Living With In-Laws – Coping With Elder Care

Being the youngest child of a family, as is the case for both my wife and I, it is surprising how often the youngest becomes the caretaker of aging parents. At first, aging parents express a natural desire for ongoing autonomy. Phrases like “We/I will die in this house” or “I/We don’t want to be a burden on your family,” become part of the ongoing dialogue as our parents age and their care needs increase.

We respect our parents and want them to live on their own as long as possible and have been fortunate to have others in and around to provide relief and release for them and for us as the need for caring increases. Such things as having a nurse available to check in weekly to daily, a security system, a push button alert system, available homemakers to help with meals, bathing and cleaning, meals on wheels and doctors willing to make house-calls have all been immensely helpful. The time to take the next step and have the whole family under one roof, however, has now arisen.

One way we have been able to address the need for autonomy is to find a house or complex of houses with separate and distinct living areas. Some areas would be communal and some private, so that each family has a space they can call home and retreat to when needed. Having been faced with this with both sets of parents makes the challenge even greater. In each of our families, the grandparents or surviving grandparent were eventually taken in to the home of one of the siblings of our parents or into our own home. Personally, I witnessed my maternal grandmother being taken into our home and the decision she faced after several heart attacks and strokes to either move in with us or be in a nursing home. No one in the family likes nor trusts nursing homes as a place for anything other than rehabilitation after an operation, stroke, or bones broken in a fall. Deciding to take in aging parents into our home, however, is a momentous decision filled with many sleepless nights and endless discourses with all individuals involved.

Having an aging parent(s) living at home with their adult child, her or his spouse or significant other, the grandchildren and however many pets the combined household brings has logistic and emotional challenges which must be addressed up front and whenever they arise. Whenever possible the families need time to be together to discuss all that is going on and when the move is made, each group of family members may need varying amounts of communal and alone time. It is important that the marriage and family of the adult child take time to do things together and take time to rest and recoup when caring for the other family members becomes a little more of a struggle. Remember that in-laws may have different ways of parenting, cleaning, budgeting, etc. Conflicts in these and other areas may and often do arise, find emotional or therapeutic supports to help you deal with the conflicts and to live more harmoniously. Remember, this is a life changing even on all sides, there are support groups and therapists who are there to help with this transition.

The benefits of having one or more grandparents in the home is immensely powerful to teach about how we take care of our elders. I only hope our child learns from our example and the knowledge and experience we have gained when he becomes the adult child and we are the aging parents.

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