relationships
Parents are many things. Is a burden one of them?
Written by Kathy Lawrence There’s been discussion on our Twitter feed this week about our article on not making parents feel like they’re a burden. Is this too negative an approach? Should we be focusing on the positive? Here’s a view from our office. I would hate my parents to ever feel like they’re a […]
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Are sex and love taboo topics for you and your parents?
Don’t be afraid to talk to your parent about love and sex, advises Relate counsellor and author, Barbara Bloomfield. They’ve got the same hopes and dreams as you have, but are probably just a bit shyer of talking about it. After my mother was widowed in her sixties, I used to see quite a bit […]
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How tradition makes living with dad the obvious choice
This week’s storyteller has chosen to be anonymous. Their cultural background made the decision to share a home with a widowed parent easy for one family. Our storyteller explains how the arrangement works and its ups and downs. My husband and I married 14 years ago. For the first 5 years of our married life […]
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Ups and downs of moving mum in
This week’s storyteller has chosen to be anonymous. One of our readers tells us how her mum moved from Zimbabwe to live in the family home in the UK at the age of seventy-six. Seven years on, she talks about why it happened and how well it’s working. And we asked her husband what he […]
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Bridging the distance between us
This week’s storyteller is Sally.When Sally’s parents both became ill and dependent on others, Sally resisted the pressure to turn her life upside down and go home to help. She tells us about the struggle to help from a distance and relieve the load on family who stayed nearby. At the young age of 49, […]
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Helping our parents to feel that they’re not a burden
We’re bound to feel frustrated with our parents sometimes, but do we want them to feel eternally grateful to us? You’ve given up yet another Sunday to spend it in A&E with a parent. Your partner’s come too, and between you you’ve been running errands all afternoon – driving off to your parent’s house to […]
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Coming home – or at least nearby
This week’s storyteller has chosen to be anonymous.When’s the right time to move a parent to be close to you? Does removing some parental challenges mean introducing new ones? My mum is a healthy lady in her early 70s. She and dad moved away from our home town some years ago, building a full and […]
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I can’t believe you said that
Remember when you hit that age in your teens when overnight your parents seemed to become excruciatingly embarrassing? You didn’t want to be seen in their space because you never knew when they would next say something truly toe-curling? Well here’s some news for you. It could be about to happen again. Here are two […]
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I’m struggling with my aunt’s reliance on me as her carer
Dear Lesley My aunt had been living in Spain but after losing her husband six years ago her health has deteriorated and she wasn’t taking good care of herself. My sister and I persuaded her to return to the UK and managed to find her a little flat in a block which isn’t exactly warden-aided […]
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Maintaining a relationship when your parent has dementia – a real-life story
Our specialist ageing parent “agony aunt” Lesley Trenner has been talking to people about the emotions around caring for family members living with dementia. Here she tells how sisters Jean and Diane are taking this journey and offers tips to others with the same challenges. When your parent is diagnosed with dementia it can be […]
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