The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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We have an interesting phone call from a woman who's a caretaker of an aging parent, and all would be well except for her siblings. Do you have sibling issues in your life or caretaker issues? Stay tuned.

What do you do if you're taking care of an ill parent and you have family members, that you're supposed to be left in charge of medical and different things for your parent, and you have other siblings that are trying to push their way in and do it their way, and just, you know, bullying you out of what you're supposed to be doing? Just wondering, you know, how do you go about handling the over-aggressive siblings? Thank you.

Okay, my guess is that you've had these same over-aggressive siblings your whole life. Let's pretend it's a brother and a sister, and my guess is you've grown up with them, and you already have developed strategies for dealing with them. And they may not be the best strategies for you. It may be that you give in.

So if they say, "Well, this is the way we're doing it, and I'm telling you, Mom's going into assisted living," or "Mom's got to stay with you. I can't. I live in California. You know, you live in Wisconsin, and mom's in Wisconsin; there's no way I could take her in. I have a full-time job, so you need to take care of her. This is the way we'll work it."

Now, just because a sibling comes on like a steamroller—with moral certainty, with a strong voice, with self-assurance—doesn't mean that they have to call the shots. In fact, you can name that very issue. You can say, "You know, Mom put me in legal charge of her affairs, and I've decided that Mom is going to..." and then you fill in the blank.

Hopefully, you'll pick the best, most rational decision for yourself and for people involved. "Mom is going into assisted living. I can't afford to keep her in the house. Emotionally, I've got the three kids underfoot, and it's just too much for me to take care of as much as you would like this. We're going to use some of her money to put her into assisted living, even if it eats up all of her money."

And the siblings say, "No, you can't do that." You know, and they may not be able to say, "We want our inheritance," but that may be the undertone that's going on. And you may say, "Well, you're welcome—another alternative I'll throw out there is that you can take care of mom if you want."

"Oh, we couldn't possibly do that, but you know, Mom really wants you to take care of her. We told her she would never be put into a home, and now you're putting her into assisted living." You need to be able to hold your own.

We have a case of a friend of ours who has an elderly parent, and she promised the parent—that's her mother—that she would never put her into a nursing home. And of course, she nursed her other, her in-laws, at her own home when they were dying. And so she's got an elderly parent at home. The only problem is that the parent is very cantankerous. The parent is really losing it, and is like 70 pounds, and refusing to eat, and just making a mess of herself—just very difficult to live with.

And so this friend decided that, yes, she looked into assisted living, and of course, she may need a nursing home soon. But she made the decision that she would stay home with her parent, but that her siblings—her siblings who have given her zero help—would have to pay her for her lost income if she stays home. And so she presented that to the siblings, and at first, they whined and moaned, but she held her ground, and that's what they do now. They pay her for the lost income, and she stays home and is nursing the parent.

That's another choice. We used assisted living, and I highly recommend that if you can afford it, because it gives the parent the dignity of not being a burden to the child, and it gives you the freedom to enjoy that parent and not burn out prematurely. Especially if they have a prolonged illness, it's a very difficult choice to make, but if you can make it supportively and lovingly, it can be done very well.

So I hope that helps. Again, just to sum up, what you need to do with your siblings is that you don't want to assume unearned guilt. You know what is the very best decision for a parent that's hard to make. You want to learn assertiveness skills—I role-played one—but you want to be able to speak up for yourself assertively. You want to name their method if they're bullying you, if they're strong-arming you. You can say, "You know, I hear you yelling on the phone. Why don't you call me back when you feel a little more settled and can present your situation better?" Or, "This is the decision I've made, and I've been given the legal authority to do so. I hope we can talk about this."

You don't want to alienate your siblings unnecessarily. "Let's sit down and talk about this." If they are totally unreasonable—

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If they are totally unreasonable, you can use your legal authority: "You know, I am in charge here, and I wish we could be on the same page. I understand that we're not, and I'm going to move forward and go by my best judgment, which is what Mom wanted."

It could be all the sibling issues are kicking up. There's a lot of jealousy around the fact that Mom chose you, possibly, or maybe there's guilt. Maybe they feel they're not doing enough or didn't earn Mom's trust, so they want to rush in at the last minute when she's failing.

And you also might want to look at yourself. There may be some self-doubts that make you capitulate to your siblings and just give in. There may have been some significant events in your past. I would get some counseling for yourself to help you learn the assertiveness skills because you'll have them for life. You'll have them to be able to deal with your siblings even after, say, your mom passes away.

So, hope that helps you out, your mom or your father.

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Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and co-author Dr. Edwin Locke.