My Elderly Mother Expects Me To Support Her

I spend a lot of time on sites about caregiving and aging, including forums and Facebook groups. That’s not surprising really, given that I write about caregiving so often. A common theme across those sites is the complaint that ‘my elderly mother expects me to support her’.

At first, the expectation sounds fair enough.

Our parents supported us for much of our early life, keeping us clothed and fed, while also teaching us how to be successful in the world. It’s not unreasonable to think that we should support them in the same way as they age.

After all, seniors can face many challenges, including declines in their physical health, potential issues with their memory or cognition, and financial difficulties. Many seniors really do need help to stay healthy and safe as they age.

The problem, however, is cases where elderly parents are incredibly demanding. Sometimes it feels like they want everything under the sun and even then won’t be satisfied.

What do you do when that’s the case? How do you respond to the expectation for support when what is asked of you just isn’t realistic?

In this post, we’re taking a close look at the idea, including things to think about and ways to move forward.

Important Things to Think About

Are The Requests Reasonable?

Sometimes aging parents really do need a lot of support, whether this is financial, practical, or emotional. It’s not uncommon for elderly parents in this situation to expect their children to help. Doing so is reasonable. Who else would they turn to?

Yet, many adult children face excessively needy parents, ones who may want their children to spend a large amount of time, money, or energy on them – despite being able to take care of themselves.

One of the best places to begin is to put your emotions aside for a moment.

Rather than thinking about what you should be doing or how your parent will react, think about whether the requests are reasonable. It can help to reverse the situation in your head. For example, what if you were the senior and had those expectations of your adult children, would they be reasonable?

Here are some examples of requests that might be unreasonable:

• Wanting you to call or visit most days
• Being upset if you go on a holiday without them or are out of contact for a few days
• Expecting to always be your first priority
• Expecting you to solve every problem when it occurs, regardless of how trivial
• Turning to you for support and assistance for tasks that they can easily do themselves

How you feel is also a good indication of whether your parents’ requests are reasonable or not. If you’re constantly run down, feel like you have no time or energy for your own needs, and have little time to relax – then chances are you need to do more for yourself, even if that means doing less for your parent.

What Do They Truly Need?

Another crucial area is the difference between your mother’s wants and what she actually needs.

What Your Parent Wants Isn’t The Most Important Thing

Some people are externalizers, where they tend to look at other people for the solutions to their problems. They’re often unwilling to look at their own role in a situation or to try and find solutions themselves.

If this pattern is playing out in your relationship, then your mother may be wanting you to make her feel better, to fix her life. However, doing so isn’t really possible. It doesn’t matter how hard you try – you can’t make the challenges of aging go away.

Similarly, you don’t have the power to change how your mother feels. You can make her life easier, true, but how she feels about that and about your efforts comes down to her, not to you.

So, when you’re thinking about how to support your mother (or any family member), try taking a step back from what she wants you to do.

What Do They Need?

Think instead about what she needs.

Take finances as an example. Many people do face significant financial challenges as they age, especially if they didn’t save much for their retirement. Some may be relying entirely on Social Security, a situation that is challenging at the best of times.

If your elderly mother is struggling to make ends meet, isn’t able to afford healthy food, can’t pay bills, or has other serious problems – then yes, chipping in financially could be important.

On the other hand, if your parent can’t pay their bills because they’re spending their money frivolously – giving them more money might not help things at all.

For example, in her book Setting Boundaries with your Aging Parents, Allison Bottke talks about a man who was helping his aging parents with their budgeting and giving them extra money to help with shortfalls between their income and needs. But, it turned out that the parents were using the money they had for bills to support the man’s sister, partly fueling the sister’s addictions in the process.

As Allison Bottke points out, it’s useful to draw a line between helping your parents and enabling them.

Where you draw the line will depend on the situation, but here are some useful questions and statements to get you thinking:

• Will your support (financial or otherwise) help your parents to live a better life or would you be enabling them to continue unhealthy behaviors?
• What would happen if you weren’t available? Would they find a way to make ends meet on their own or would they be completely stuck?
• Are there other ways to solve the problem that your parents aren’t thinking about or don’t want to? For example, if their house is too expensive to maintain, downsizing is an obvious next step.

Can You Support Them Without Harming Yourself?

The other part of the equation is you.

What are your needs? How much support can you give (emotionally, physically, or financially) before the cost is too great?

Let me put it this way. Supporting a parent often involves some sacrifice. You may need to give up things that are important to you to make sure they’re okay. Such is the nature of caring for someone.

But, supporting your parents shouldn’t leave you burnt out. It shouldn’t mean that you need to give up everything important to you until there’s nothing left.

Because… you matter as well.

The goal is to find a balance between the two areas. To find ways to help and support your parents without losing yourself in the process.

This means that you need to look at what where your lines are. What’s too much for you?

For example, if your elderly mother wants you to support her, she may be hoping to move in with you. That way you are on-hand for her needs, while her financial burden is decreased.

Moving an aging parent in with you might seem ideal, but it’s a decision that’s also fraught with difficulty. This can be a particularly big problem if you have a poor relationship with your parents, a difficult past, or if they were once abusive.

Remember that it’s much harder to take space when your mother is living with you. The situation can also be difficult to get out of once it is set up. Some adult children struggle with this exact issue, sometimes finding that their parent moved in for a few weeks and then simply refused to leave.

If you’re at all worried about your aging parent living with you – look for other solutions. You could try caregiver forums or talk to local advocates. You might be surprised at how many other options there are.   

