How to set boundaries or not drive yourself crazy with a passive aggressive sibling?

Make a list of his duties he agrees to and yours. You sign it and he signs it. You pin it to Ur parents frig and explain to them you cannot do it all. For the things he is suppose to do and doesn't, he needs to find them a replacement. Your not it. The problem here is your parents allowed this now its ingrained. May have something to do with him being a boy. Whatever, you need to tell ur parents you cannot do it all. If brother can't do his share than they will need to hire someone. How dirty do 2 people get a house. They can order their groceries and have them delivered. They can order dinner to be dlvrd.

If their care and keeping up a home is too much for them, its not your responsibility. Maybe time to look into independent living or an Assisted living. If they are 90 than you are approaching retirement age if working. You too are a Senior. This they need to realize and that you have responsibilities of your own.

I have to ask, can’t groceries be ordered and a housecleaning service paid for by your parents? I’d be reluctant to do those tasks too when I’m sure there are plenty of tasks that can’t be farmed out. And nobody in this scenario is getting any younger.

Just being kind of blunt here. 😊

I'm an only child. But I have a friend who has an older sister who acts just like your older brother.

Like your brother, she says enthusiastically, "I'll do the task!" in front of the parents. And then she doesn't. The tasks then fall on my friend every time. When my friend brings it up, the sister ignores her.

OP, here's my advice, which I also told my friend:

Your elder sibling is a liar. Tries to look good in front of the parents, therefore pretending to say "I'll do the task!"

Your elder sibling is not a good person. Unreliable, a liar and knowingly causing more work for you by WASTING YOUR TIME. (Example: if your brother had honestly said from the start that he wouldn't do those tasks, you would have made other arrangements so it doesn't fall on you in a very inconvenient way.)

If possible, cut ties with your sibling.

Another point: sometimes the reason a sibling doesn't honestly say, "I won't do the tasks", is because they don't want to be disinherited. So they pretend. "Yes, I'll do the task! I can't wait! I love doing tasks so much!!!" In reality, they have no intention to do the task, and they just don't do it.

I think it's time for you, your parents, and your brother to have a sit-down.

It's time for you to be the one who speaks and they listen.
You tell all three of them that you are not going to cover for your brother anymore when he doesn't show up to do the things he agreed upon.

Your brother humors your parents and tells then what they want to hear in the moment but had absolutely zero intentions to actually follow up on the promises he's making. There's a name for people like your brother - Liars. No doubt your brother has gotten away with this his entire life. He's not going to change now.

Now there will have to be a new arrangement. It comes in the form of hired in-home caregivers.

Mom and dad PAY for this new help out of their money. They come in on a schedule to cook meals, clean the house, and take them where they have to go.
Some or all of their doctor's appointments can be made during their aide's hours and they will take them to the appointments.

You have to learn to tell your parents 'NO'. You don't come running because your brother backs out. He has to be held responsible for his actions, not you.
So let your parents take it up with him the next time he skips out on helping them like he agreed.
You don't do it.

Also, you have to let go of letting your brother's behavior eat away at you. That's not healthy and you're hurting yourself. I know how it is to have a do-nothing sibling too, but there are options.
Please talk to a homecare agency.

Sometimes we have to SHOW people that we mean what we say.

Stop showing up for your parents for a few weeks.

Then, call the local Area Agency on Aging and request a "needs assessment" and case management services for your parents. Show up for that assessment. DO NOT clean up any messes or bring in any supplies; the AAA needs to see how they live.

If this doesn't result in any behavior change on your parents' part, the next step is to call Adukt Protective Services and report your parents as elders who are vulnerable and in need of help.

You can't, as one person and an older one at that, fulfill all of your parents' unrealistic expectations.

Get them on the path to getting the help they need.

Who is your parents DPOA? Are they still competent?
Do they intend to continue to live at home with only your help?

Next time they call and say brother can't take us to the doctor today you need to tell them to call brother and find out when he is available so they can reschedule. You are not available at the moment. They need to work this out with him.

