Helping aging parents can be a difficult journey as they age. Some elders are relatively simple, though always work, while other families experience a minefield with their parents. Some aging parents have always been manipulative in their lives. It can get worse with aging, when they expect more as their needs increase.
Those with substantial assets can use threats of disinheriting their kids to try to force them into doing their bidding. Adult children may feel trapped, stressed, emotionally drained, and overwhelmed. If they do what the aging parent demands, they are angry at being manipulated. If they don’t obey, they question themselves and feel guilty.
If this resonates with you, you’re not alone. Navigating relationships with difficult aging parents is one of the toughest challenges middle-aged adults face. Those who are still raising their own kids, the so-called “sandwich generation” is especially affected by threats from their aging parents. They already have their hands full with their families, work, and their own, different responsibilities. Recognizing manipulation, while protecting your own emotional well-being, is critical to finding enough balance to manage the stress.
How Can You Deal With Those Power Plays?
First, Recognize the Manipulation Tactics
Manipulative behaviors often start subtly and escalate over time. Here are common tactics aging parents may use:
- Guilt-Tripping: Statements like “After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me?” or “You’ll regret this when I’m gone.”
- Emotional Blackmail: Threats such as refusing to take medication, accepting help, or even saying they’ll disinherit you if you don’t’ meet their demands.
- Playing Siblings Against Each Other: Using favoritism or comparisons (“Your sister is so much more helpful”) to control the family dynamic.
The first step in handling manipulation is to recognize it for what it is. Once you label the behavior, you can separate the emotions it triggers in you from how you respond. This is a choice.
Why Aging Parents Become Manipulative
A second step is understanding why these behaviors happen in your aging parent. This can help you approach the situation with empathy while maintaining your boundaries. Some common reasons include:
Fear of losing independence: As independence fades, some parents manipulate to try to hold power over their lives and others, particularly their adult kids. This gets more obvious when cognitive decline appears. The aging parent may know something is wrong and is fearful of losing control over their life. They take it out on those around them.
Personality Disorders: Traits like narcissism can exacerbate manipulative behaviors that have always been present. Some of these traits worsen with age, again arising from a fear of losing control. Here at AgingParents.com, where we offer advice and strategy to families of elders, this is a common refrain. “My mom is a narcissist”.
Loneliness: An aging parent may guilt-trip or create drama as a way to get attention. If they are consistently unpleasant in their demeanor, families visit less and it becomes a vicious cycle.
How to Respond to Manipulative Behavior.
Dealing with manipulative parents requires a combination of firm boundaries, emotional clarity, and practical strategies.
Set Clear, Consistent Limits
Stick to your boundaries. Manipulative parents may push harder when you first set limits, but consistency will help reinforce them over time. Get past your fears of being disinheritied or whatever the threat of the day is. They may not really be able to do this.
Don’t Take the Bait
When your aging parent manipulates you, they want your emotional reaction. If you respond by arguing or getting defensive, it fuels the behavior.
It’s very hard to stay calm and detached. If you’ve just had it with any conversation, you do not have to stay engaged. Take a pause. Leave. All are choices. You can revisit the issue at hand when you feel more rational and in control of your own feelings.
A tactic advised by Dr. Mikol Davis at AgingParents.com is the “Do Not Respond” method of dealing with verbal attacks. They say their nasty, demeaning thing or threat. You remain expressionless and silent. You then change the subject. They repeat their ugly words. You repeat saying nothing and doing nothing, and again changing the subject. It can be very effective. The parent is getting nothing out of it, so this often stops the tirade.
Enlist Outside Help
Sometimes, difficult dynamics are too entrenched to resolve on your own. You can get neutral help from professionally trained experts, such as elder mediators. Many label themselves “elder care mediators”. That may be fine if the problem has no legal implications at all. However, when threats about disinheritance are in the mix, a lawyer-mediator would be a better choice. They know the laws of your parents’ state about changing wills and trusts and you need this information.
The Takeaways:
- Focus on What You Can Control: You can’t change their behavior, but you can control your responses.
- Limit Exposure if Needed: If your aging parent’s behavior becomes abusive, it’s okay to step back temporarily or limit interaction until you are able to interact calmly. Meanwhile, do not respond.
- Practice Letting Go of Guilt: Guilt is a weapon in manipulation, but you don’t have to carry it. It’s okay to say “no” to demands. Saying “no” doesn’t make you a bad child; it makes you a healthy adult. Helping your parent is one thing but preserving your own well-being is also very important. Protect your own mental and emotional health above all.
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