part of this is that my sister and I will be on the hook for the financial fall out if/when our parent is left with nothing. We can't abandon our parent, but boy is it frustrating to be completely ignored and then left holding the bag. If ever there was a situation that deserved to be described in four letter words, THIS is it!

[lizzywednesday]

My dad has the same problem with his mother - she'll only listen to his older brother.

But, the fun wrinkle in that is ... she won't call & talk to him because, apparently, he's "busy."

I happen to know that he spends about 14 hours a day on Facebook posting all kinds of nonsense (with a sh!t-ton of misspellings, BTW, and he was a teacher for 30 years) and going to concerts and so on.

So, sure, he's "busy" but he wouldn't be too busy to listen to his mom!



I guess what I'm trying to say is ... I totally hear you & send lots of hugs, because I haven't figured out how to get around the "selective deafness" either. (And I'll bet good money that when my dad starts to get older, I'll be the only one who can talk to HIM.)

[Simon]

Yes! That is my Mom and she listens to Dh but not me. Only recently have I learned to take advantage of that and get him to push the thing we want. But really, it is just obnoxious and very irritating.

[kijip]

Well, honestly my dad listens to pretty much no one so I hardly expect him to listen to me. I like him alright but if he was not my father I would think him the most hard headed, foolhardy person in the world.

[crl]

I can see this coming with my parents, except I may be the one they listen to. In our case it will be a combination of my brother having pushed on them making plans for when they can't live in their house anymore before they were ready to think about it--they are in somewhat bad health but mentally totally with it and have planned very well financially--and their personalities. I kind of see my brother's point on the house, but I could have told him he wasn't going to get anywhere and he was just going to piss them off. Sigh. I don't want to be the only one they will listen to.

Catherine

[hellokitty]

I really feel for you. We deal with this on both sides of the family. Both my mil and my dad REFUSE to listen to family members. They will only listen to total strangers or idiots who don't know what the hell they are talking about, and their spouses having given up trying to rationalize or argue with them, so all the adult kids are just completely fed up. They repeatedly get burned over and over again (and family members are left to deal with the damage control), but still have not learned. I have basically washed my hands of it. Esp just in the past couple of months, my father (who really needs to retire) was offered a good price for his office, higher than he would ever get by trying to sell it on his own. He turned it down and insists he will try to sell it himself. Yeah, nobody is going to buy an office that he never re-modeled and barely counts as being maintained that is over 30 yrs old, NOBODY! His practice is in shambles (his own doing, nobody else's fault except his own), what is going to happen is that he will probably die from some medical issue (he is in poor health, once again his own fault, he's a physician, so there is no excuse), so WE will have to deal with his mess if he dies, since he doesn't give a rat's ass of leaving a disaster behind for his own family to deal with. In fact, he has told my mom before that he basically plans to die before her, and he doesn't care what happens to her after he dies! He is just a very selfish person. My siblings and I always say that it will be very interesting if my mom dies before my dad, b/c he can't fathom the idea of that happening and not being able to just dump his problems on someone else, instead of the other way around, kwim?

It is the same situation with his house, he won't let my mom maintain it like it should be. It looks like something straight out of late 70's, and basically the only solution I can think of when my parents die is to auction the house and all its contents (the only thing I want is my piano, which they said I can take any time I want). I am not spending like 100K to completely re-do the house and I am already upset that they refuse to declutter, so *I* will be stuck doing it (my brothers both live OOS, so I know that this will fall on my lap).

Really, what makes me more mad than anything is that it is so damn insulting that while they won't listen to family members who actually CARE about them, BUT they will listen to ppl who are strangers who give bad advice or worse yet, have self-serving reasons to give them bad advice. Whenever my mom complains that we (my siblings and I) don't listen to their wisdom (snort), I just flip it right around and say that they never listen to us, so why should we listen to them? I totally get the frustration though, of seeing a family member basically making one poor decision after another and not being able to do ANYTHING about it and worse yet, having them get irritated with you, when you have their best interest at heart. Sorry for the rant, but :hug:, I totally get it and don't get me started on my mil. She is the queen of not listening to family members, screwing things up big time and then blaming everyone else, except herself for the stupid decisions that caused the cascade of problems. Some ppl don't learn, even if it's the hard way.