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

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.

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.

This book is enjoyable and easy to read. I read through cover-to-cover in one evening. The examples describing each "difficult behavior" were fun to read and helped relate the message in a very understandable way.

The book makes an effort to deal with specific problem behaviors in a way that helps most children. Obviously, in 198 pages the authors cannot cover EVERY situation in-depth, but they do a wonderful job of grouping behaviors into broader categories which you will most likely find that your problems with your parent fit in to.

I am currently a student earning my PhD in psychology, so I feel that it is important to remember that reading a book will not solve your problems- the book makes this point very thoroughly. The problem will take a lot of time and effort on your part, and possibly professional counseling, but this book is an excellent starting point.

I think some people might NOT like the book because it asks the reader to take responsibility and change the only aspect of the parent-child relationship that you can- yourself. If you are looking for the book to say "you are right- your parent is wrong" you will not find that here. What you will find is how to get out of arguing with your parent, how to deflect constant criticism, and how to keep your own life and caring for your parent balanced.

In summary- this book is enjoyable, easy to read, insightful, and helpful, but obviously cannot solve your problem overnight.

I ordered this book for my dear Mother who is having a time with her Mother in Kansas City. Grandma "Honey' is stubborn and sometimes argumentative and has grown negative in her old age. All she does now is eat 3 times a day and sit and watch Jerry Springer- isn't that terrible ! The word I get from Mother dear is this book has been very,very helpful.

There are very few books on the subject of managing difficult elders and this is one of the best. Real situations that every adult child or caregiver can relate to with workable solutions to make it easier. You will realize that you are not alone, others have gone before you and survived, and you feel hope again that it can all be managed. Another great book on this subject is "Elder Rage or, Take My Father...Please!"