No one likes to be around a person who constantly complains or argues about everything. When you meet someone like this, you tend to distance yourself away from this person as quickly as possible. But what if this argumentative, complaining, negative person is your elderly parent? Distancing yourself may not be an option.
In their book “Coping with Your Difficult Older Parent,” authors Grace Lebow and Barbara Kane offer practical tips to help grown children work with their elderly parents who are persistently negative or otherwise difficult.
No matter how your difficult parent behaves, Lebow and Kane explain, “The most effective thing that a grown child can do for himself and for his parent is to learn why she behaves as she does. Understanding almost always leads to empathy, and this is the first step in making progress.” Extremely negative people are “basically very unhappy” and these negative behaviors are the way in which this unhappiness is expressed. “As bad as your parent makes others feel, she feels still worse and she can’t run away from herself.”
When working with a parent that is angry, hostile, extremely negative, distrustful, and/or suspicious to the point of being paranoid, Lebow and Kane recommend that you empathize and then try to defuse the situation. First, put yourself in your parent’s position. Feel what they feel under the circumstances they are in. Then, respond to those feelings. When verbally responding
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