What You Can Do

Get External Opinions

Getting external perspectives on your situation can be incredibly helpful.

After all, your experience of the situation is biased by your own views and emotional responses. It’s often difficult, if not impossible, to understand both sides of the situation without more input.

Caregiving forums and support groups can be fantastic places to begin, as these are filled with people who have an emotional understanding of your situation. Honestly, these forums can be fantastic even if you’re not a caregiver.

Talking to friends can help too.

However, it’s important to find people who are willing to be objective. This may take a little time as some well-meaning friends may simply choose to affirm your point of view, rather than helping you to think critically.

Talk to Your Parent About the Problem

The next step is to talk to your parent. In particular, you need to talk about their expectations versus what you’re willing to do.

The conversation could easily be difficult or confrontational, but having it is still critical. In fact, difficult conversations are a crucial part of any healthy relationship.

We’ve written an in-depth post about strategies for talking to aging parents, so we won’t talk about the topic too much here. However, we will cover a few crucial points.

Do Some Planning

Rather than jumping straight into the conversation, take the time to do some planning and thinking. Take a good hard look at the situation, including your own assumptions.

Think about what you want too. In an ideal world, what would you want to change? Why?

Step Away from Right versus Wrong

When planning and having the conversation, try to move away from the idea that there’s a right and wrong point of view.

Honestly. The idea of right versus wrong gets us in so much trouble. We’re often convinced about our own point of view, then try to talk the other person around to that perspective. Doing so doesn’t work well, as the other person has their own strong opinions, ones that they’re just as convinced about.

As Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen talk about in their book Difficult Conversations, we all have our own stories about the world, which influence what we do, how we feel, and who we think is right.

In Stone’s model, stories come from four main areas:

• Available Information – what actually happens.
• Our Observations – what we see and how we experience what happens. We often experience the same situations differently, based on where our attention is and countless other factors. Plus, we always know ourselves better than anyone else.
• Our Interpretations – how we filter what we see to create meaning. Interpretations are based on many things, including our past experiences, our values, and our underlying rules. We’re often not aware of the interpretations we make or the rules we use to make them,
• Our Conclusions – what we take away from our observations and interpretations. Our conclusions are often influenced by our own self-interest and we may be unaware of the gaps in our knowledge or any assumptions we’re making.

This meaning-making approach means that people end up creating very different stories.

The most productive conversations take a learning approach, where the goal is to learn more about each other’s stories, experiences, and needs. You’ll still have your own assumptions, but the trick is to remember that these are theories. Be open to change.

Don’t Assume Intent

If your elderly mother is being pushy, it’s easy to think that she’s being selfish, that she doesn’t care about you, or something similar.

But, assuming intent is never a good idea. People have many reasons for doing things, often complex ones. They might not fully understand their own intent either.

Don’t Avoid Emotions

When talking about a difficult topic, it’s tempting to avoid emotions entirely and focus on the practical side of things.

In the case of your mother expecting support, this might mean focusing on facts and figures to prove that you can’t do what she hopes of you.

But, there are multiple issues with avoiding emotions.

• Feelings tend to emerge in the conversation regardless. Trying to suppress them can simply make them stronger or mean that they emerge in unproductive ways (like being angry or short-tempered).
• Not talking about your feelings can make it difficult to focus on the conversation, as some of your attention is stuck on your emotions. It can become more difficult to hear the other person and connect with them, which doesn’t help anyone.

Besides, emotions are often at the heart of a difficult conversation or a disagreement.

Rather than avoiding the emotions, talk about them. For example, your mother expecting unending support might make you feel unrecognized and undervalued, especially if she seems to want more no matter what you give.

Don’t forget the other side of the coin too – her emotions.

Talking about your emotions and hers can help you to untangle what’s going on and start to find a way forward.

Some Other Tips

There are some other important things too, starting with the idea of always coming back to connection. Remember, we’re talking about a difficult and emotional topic. It may take multiple tries before you can have a productive conversation.

Being gentle, kind, and coming back to love helps to make sure that you don’t burn any bridges while you’re trying to figure things out with your parent. After all, we’re all human – and being human isn’t always easy.

Remember too that some of your parent’s reactions may be self-protective. Many people react harshly to criticism. All of their walls come up and they do all they can to protect themselves, even if doing so means that they’re harsh to you.

If things get too heated, it’s often best to put a hold on the conversation and leave it to another day. You might even need to do this multiple times. The process might even be helpful, as it gives each person time to think about what is happening without being as emotionally reactive.

Don’t Let Yourself Be Defined By Their Opinions

One of the biggest challenges of this topic is guilt. Many of us aren’t just dealing with parents who think we should support them. We also face the fact that we think we should support them too.

This perception can come from many places, including social norms, our expectations of ourselves, and the idea of seeking approval from our parents.

Here’s the thing though. You’re not responsible for someone’s opinion of you. You might not be able to make your parent see the importance of your needs, but this doesn’t make your needs any less important.

In the end, you need to find value in yourself. To realize that your wants and needs are valid – even if you and your parent don’t see eye-to-eye.

Final Thoughts

There’s no simple answer for cases where your elderly mother expects you to support her – as every situation is different.

However, the most important take-home message is that you need to weigh up your needs and your mother’s, rather than simply following along with what she wants.

Doing so is important for your health and mental wellbeing, but also for hers.

After all, supporting your mother’s every whim without question is much less helpful than it seems. In doing so, you’d often be enabling unhealthy behaviors and decreasing her self-reliance. That pattern leads to a more dependent later life, one that would be frustrating for you and not much fun for her either.