Whatever our age, crafting & using a well-balanced friendship budget helps enhance our lives & the lives we love & care about. Ditto building & maintaining trust accounts.
Over the years, both my personal & professional experience has shown that both of these realities are sadly lacking with many older children/aging parents. On both sides.
The durable sense of friendship that existed between myself & my mother helped keep our relationship on even keel. It wasn't always easy, but it was worth it. People think the two of us were so alike, when we really were incredibly different in ways that matter. But we both kept focused on being as fair & kind & emotionally generous as we could be. Well, usually.
Trust was another matter. Am sad to say that Mom didn't trust me. Oh, it's not that she thought I was untrustworthy in the usual sense, but she never trusted what I'd ask, where I delved - places she didn't want to go, things she didn't want to look at let alone spend any time pondering. There were often times when it felt like I was the scariest person in the world to her.
Am sad to say that I didn't trust Mom any more than she trusted me. Experience taught me that she might swear she'd back me up, only to crumble when the moment came. It wasn't that she wouldn't keep her word, but that she couldn't. It wasn't in her. More fool I that it took so long to realize.
That lack of a stable trust account did a real number on our relationship. It kept it from developing the depth that I longed for, that Mom always liked to think existed. I don't wish that for anyone.
But that doesn't mean I didn't keep doing my best to turn things around or that Mom didn't try her best. That's all any of us can do - keep trying our best.
From first breath to last, we must ALWAYS do all we can to build trust with others, especially family, particularly with our parents, however rocky our relationship might have been in the past.
Parents, just as much as little ones, will pay attention to what their children do rather than say. If a son keeps talking about the things he wants to do with Dad, but consistently cancels due to other commitments, Dad is going to get the message his son a) doesn't care about being with him & b) is untrustworthy with his word.
Whatever the age, children & parents need to develop good listening skills. I've known children who talked over a parent without even realizing it, known parents (even very young ones) who seemed attentive but didn't process what was said in the way it was intended. Listening skills become even more important as parents age. Children need to make sure older parents heard everything they said, parents need to be willing to let others know they haven't heard every word.
From age 14, I was fiercely aware of the damage broken promises can cause the elderly. A scene from The Trouble with Angels has stayed with me for almost 50 years. It's Christmas Day & some of the students at a Catholic girls school & their nun teachers are visiting a home for the aged. One of the girls hears the Mother Superior comforting an old lady who is crushed because her children, who promised to visit, are no shows. Not keeping even small promises - especially when it happens over & over - can be just as devastating. It's all too easy for younger people to not realize how much their older loved ones enjoy being with them - yes, even ones who seem snarly & crabby. Make promises with care; once made, keep them.
It's impossible to overstate the importance of honesty in any parent-child relationship, whatever the age. This can be a major challenge for aging & elderly parents. They might fudge the truth or outright lie for a lot of reasons, including not wanting to be a burden, not wanting to appear vulnerable & even "protecting" their children from what's going on. Children can be just as prone to telling white lies, even building intricate deceits (hiding an illness, a problem in the family, financial woes are good examples). No matter what the age, compassionate honesty remains the best policy.
Perhaps the crowning quality to building a healthy trust account is consistency. Consider two clients. One knows that every Saturday, he will see one of his children in the morning, that on Sunday he'll have lunch with his daughter, supper with one of his sons. Without fail.
Another client's family doesn't have any sense of consistent routine - she doesn't know from day to day what's on the schedule, because this thing or that can through everything into confusion at the last minute. Between his work & hers & their children's school & sports schedules, there's nothing they can do to make things different to stabilize their schedules - not that they realize there's a serious problem (what's "routine" to them is anything but to the elderly mother). Just as it's important for children to know there's a constant set of house rules, elderly parents need to be able to get a sense of knowing what's expected of them, what they can expect from others.
It was a constant sorrow that Mom wasn't able to get past her trust issues to feel a sense of safety with me. That true with a lot of parents & children. But she never stopped working on them, neither did I. There might not have been a sense of trust between us, but we both trusted each other's heart was in the right place, that we were striving for better. In that, we had total trust. In the long run, that's what mattered most.
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