When We Start Parenting Our Parents, Is When the Circle of Care Turns Back Toward Us
There is a moment in many adults’ lives when the roles quietly reverse. The people who once cared for us now need our care, and the emotional weight of that shift is profound.
I have friends and colleagues in this position, and my heart aches for them.
As a culture, we have these step‑down facilities that make end‑of‑life care more comfortable, but they are pricey. Many of the people I know and talk with are coping with this process by having their aging parents in their homes.
You spend a good deal of your life separating from your parents. In fact, this process begins at birth. The infant is trained to sleep alone. The toddler is trained to wait for attention and satisfaction. The school‑aged child must be separated from the parent and placed in the care of strangers. The teen must go away to camp and thrive among peers. The college student must live separately and plan for a future life of their own. The adult can move anywhere in the world and connect occasionally through Zoom or other means.
Then your parent ages and can no longer live independently. At first, you may hire someone to come to their home occasionally to do cleaning and meal preparation. Then you begin to see the signs that they need more services and more oversight. The fancy step‑down places are not affordable, so you modify your home.
You could take two bedrooms upstairs and make one a sitting room with a cozy chair and a TV, and the other a bedroom. After all, your children are gone, and you hardly go into those rooms. You could renovate the basement so there are no steps to climb, and you have separation between upstairs and downstairs. It sounds very British.
All of this is quite good. Then the decline continues. Thinking is disrupted, memory is compromised, and your parent needs more oversight. They cannot be depended on to take their medication at the right time or in the right dose. They cannot take themselves to appointments, so you find time in your day to drive them, wait, and sit in on the doctor’s feedback.
The stages of life have come full circle. They took care of you when you were totally dependent. You are taking care of them as their dependence increases.
Preparing for this stage of life is not easy. I hope you have saved the old photo albums and your uncle’s videotapes of the camping trips and birthday parties. I hope you have a decent singing voice or are willing to sing anyway, as old songs and nursery rhymes can be comforting. I remember seeing a video of an older woman who had not spoken a word in a couple of years. A visitor began singing a nursery rhyme, and the older woman joined in, a smile of comfort spreading across her face, a powerful connection made at last.
Parenting our parents is an act of love, grief, memory, and endurance. It asks us to stretch emotionally in ways we never imagined, and it reminds us that connection—at every stage of life—is what sustains us.
For more reflections on caregiving, aging, and emotional connection, visit Psychology Today’s insights on family caregiving and Greater Good’s research on compassion and aging.
If you are navigating the emotional and logistical challenges of caring for an aging parent, therapy can offer grounding, clarity, and support. Learn more about individual therapy in Maryland and DC or explore therapeutic approaches that help families move through this transition with steadiness and compassion.
By Dr. Gloria K Vanderhorst
