Adapted from an online discussion.
Dear Carolyn: About a month ago, my mother had a procedure scheduled in my brother’s metro area, about four hours from my parents’. The plan was for my parents to stay with my brother and his family for about a week.
My mother experienced complications and was in the hospital while my dad was staying with them, which was stressful and open-ended. It came to a head one morning over breakfast. Between work, my mother and the kids’ stuff, they didn’t have time to make dinner and eat it together, so my sister-in-law planned DoorDash. My father said my older niece, 15, should cook dinner when she gets home from school. My sister-in-law said she can’t because she has two school projects due the next day. My father reiterated his point. My niece said he can make dinner himself if he wants a home-cooked meal. My father slapped my niece in the face.
My brother and sister-in-law kicked my father out of their house. My brother still deals with our parents at the hospital, but he refuses to allow our father to be around his children. I flew out to get my father into a hotel and generally help.
It is very obvious my father is experiencing a change in personality consistent with early-onset dementia. Here is my perspective check: I think my brother is overreacting. I think an apology from my niece to my father for smarting off would go a long way. I suggested this to my brother to smooth things over, and he refused it as an option. My siblings supported my brother. I feel as if I’m alone in getting help for my father and as if my family is fragmented over something that isn’t that big of a deal. Can you or your readers give some perspective here? — Perspective Check
Perspective Check: How your brother and his wife protect their kids, and from what — a sexist, abusive grandparent or a dementia-violent one? — are none of your business.
I could get well into the weeds on the details, but then we’d both be in the weeds on stuff that’s beside the immediate point of your parents’ health logistics, which is your business. You just don’t get a vote about your dad’s stay in your brother’s home.
So here’s my advice: Drop it. Don’t opine on it, ask about it, try to fix it. It’s done.
Train all your attention on the work of Team Sibs: what care your parents need, who is willing to give it, how and when. “Okay, Dad needs X and has to go to Y and brother isn’t an option.” That’s it. Straight-up facts. Those are where you live now.
This may seem weird, because it’s ignoring the elephant, plus we make sense of the world through talking about things, but nothing can make this situation worse faster than your rolling in with a “should” cannon. Especially demanding apologies. Egads.
Readers’ thoughts:
• Can you see that your niece’s parents are teaching their teenager that it is NEVER okay for a man to assault her? If they had told their daughter that she should apologize, they would teach a teenage girl that it was her fault a man hit her in the face. Think that through.
• A man slapping his granddaughter when he has already butted in where he has no business (his daughter-in-law decided the meal plan) IS that big a deal. Whether he has dementia is not the point; the child should not have to apologize. Bugging your brother is just going to estrange him from you as well as your father.
Update: I wrote a letter to you a few weeks ago to get a perspective check on my father slapping my niece after a heated exchange. Thank you for taking my question and giving me excellent advice to just work with what we have in terms of caring for my parents. As I spent more time with my parents, it became clear that my father deteriorated mentally and my mother physically. We haven’t spent very much time together in person over the past 2 years and my mother was able to compensate for my father quite a bit. My parents are moving into an assisted living home close to me next week so I can check up on them. My brother told me that he will do anything necessary for our mother but not our father. I understand this, but it is impossible to separate out their care. Since my father has essentially no short term memory, he does not recall the conflict that lead to the family split. It is heartbreaking. The silver lining is that the counselors at assisted living gave me some really great tools to use when helping my father. My mother knows exactly what is going on and that is also difficult in its own way. Thanks for the help.
Carolyn’s response: You’re welcome. I’m glad they’re moving near you to make things easier. A lot of people resist that, from both the patient and caregiver sides.
