Updated February 18, 2021
It’s easy to assume that as our parents age, they are going to remain basically the same person. Sure, they may face additional physical challenges and they may even be stubborn from time-to-time, but that should be the extent of it, right? Yet, there are many manipulative elderly parents out there.
In reality, seniors truly can be manipulative. Some of them may have been that way their whole lives, while others may have developed the behavior later on.
To make matters worse, caregiving can sometimes mean you have to take a hard line. Some seniors may refuse to eat, while others may be resistant to any form of help. Stepping back isn’t always a viable option either, especially if the senior is a danger to themselves or others.
In some cases, the senior may be unaware of the behavior or the reason why they’re doing it. Other times, it could be entirely intentional.
As a result, it’s critical to understand why this happens and how to respond to it – rather than just ignoring the pattern. Otherwise, you may find that the situation simply gets worse over time.
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Defining Manipulative Elderly Parents
Before we start, let’s talk about parents who are controlling and manipulative. What do we mean?
There’s a broad spectrum of behavior here. You might have experienced some or all of the following examples:
- Guilt tripping. This may include the idea that you’re not doing enough for them, that you don’t love them, or that you’re being selfish.
- Gossip. Your family member might be nice to your face and then tell stories about you to friends or family members.
- Control. Your loved one may want everything done in a specific way, regardless of what is practical or realistic.
- Complaints. A manipulative or unreasonable parent will often complain about their family members. It often seems like nothing will please them and that everything you do as a child is wrong.
- Easily upset. Sometimes your family member may get upset at just about anything. This may be used as a way to manipulate too, as you can easily end up going to great lengths to make sure that everything is perfect.
Why Elderly Parents Manipulate
There are many potential reasons for why some seniors are manipulative.
Understanding the cause (or causes) for controlling behavior is critical. The best approach is going to vary depending on what is causing the behavior.
For example, it may not be possible to decrease the manipulative behavior of a parent who is that way by nature. As such, protective measures and boundaries become important. But, if there is an underlying cause that can be addressed, it may be possible to improve their behavior and your relationship with them.
Key Underlying Causes
For this section, we’re looking at cases where manipulative elderly parents are that way because of a specific situation. For the moment, we’re ignoring cases where manipulation is a part of the senior’s personality.
In some cases, it may be an effort to gain back control over a situation where they have lost it. Likewise, some parents are controlling by nature (especially if they are narcissistic) and this can become amplified in old age.
Control and Power
As people age, their control over their own life and body often decreases. For example, they might face issues with incontinence, mobility, and the ability to drive.
This loss of personal power and control can be stressful, not to mention scary. Some seniors lash out as a result. Those that are helping them often feel the brunt of such reactions.
Issues like this can create situations where your parents feel resentful or powerless. They may even feel like you are intentionally taking power away from them.
Acting in a controlling or manipulative manner may be a way for them to try and regain that control. Such behavior may be more likely if the senior feels like they cannot talk to you and find a middle ground.
Health Problems
For seniors with some health problems, behaviors that look like manipulation may not be intentional at all.
One common situation is memory loss, which can arise with dementia or with some other health problems. This often means that seniors cannot remember key things. As a result, they will often go back on promises that they have made or contradict themselves often.
The timing or frequency of such issues can sometimes make them feel intentional too. It’s often tough to believe that your family member really did forget. This is even more significant in cases where the senior hasn’t been formally diagnosed or when there are challenges that haven’t yet been recognized.
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What to do About the Manipulation
The first approach to senior manipulation is to figure out the underlying cause and, if possible, address it. This may mean seeking medical support or even psychiatric support, depending on the situation.
If this approach isn’t appropriate in your situation, there are other things to consider.
Provide Them With Personal Power
Even if the underlying reason for manipulation isn’t obvious, increasing the senior’s sense of power in their own life can be powerful.
One approach is to involve them in decision-making more. This is especially true if you are acting as a caregiver for them.
These don’t always have to be important decisions either. For example, you might ask your family member if they want a shower in the morning or the afternoon, rather than simply telling them that they need to have them.
It’s also important to think about how much you are controlling their life.
Caregivers often end up making many decisions for their caree, to the point that the caregiver may take over some parts of their caree’s life. This is often done with the best intentions. After all, it can be more efficient to tidy up after your elderly parent than to wait for them to do it.
But, exerting this level of control can be frustrating for your family member. Think about how it would feel if someone did something similar for you.
