Growing up Sunset
This page is an attempt to make the relationship between adult children and their parents a happier one.
It will require the input and help of many of you.
But it will also make some folks angry. They will be the ones that cannot let loose of the past, even when it doesn't work.
I ask you to read this and then use
the form at the bottom to make your contribution to this effort.
Raising Your Parents
Have you ever tried to imagine what it would be like to live in the future?
Have you ever tried to see the hands of clock moving? It looks like they are not moving, but they are. Time is moving on, you just don’t see it.
The same thing has happened to us - we have “moved” into the future and may not have noticed it.
Let’s look around and see what has changed - what is this future like?
1. Do you recall waiting for Sunday night to watch the Ed Sullivan Show? Do you remember when there were only 3 major stations and shows that seemed to last for years in the same time slot? But today, many of us have 300 cable stations and Netflix and we choose what we want to see and when.
2. Do you still read a print newspaper each day or do you get your news as it happens on-line?
3. Do you have to run to the other room to get the phone or just reach into your pocket?
4. Is your phone also your camera, your photo album, your “boom box” and a dozen other things?
5. Do you keep a plant & flowers on top of your tv? Or is your tv thinner than a painting and hanging on a wall?
Is it just technology that has changed? Or have human relationships changed also. How many couples do you know who met on line? Technology has changed human relationships. Many of us are not happy with this, but ask the thousands, the hundreds of thousands who have met the love of their lives thanks to new technology - they will disagree.
On Sunset Parker we are going to address another social change, we are going to address a very intimate and personal relationship dynamic that has been altered not just due to technology, but also due to medical science, healthcare and nutrition - the relationship between children and parents.
Not too many years ago, families tended to stay in a single household. Your parents, a grandparent or two and you and your children - all in one home. Or in apartments within a short walk or right next door or upstairs. Parents are living longer and are more active much later in their lives. When I was a boy, people in their late 40's were already in their middle age. Many adults worked until the day they died. When parents got ill, they didn’t linger for years, they died soon after the first diagnosis.
Yes, we are uncomfortable talking about this, but it is true. Today, parents retire earlier - many at 55. Many parents begin a “second” life in their fifties, many families are combinations of “his 3 kids” and “her 2 kids”. Parents fly away, children move away and then back again. Life is full of many options. But time eventually catches up and at some point, your parents become dependent on you or the healthcare system, or a combination of both. Diseases that we barely heard of or never heard of, are now becoming common - Alzheimers, dementia, senility. And some realities that technology cannot change, such as poverty continue to wreak havoc in lives.
I am suggesting that “we” need to accept that people live longer, people remain active longer, people build second families, people eventually still grow old and need greater help than before because of diseases like Alzheimers or lingering illnesses that increase their need for care.
One day, I realized that I had never touched my father’s face. How could that be? It was partially because of a high sense of respect and of awe. I realized that I needed to exercise more responsibility and control for my dad and it was difficult because of the position that I held him in and the position he had filled all my life - he was the FATHER.
Again, this is very difficult to discuss, but I think at some point, maybe when a “child” reaches the age of 40 or 45 (maybe even sooner) there needs to be a new understanding - one that in NO way diminishes that respect of a parent, but shares responsibility and decision making.
I am trying to put together a checklist that will help provide a “road map” to this new relationship. Areas of needs and responsibilities to be shared.
In all honesty, I don’t know exactly where this is going. I do know that the easiest area to create the checklist will be for when a parent is unable to care for all their needs. The more difficult area will be the sharing of responsibility and decision making a bit earlier. But the earlier that sharing happens the easier it will be when the parent is infirm.