Acceptance and Aging Family

Winter is hardly over, but plans for summer are already underway. This is especially true if you have family overseas. The summer is often the best time for parents living abroad to come and visit, or an extended vacation where you visit home and meet extended family.

But every vacation has its share of ups and downs and family can be a source of both. Meeting parents or in-laws can be a joyous occasion. Catching up with parents and sharing your life with them is essential to having an ongoing relationship with family who live far away. 

However, every subsequent family visit involves parents who are slightly older. Older parents have more health issues, more fears and anxieties, more specific needs and more hangups. Older parents are difficult to manage and harder to please. There starts to be a slow role reversal - one starts to become the parents in the relationships with one's mother and father. One needs to be more patient, more understanding and more accommodating. Which also means that one is more exhausted and more frustrated, and the joys of family visits become strained.

One possible difference between dealing with parents versus dealing with in-laws is the degree of honest communication and emotional closeness. With one's parents, it might be easier to argue, to air one's opinion, to push back and maybe even scold and fight. That’s because there is a rich history of a past relationship of closeness and trust, and memories of arguments followed by reconciliations. 

With in-laws, it is often the case that any suggestions or comments can be interpreted as disrespect or criticism. There is usually very little incentive to engage in providing honest feedback to the in-laws - it can negatively impact your relationship with them, and your relationship with your partner. While avoidance and non-engagement can seem great ways of minimizing arguments - silent conflict can be exhausting and nerve wracking too. Another coping mechanism is to motivate one's partner into talking to their parents - and that comes with its own costs if the partner is unwilling to have that conversation.

The strategy of intentional acceptance is one way of addressing family conflict (whether parents or in-laws). Actively accepting that parents or in-laws have the right to their own fears and anxieties. Actively accepting that parents and in-laws have the right to their own informed or mistaken views. Actively accepting that parents and in-laws have the right to choose their own behaviors (e.g., drinking chai at all times of the day or night), even if they are difficult to understand.​

Active acceptance of family allows us to spend time and energy pursuing family activities and create positive memories that can last a lifetime. Active acceptance of family makes that long journey to see them worth the effort. Active acceptance of family allows us to reconnect with aging versions of our parents and in-laws and to try and love them just the same.