They may not like this, but you can't be responsible for keeping your brother's promises.

You say that Mom and Dad are reverting more and more back to their first language. This is common in people who have Dementia of some kind.

Avon, if you have difficulty finding your local Area Agency on Aging, let us know what county of what state your parents reside in and we can look it up. Private message me if you don't want to share that publicly.

Update: I hired a pt caregiver for my parents. They start this coming Monday.

My brother made a video appointment with mom's pcp for tomorrow. I saw it in her online health group info. It was made yesterday according to my dad.

Dad also told me my brother can't make it. It's not the first appointment he doesn't plan to attend though he schedules it.

This time I'm doing nothing. I'm not even informing the doctor's office as I have many times before that he makes appointments planning neither to be there nor make arrangements for another person to accompany her. We'll see what happens.

Another update. This will be the last one due to the crazy. My brother has aggressive cancer which needs radiation or the tumor should be surgically removed. Buy will be going on vacation overseas in 10 days anyway according to my dad.

I know the vacation part is true but cancer??? Am venting. No need to respond.

My sister and I got tired of complaining about our brother so we gave him some tasks he could do at his convenience or hire out. He never did them. My sister and I cared for our parents (w aides) for 10 years. Brother would stop by occasionally for an hour, unannounced. (If I'd know he'd be there maybe I could have actually spent a Sunday at home.) When my mom was on her death bed , he finally showed up, tried to take over w hospice-who he told he'd been nursing my mother. My sister will forever be a legend for throwing him out. Now he wants to know when he'll be getting his inheritance. As bad as this was, at least he mostly stayed out of the way. Yours is worse.

Caring for parents is precious and expensive for hired help. Forget about conditional inheritance.

Avon, if your brother has DPO he is the one responsible for caring for your parents. If he doesn’t want to do the job it’s time for him to step down & for it to be assigned to someone else.

It’s only going to get worse. I learned the hard way…..do not do any caregiving if someone else has DPOA.

So many of us on here are in the same boat. My brother will not lift a finger and he lives close. I am doing everything from far away. Much of his unwillingness to help stems from the not great relationship he had with our father. But there is so much he could do behind the scenes to help that he just won’t. He has never asked me if I need help with anything and he is fully aware of how much I have on my plate. Many weeks my life is completely taken over by the tasks and constant problems my father’s dementia creates.

I am POA and let’s just say…his day will come. The less he does now and the more resentful I get, the less gracious I am going to be later. And the way my father structured things, my being gracious is something he will need.

I suggest you get a therapist to help you. You are dealing with a person who has successfully gotten away with not being accountable for a long time in his life. In addition, you and others have learned to work around his irresponsibility. These are hard behaviors to change, both your and his.

Start doing it now or your future holds more of the same behavior

Well a couple of thoughts that come to my mine are, let these things go ahead and fall through and don’t help your dad, be unavailable, don’t answer the phone, etc. and let the crisis happen and have it come back on him - quit enabling him. It might be quite bothersome the first few times he is caught dropping the ball, but he’ll get his act together or he’ll ask her to make new arrangements.

And a new arrangement could be is that he pays you to handle these things for him. And if he’s paying you maybe you can pay a caregiver to help you out.

Expecting his behavior to change since you’ve known him since your teens you already know the answer to the question - you can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do.

All you can do is back off and let him take responsibility for his own actions or do something different like I suggested with the money. Good luck to you!

I forgot to mention a really good book and they have a series of them. It’s called boundaries. By Dr. Henry cloud and Dr. John Townsend. They give many simple to understand uncomplicated examples of what you can do to help people own their behavior. And like I heard said in some movie, The answers are easy they’re just tough to do. Everybody’s ingrained habits will need to change, that includes yours. Again good luck.

Your brother has DPOA.  That means he has control over your parent’s money.
If you do not have the money control then how can you pay for help?

I agree with “BarbBrooklyn”, involve the Area Agency on Aging, involve Adult Protective Services. Tell them the DPOA is MIA (missing in action).