Taking a step back and allowing your family member to control their life more is a powerful approach. It might be a little difficult emotionally at times, especially if you could do a task much more easily than your family member. Still, doing so is important for you and your family member.
Set Boundaries For Elderly Parents
Setting boundaries basically means that you’re working out what you will and won’t tolerate – along with the way that you will respond to specific situations.
A good example is in the area of finances
Many people wonder whether they should bail out their aging parents, especially when that parent is struggling financially. There are many reasons why you would want to do this, especially as seniors often don’t have enough income to meet all of their needs.
Yet, when a parent is manipulative, this area can take on a whole new dimension.
- For one thing, some seniors will spend far beyond their means, often assuming that family members will help out.
- Some seniors may even feel that they can simply move in with their children if they can no longer afford to live on their own.
- Likewise, some manipulative elderly parents may want their children to help with every little thing, even if the senior could easily do it themselves. If the child doesn’t, then emotional manipulation often comes into play.
These patterns make it critical for you to take a step back and figure out how to respond. For example, having to run errands for an elderly parent every day probably isn’t practical, especially if they don’t really need that. Likewise, even if your parent is living with you, taking care of your own needs is still critical.
There is no single or simple answer about where to set boundaries. But, one key area to consider is what your parent actually needs versus what they want.
Another area is to look at family history. For example, if your parent was always manipulative, then you may need to draw harsher lines and be stricter in your responses.
In contrast, if the behavior is new, it may be related to a medical condition or the situation. If this is the case, you may be able to resolve some issues by providing them with more control or by working to understand the underlying causes.
Take Care of Yourself
Self-care and self-compassion are both important for caregiving. They’re also easy areas to overlook. Many caregivers feel guilty when they take care of their own needs.
It’s always important to care for yourself as you support someone else. Failing to do so can put your physical and mental health at risk. The care that you provide can end up being of lower quality as well.
This is a critical area for people with manipulative elderly parents, as they may suggest that caring for yourself is selfish. It isn’t. Your needs are valuable too.
Take a Step Back
Sometimes you’ll need to reduce the amount that you interact with your parents. This could involve providing less help for them or not being in contact as often.
If you’re a caregiver, you may need to seriously consider other ways for your parent to find support, such as through paid caregiving or assisted living.
In fact, prolonged controlling behavior is a form of abuse. This is true even if the behavior is unintentional.
This can mean that providing long-term ongoing care simply is not a sustainable option for a caregiver. That idea might sound harsh, but it’s true. Attempting to care for someone in a toxic situation, even someone you love, will burn you out emotionally and can easily contribute to mental health issues.
And honestly, it’s not good for them either.
You can’t be an effective caregiver, especially not in the long-term, if you are suffering from strain and burnout.
Final Thoughts
Dealing with manipulative elderly parents is never easy. There are times where you can help your parent and even reduce the manipulative behavior. Other times, this may not be the case.
You may even find that you need to completely distance yourself from your family member.
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My situation is a bit unusual, or at least I think it is. My Mother died in January 1988, after being married to my Father 42 years. He remarried in August 1988, and remained married until his death in 2007. I am an only child, my stepmother has no children or family, so the responsibility fell on me. I am a very responsible person, so I agreed to provide her care. Nancy was 66 when she married Daddy. Ever since I have known her (30 years) she has been a liar and a manipulator, and obsessive about her appearance. My Daddy learned to despise her, and I have never cared for her because there must be trust for any relationship to work and be healthy. Fast forward to now, and she is 96, still has a pretty good mind, and is in assisted living. I try to see her once a week to check on her. The issue? She has had an ulcer on her heel for years. It would heal up, then return, because she rubs her foot on the sheet during her sleep. She sees a Wound Care Specialist, has Home Health 3x week, and the staff at the facility dress the wound as well. She is supposed to wear a pressure boot ALL the time, but she does not. She lies and says she does. She takes the dressing off of the wound and walks around with only a sock on. The goal of Wound Care is to keep it from going septic. I have begged, been nice, bitten her head off—you name it, I’ve tried it over a LONG period of time. I have been co-dependent, trying to get her to help herself. She is a liar and a manipulator, always has been, getting through life on her looks. After years of fighting then distancing, being nice and losing my temper, I have finally had enough. I have confronted her habit of lying for the past several years, she just raises her voice, denies it, and cusses me out. The last time I saw her, I had all I could take, and I called her a f***ing liar. That is way out of my character. I do not want to go around her ever again. I have distanced before, several months go by, and guilt would drive me back to checking on her. And the sick cycle would start all over again. I don’t want to get in that position again, and the only way I seem to be able to keep my sanity is just to STAY AWAY. I truly despise her. I pay her bills and make sure she is taken care of because it is. in my mind, my responsibility. I need my feelings validated! I never want to see this manipulating, lying, narcissistic woman again! I will be glad to pay her bills, but that is it. I’m done, stick a fork in it!
