Coping With Your Difficult Older Parent : A Guide for Stressed-Out Children

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Summary: Get another book too
Review: (...) Get the real truth about the fraud and abuse of the elderly and not so elderly. To avoid a guardianship in the State of Florida, and other states, should be of paramount importance. Find out how to protect yourself and your loved ones with alternatives: health care surrogate, durable power of attorney, mediation and more. Consider that if you leave your parents to fend for themselves, and ignore the deterioration associated with aging, a guardian can gain a guardianship over them and their assets, without informing you. That guardianship will nullify the most meticulous of plans. To really cover your aging parents, make sure they create a "Pre-need" guardianship and name someone they trust, this is the only way predators in the retirement homes will not be able to force guardianship on them. Also create an irrevocable trust.

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Summary: A small book of immense value
Review: After reading this wonderful book, I now find I can pick it up, open it to any page, and find something to make me calm down immediately. I appreciate how the authors are always respectful of the older parent's life and situation. It helps me keep things in perspective as well as deal with more mundane and immediate struggles. The bottom line is on page 118: "... no matter how miserable your parent's controlling and manipulative ways may make you feel, your parent feels worse than you do." I also appreciate chapter 9, "How to keep from being difficult yourself." I have recommended this book to many friends. It is valuable in understanding and dealing with all interpersonal relationships.

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Summary: An Author, reviews Coping With Your Difficult Older Parent
Review: An Author's Critique of "Coping With Your Difficult Older Parent: A Guide For Stressed Out Children

As a fellow writer, I want to complement the authors on their insight. I did deal with some of these problems in my own book, "Dancing in the Dark: Things My Mother Never Told Me," but my intention was to write it, I am not educated enough to help solve the problem or understand it. " A Guide for Stressed Out Children etc" did that for me. I highly recommend it. There will
come a time in everyone's life, I'm afraid, when it will be
needed. I intend to buy this book and give it to my daughter in
case she needs it for dealing with me. I am 73-year-old woman, racing rapidly toward being a feisty old lady. I will never
knowingly cause my daughter, my only child, the grief I had with my mother and my in-laws, but sometimes it cannot be helped in the case of Dementia or worse. Some of the characters could have been members of my family. My mother-in-law used to say, when we traveled, "Do you know what you are doing to me?" Everyone with older parents should own this book.

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Summary: At last--the book I've been searching for!
Review: An enormous "thank you" to the authors. This book reads like they were running a video camera on my life. Finally, helpful, experienced, =sane= commentary for those of us who struggle with difficult aging parents. This book addresses an important family issue that is usually ignored by other books on aging and caregiving. I'm ordering three more copies for relatives and friends.

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Summary: A life preserver to a drowning person!
Review: Being an only child has left me completely overwhelmed since my father's recent death. This Guide HAD to have been written with my mother in mind! It provides simple, clear concise scenarios that everyone can relate to and better yet, it gives solutions. This book is an absolute MUST read for anyone dealing with a difficult parent in their later years. You will not be sorry to have picked this one up.

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Summary: A life preserver to a drowning person!
Review: Being an only child has left me completely overwhelmed since my father's recent death. This Guide HAD to have been written with my mother in mind! It provides simple, clear concise scenarios that everyone can relate to and better yet, it gives solutions. This book is an absolute MUST read for anyone dealing with a difficult parent in their later years. You will not be sorry to have picked this one up.

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Summary: The best of the bunch
Review: I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I've read the gamut of parent self-help books and found this one to be the most uplifting and practical. I deal with a difficult 86 year old, narcissistic mother who has had many recent illnesses and crises. Barbara and Grace's book gave me the insight and advice needed for me to get past my anger and confusion and start setting limits for my mother while providing her support. It helped me enormously. After reading the book, I also found myself needing care management services for my mom. I'm lucky to be living in the Washington, DC area and was able to use the author's care management services when my mother had emergency surgery and needed 24 hour home help. Barbara is as wonderfully empathetic in person as she is in her book. She helped in both understanding and helping me manage my mother as my mother moved through her latest crisis. I don't think I couldn't managed easily without her help.

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Summary: This Book is a Sanity Saver!
Review: I found my aspects of my mom's personality in just about every scenerioj. We have been making each other miserable since she had to move from independent living - she is angry and so am I. This book offers the information I really needed to hear to keep me getting stressed out even more - and treating my mom with impatience. Thank you, thank you, thank you...

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Summary: This book is a godsend of practical insight and advice.
Review: I have been hoping to find a book like this for the past two years. During that time, my three adult siblings and I have struggled with sick elderly parents and their painful, chaotic slide from independent living. There are many books on the needs/problems of the elderly, but this book is unique in that it is written from the perspective of the burned-out offspring trying to give aid and comfort--and it tells how NOT to feel like a guilty failure in the light of your parents' problems. In every chapter there are many practical insights and examples for understanding where your parent is coming from and for providing enlightened support and compassion--without continually sacrificing your own needs. There's a whole chapter on dependent behavior, one on negativity, another on fearfulness, including ways to handle them (and ways NOT to). I bought 5 copies of this book and sent them not only to my brothers and sister, but to two friends who are having trouble trying to help sick, depressed elderly parents. This is a handbook for that. I'd give it 10 stars if I could.

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Summary: A Great Help for a Difficult Mother In Law
Review: I have read several books and articles on the subject of children providing care for their ailing parents. This book is the first I have read that addresses the challenges of the interpersonal relationship between a grown child and an emotionally-draining parent. All the other books have dealt with the physical ailments of aging, or the individual challenge of being a caregiver.

The authors address several different types of interaction between a grown child and parent that are common today. Any reader frustrated with a difficult parent will find some area of this volume to which he can relate. The authors are quick to emphasize that since parents can't be made to change, the only hope for improving the relational situation is in changing as grown children.

Role-playing is frequently used to illustrate "before" behavior, then to illustrate "after" behavior as a result of using the specific principle suggested. The authors also encourage developing a mental strategy that plans ahead for confrontational situations. By identifying certain phrases and comments that trigger stress, the grown child can redirect the conversation and move it in a healthier direction for both parties.

This book does not address responding to serious diseases with parents, the decision of a nursing home, or major financial frustrations. It does deal with the constant irritation that can and often does develop between an aging parent and a grown child. I recommend it highly to all persons who are dealing with the stress resulting from interacting with a difficult, older parent.