So Your Mom Has Moved In With You??
Having a parent move in with you is a life-altering experience, and unless your parent is unaware of her surroundings, that experience is had by both of you!
In most instances, your mom (or dad) really doesn’t want to move in with you. She may resent having to move in. She may be embarrassed that she has to rely on a child because to her, it’s not the natural order of things. “I should be taking care of you!” your parent may say. Although you are over 50 years old yourself, to your parent, you are always the child.
Most of all your parent hates giving up her independence and one of the hardest things to do is to make sure that your parent maintains at least some level of independence no matter how sick she is. That may mean that you’re not doing everything for her. Have mom makes her own breakfast or ask her to make you a cup of coffee if at all possible. If mom likes to watch late night television, she doesn’t need you to hen peck her about getting to bed earlier. She’s your mom, not your teenage daughter after all. Yes, I know she listens to it at level 79 and you can hear it down the street. Compromise on level 35 and just go to bed. She’ll figure out if she can still stay up until 2 a.m. on her own.
By the same token, you need to set boundaries so mom isn’t telling you to get to bed earlier either!!! So when she tells you that it is late and you should get to bed, try not to bite her head off by saying “MOM! Seriously?”
But all kidding aside, often a parent moves in with you because she isn’t well enough to stay on her own. I’ll cover some tips on how to deal with that and documents that you really should have in place in another installment of this blog. If you have general questions, feel free to email me at [email protected] and I’ll do my best to address them in the blog. (Note: I cannot reply to questions of a personal nature.)