I’m sorry for your situation, it sounds very stressful. You bring up an important point too. Discussions on caregiving often focus on the idea of a somewhat caring and reciprocal relationship. That’s not always the case. Some people are providing care to family members who do not want it at all and even to people who aren’t related.
Thank-you so much for this. So much you speak of describes our situation with my mother-in-law. Apart from the fact that we don’t know what is said behind our backs, all 5 of your points under “Defining Manipulative Parents” ring very true. Thank you also for your courage to write the very last sentence under “Final Thoughts”. No-one in authority has had the courage to say that, I guess they are so keen to protect their precious Mental Capacity Act which allows a vulnerable person to refuse all help from outside. I wonder how many care-givers are kept in place through guilt trips although they know full well they have the absolute right to walk away leaving a vulnerable person helpless.
I’m glad you found the article useful. Manipulative and unreasonable parents are a difficult enough challenge at the best of times. The problem can be so much worse once caregiving and vulnerability come into play. The truth of the matter is that caregivers can be abused and that the caregiving situation they are in isn’t always healthy or ‘right’. Recognizing when it is time to step back and look for other options is important – even if doing so seems almost impossible at the time.
I’m in need of serious help and clueless what to do. My mom is 67 and she has to deal with my father who has an amputated leg, but is bedridden because of his own lack of motivation to do anything. He relies on everyone else to do every single thing. Not to mention he is emotionally abusive always making guilt tripping comments and just hitting my mom when she tries to do clean up. We even had a social worker that visited and is willing to put him in a home but it needs his consent. Of course being the misbehaving adult child, refuses to answer anything, plays dumb in front of social worker, etc…
I’m inclined of just dumping this old man out into the street and leaving him there. My tolerance has ran down to the red and he has pushed and abused anyone around him, crossed many lines, we have no more patience or tolerance.
It’s easy to focus on sympathy for seniors and forget that they sometimes can be emotionally and even physically abusive. The idea of abandoning your father might seem harsh, but your own needs and those of your mother are important too.
The best solution to your situation will depend on a range of factors, including where your father lives and who owns the house.
We suggest taking a look at some of the caregiver forums (AgingCare has a fantastic one). Asking the same question to other caregivers should give you a good sense of practical approaches that you can take, along with the experiences of other adult children in a similar situation. It’s sometimes surprising just how often the same patterns play out within families.
Jojo,
Thanks for the posts and the article. I am at wits end with my narcissistic 84 yr old mother. She is also an alcoholic. She has legit ailments, arthritis, anxiety, bowel issues. Who wouldn’t if you still drink at her age! She will do NOTHING to change any of her behavior to help herself feel better. We are horrible children when we make any recommendations or suggestions. The lies, the telling stories differently to each of us. The push back on ANY help that we offer and then complains that people don’t do enough for her.
I’m in therapy and this issue takes up all the time. My Mother is toxic to me, and I want to be done with the relationship but that guilt that we all seem to feel. That, “how dare you not take care of your Mother” that she basically instilled in all of us.
With people living longer, I see this as a National Problem. What can we really do? They are adults with all faculties and as the children we are like fish in a barrel. I hate it. So many have loving families and for those of us with nasty aging parents, it’s a living hell.
I’ve tried boundaries, but they are met with games and manipulation. I’ve tried just saying “ok” to whatever the complaint of the week is but it is so draining! My grandparents aged so gracefully and appreciated everything and anything we could do for them.
Thank you for letting me vent to strangers. I wish everyone well and hope that we can all find our way through our situations.
It’s no picnic, I know. I’ve seen so many variations on this theme across caregiving forums and had my own experience with my partner’s mother for a short while that was overwhelming at the best of times.
There is certainly this strong social expectation that children are meant to take care of their parents, no matter what. Yet, that expectation often isn’t realistic, especially in cases like yours when there is no clear way out or to make things better. I personally found the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents helpful for identifying patterns with my own parents and unpicking much of the guilt that I learned as a child. That book doesn’t focus on caregiving specifically. I haven’t seen many good ones dedicated to caregiving for difficult parents yet, although many mention it in passing. Toxic Parents is another good one, although it is older.
