How “Role Reversal” or Other Catch Phrases Skew Your Thoughts

You are so right. Thanks Carol.

Good Perspective. I have trouble with the terminology of role reversals also. I look forward to reading more about my evolving caregiver status. I also wish to hear from Males taking care of their Mother's who like in my case have never had children. Thanks!

amen! great thoughts! discovered very quickly about the "sense of loss" my mother must have felt when she first came to live with me 4 yrs ago with beginning stages of dementia and all the frustrations and anger (on both parts)-the flipping back and forth between being a "child" and being "an adult" (re. to her mental capabilities) and then her treating me as her "child" and then treating me as an adult----CRAZY!!!!

Our Mother attends a day care type of center. We call it the Senior Center which makes her think she is going to a place to meet other Seniors and works out great. She has been attending almost 2 years now and has been a real blessing to us to be able to do our errands and help our other elderly family.

Yes, a thousand times yes! It's so wonderful to hear you say this, and articulate it so powerfully. I have a huge emotional problem with the widespread assumption that my Dad is somehow now my child: my brilliant, sophisticated, scholarly world-traveler Dad. The caregivers at his assisted living do a wonderful job with physical care, but they address him as if he were a child, and often talk to me as if I were his mom. I am his child, his daughter, and I will love and revere him and my father forever.

My Aunt is very fortunate. She is able to stay in her own home, because of me. I live with her, and do all the house duties. I am a nursing home for one.... She hasn't a clue how fortunate she is. But she is lonely and bored at times. It is part of getting old, not going alot of places or doing a lot of things.
she has a companion they eat out 3 times a week, go to church and out to lunch afterwards, they go to movies and shows(we live in Branson Mo. Yes I play the "reversal role" and I am her niece. Her sister(whom is dead) daughter. I have been here, doing what I am doing, for 5 years. I am at peace for the most part,nut it is the hardest job I have ever had. God Bless all, he does me every day (smile)

Well I appreciate what you are saying but have had difficulty because of my mother's lack of input into my life when I was a child. My mother was never the nurturing kind. So fixing her food, bringing it to her and tucking her in at bedtime which is now commonplace for me to do for her, was never part of the equation for me when I was growing up. So in this sense I do feel I am parenting my parent. Even sitting together or across from one another to talk together or have her explain or teach was not part of the mother daughter role when I was a child. So I am struggling with this.

Yes, you are so right!
AND
It is hard as their child, to escape that role, as an adult. I need to be an adult in this situation, taking care of the house, the meds, the lawyers, the money, the bills, and the parents. But there is this lingering old role of "mothers-child". Ah, somedays it is hard to be who you are and not who you were, and always, always, know where the cat is...

I think the real role reversal that so often takes place is the adult child becomes the emotional child once again which abusive parents want, but no parent really needs much less others connected in the drama.

mom is 97 and very child like but somewhere in there is i am mama and in charge it is like being bossed around by a 5 year old