They will hold the DPOA accountable.

Your last paragraph indicates you already know where this is going. You cannot county on brother and parents can't either. It's very common for one sibling taking on the load even when there are multiple siblings. Some people just aren't caretakers and never will participate equally. If you get anything out of him at all, you're lucky.

AvonLady: Contact their town's COA (Council on Aging), who should have on staff an elder case worker who will go into their home to assess their needs. Think no longer on your brother's moral compass, else you drive yourself crazy.

I know EXACTLY how you feel and my brother LIVED with my Mom. He was basically a warm body to make sure (hopefully) our mother didn't hurt herself. But mostly he hung out in his room all day. I bathed her, cleaned the house, did the maintenance, took her to all doctor appts, handled her checkbook, paid the bills, etc.

That said, hopefully you are local. I guarantee you won't be able to delegate or count on him to do ANY caregiving whatsoever. You will be angry. Frustrated. Resentful. Stressed out. Trust me. I went through 10 YEARS of this. I was on anti depression medication (still am) and Ativan when the stress was overwhelming. Thankfully, I had a wonderful primary care doc and a husband who let me vent.

My advice is let it go. You already have experienced the disappointment, lack of caring, lying, and stress of dealing with your brother. He's not going to "come around" no matter how you talk to him and you can discuss it until you're blue in the face. Face it, he can't be relied upon. I'm trying to save your sanity with this advice. My Mom passed away 7 years ago and my brother moved 500 miles away. We no longer have any contact and I'm okay with it. He stressed me out for 10 years with his passive aggressive behavior and I'm so much better off not dealing with him anymore.

So what I'm saying is basically you will be taking care of Mom (like I did). Steel yourself and do the best you can. We're here for you to vent.

Order groceries online and have them delivered. Have your parents hire someone to come once a week to clean the house. Have meals delivered (several services that deliver frozen meals for senior that just have to be microwaved) or have meals delivered from local eateries. That leave managing healthcare/doctor appointments to manage. And then you can stop asking your brother to help because you know he won’t follow through. The less you have to deal with brother then the less aggravation, frustration, and disappointment you will have.

Hire a caregiver to do what your brother is not doing - as he needs to and should be doing as a responsible, 'caring' son.

Then send him the bill. And TELL HIM that you are doing this.

Do not allow him to bully you. He is. He knows he can.
You need to stop this as he won't.

Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed. Ever since we’ve had to take care of my father almost three years ago, my siblings have done absolutely nothing to help out in any way. My sister however, keeps in regular contact with me, and she’s had her own set of troubles for a while. We’ve had a bit of friction between us but have sorted that out. My brother does bugger all and doesn’t keep in contact except when he wants to swindle us out of our inheritance. He’s a greedy arsehole. My sister and I will have nothing to leave our respective families once our father dies. To be quite honest, I dread seeing my brothers name appear on caller ID and have blocked him for now. Any conversation that we might have will end in an argument and I’m not well enough to withstand that at the moment.
So, my advice is, if they haven’t helped up until now, they never will.

Not everyone is cut out to be a caregiver, no matter how much they wish they were. He may truly want to be helpful but find it difficult to follow through. Taking care of parents is never going to be 50/50. One is usually better at some tasks and the other better at others. My brother is very good with finances, which I detest, and I am better at staying int he hospital and going to dr. visits, so that's how we divide tasks. Figure out what your brother and you are better at and see if you can't use that to decide what areas of responsibility belong to who.

If your parents have enough money to leave an inheritance, then you should be using their money to hire as much done as possible. There will be less to inherit, but using it to care for them is better than inheriting it imho. Let your sibling do what they want to do, just as you are doing what you want to do. Blaming your siblings for not "doing their share" only causes trouble. If your are available and willing, and your parents have the money, then use their money to hire the help that is needed. No need for you to do all the work and setting yourself up to feel like a victim. If you truly want to help your parents, take charge, hire help, and refuse to be, think, or act like a victim because your siblings make choices that are different than yours.

Cut off contact