As you, myself, and many others have found out, the situation itself often isn’t resolvable. Changing your mother’s behavior and attitude may not be possible, especially if she is truly narcissistic.
If that’s the case, it falls to you to decide what to do next. You can work on how you see and react to her. Some of the books I mentioned before might help in that area. Self-compassion can be a useful tool too. You may need to think seriously about whether to continue to provide support and in what way. In the end, you’re not obligated to make her happy or to make her life perfect. Neither of those things are possible anyway. If she wants to complain, manipulate, and be unhappy, she’s likely to keep finding ways to do so.
Oh my thank you for putting a face to this. My husband is a primary care giver to his mom. the older she gets the more I wont say demanding but expecting him to leave work, he works 2 jobs 70-80 hours a week, she is 85, she expects him to leave work almost daily for some reason. We live almost 40 miles 1 way, I cant help a lot, I am raising a small grandchild and all the responsiblity that goes along with that. It has got to the point like you alluded to guilt trip. She lives alone, refuses to move to assisted living wants to live at home. Often calling many times a week can you come out and read my mail. says she cant see ok then how do you order things from a mail order catalog hum. When he gets there she needs a light bulb changed, put batteries in her remote, and all this on his lunch hour, so when he leaves he doesnt have time to even pick up fast food. She will say well my medicine is ready at walmart need to find a way to get down there to get it, okay mama I will get it. Call a cab.What will she do if he loses his job or becomes ill, what then. She has another son and daughter living close by, a lot of times they dont answer her calls, she doesnt understand she has also worn them out.
Thank you for sharing your story. It’s hard, beyond hard, to care for someone that matters to you and to know that most of what you do isn’t seen or acknowledged.
In situations like yours, setting boundaries and keeping to them is one of the most important things that you can do for your husband’s health and your own. Doing so is also incredibly difficult emotionally, as there’s so much guilt associated with not giving your mother what she needs (or what she thinks she needs).
One of the most important things that I’ve been learning is that other people’s happiness isn’t my responsibility. Unfortunately, I didn’t figure that one out until after my caregiving role had finished. It would have been more useful while I was caregiving. As I’ve found from time-to-time, people sometimes don’t want to be happy. They’d rather complain and make other people responsible for how they feel. I suppose doing so is easier and less painful than trying to work on themselves.
I hope things get easier for you and, regardless, feel free to reach out again if you want to talk.
Thanks for the replies and support all. Also the suggestions on books. Thank God I have a great therapist that is guiding me through dealing with “Mommie Dearest”.
I understand the anger and almost rage that we all feel. Unhooking ourselves from the Narcissistic Parent is really hard because it goes against the grain of what we are taught as children. Help others.
I wish everyone strength to deal with our individual situations. It’s nice to have a place to say how it feels.
Be Well
JoJo – reading your comment, I thought I had written it. I am in a near identical situation with my 83 year old mother. I have become so depressed and feel hopeless.
My mother died in 1988, but she was grateful for the help that I did for her. She had hospice in the home. I work as a caregiver, and now they have this thing called patient centered care that has been taken to the extremes by these elderly clients. I find them to be very unnerving and annoying at times. These clients will ask for your personal information, be extremely demanding and verbally abusive. Many of these people had very lucrative incomes and will treat the caregiver like some sort of servant with the mentality that you are lucky to be employed by me. My first client was very nice. The second one is pure hell. I was in this field of work but it was a different generation of elderly people back then. These new breed of elderly folks are in a league of their own.
Terri, you almost describe my situation to a T. My husband and I married in our early 50s. He was twice divorced and I was widowed. He lived with his widowed mother at the time. His first marriage ended maybe a year after his father passed away. After the divorce, he moved back in with his mom. His sister moved next door to his mother a few years later and he met and married a nice lady who had five grown children (she was about 7 years older than he). He was in his early 40s then. Then, his sister died suddenly. He soon separated from his wife (they lived in another town) and insisted she sell her property and move closer to his mother (and his job). She did not. The separation lasted a couple years and they divorced. A lot of this I learned through our 10 year marriage. Although he’d explained his previous marriages, I kind of put the scenario together that problems arose after his mom needed him. Before he and I married, his mother married a recently widowed old gentleman. That was about the time my husband (he has no children) and I married and it’s been a little more than 10 years. His stepfather recently passed and I was scared his mother was going to move up here with us. She and I are cordial but she’s never liked me for very shallow reasons. But she decided she doesn’t want to move from the home she’s known all these years, won’t consider a retirement community near here yet insists she’s afraid and can’t sleep. I know she takes antidepressants and has for years.Now, granted, his mom gets around great for 84 years old! In fact, I’m sure she’ll outlive us. The problem is my husband stops there every day after work and spends about an hour, then makes the hour-long commute home. His mood is totally different on days he sees her. When he gets home from her house, he’s grouchy to me. I usually let it slide but he was grouchy to my daughter and granddaughter the other night and that is where I draw the line. My daughter and granddaughter were here for a week and he didn’t like that I keep our dogs in the sunroom when the baby is here. It’s mistreating them in his view. My husband is not a good communicator and won’t even ask why I’ve given him the silent treatment since then. I’ve wanted to say A LOT but thought better to hold my peace and think about it rather than say things that can’t be unsaid. I am confident that his mood is reflective of his mother’s. No one really likes to be around her. I fear after he retires next year, she will want to move in with us. At this time, she doesn’t want to be alone in the house with me because she’s generally uncomfortable around anyone but her family. She says her doctor says she has a “chemical imbalance” and when she doesn’t take her medicine, she has bad side effects. Why wouldn’t anyone not take their medication? As I said my husband isn’t a good communicator so I don’t know if marriage counseling would be helpful. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t think he nor she is the problem.I am recently retired and keeping my 2-year-old granddaughter while my daughter works. At some point, I want to do what I want with my life and spending my days looking at his mother’s sad face is not in my plans. We have built a beautiful home and I have investment in it as well as him. I’m almost to the point of saying, “Let’s put the house up for sale, split everything and go on our ways.” I’m sure his other marriages ended the same way. I certainly hear Terri when she says the mother has worn out the rest of the family – my mother-in-law is the last in her family of four sisters left. She mostly had them and really no friends. That speaks volumes to me.
I truly hope you both work on your communication as it seems there is a lot going unsaid that needs to be put on the table. I also hope your husband works on his boundaries with his mom as going over there every single day, and the emotional toll it’s taking on him, obviously isn’t good.
My mother is obsessed with cleaning. That’s all she does all day is clean and then complain about how hard she works. Then she expects me to clean her house after she already cleaned it and makes me drag ladders up and down the stairs to clean the windows. Then she says I’m lazy and never do anything for her and she does all this work herself. Then she makes me find her contractor and doctors and then complains when she doesn’t like them and blames on me that I don’t know what I’m doing she doesn’t know why she asked for my help and she just do it herself. She wants to call USAA to get insurance quote she doesn’t know the phone number and can’t figure out how to find it. I pulled up on my phone and had in front of me she was like never mind I find it myself. I’m like you have been saying you were going to call them for months now if you could figure it out then why haven’t you called. I not going to just listen to her keep saying if I could only figure out the phone number over and over then I try to give to her and she refuses to take.it. I feel like going to lose my mind. She won’t do anything fun because she has all this cleaning to do and nobody going to do it for her. It’s pointless. For example, I mowed the lawn right after I mowed and the yard look just fine, I promise she got the mower back out and mowed the whole lawn again because she was certain I didn’t do it right. She would do this every time I mowed, I imagine the neighbors think she is crazy. I stopped mowing the lawn I’m like I not going to mow if you’re just going to mow again every time when clearly doesn’t need to be mowed two times every time. It’s most crazy stuff and I have nobody to talk to about it.
I feel you.
It’s hard to understand why some parents are like that. Sometimes there seems to be an underlying mental health condition or a strong desire for control. I had a similar experience some years back. She was living with me, yet was still often angry about me being ‘lazy’ and not cleaning enough.
Everyone has different standards for cleaning though. There isn’t a right way at all.
It seems that some people, especially seniors, simply can’t be pleased. It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s never going to be enough. That’s why we often write about boundaries. They suck to set and might make her angry, but if she’s going to be difficult either way, it makes sense to choose the path that’s best for you.
Have you tried the AgingCare forums? Many caregivers use them as a place to talk things out. They’re good for advice too or you can just use them to vent (although you’re more than welcome to do that here as well). I love how many caregivers are on those forums and how they have each other’s back. After all, the most helpful people tend to be those with similar experiences.
Cassie