Worth a Read

Coping with Your Difficult Older Parent: A Guide for Stressed-Out Children

By Grace Lebow, Barbara Kane and Irwin Lebow | Avon Books, Inc.

Do you have an aging parent who:

  • Blames you for everything that goes wrong?
  • Cannot tolerate being alone, wants you all the time?
  • Is obsessed with health problems, real, or imagined?
  • Make unreasonable and/or irrational demands of you?
  • Is hostile, negative and critical?

Coping with these traits in parents is an endless high-stress battle for their children. Though there’s no medical definition for “difficult” parents, you know when you have one. While it’s rare for adults to change their ways late in life, you can stop the vicious merry-go-round of anger, blame, guilt and frustration. Here’s a common-sense guide from professionals, with more than two decades in the field, on how to smooth communications with a challenging parent. Filled with practical tips for handling contentious behaviors and sample dialogues for some of the most troubling situations, this book addresses many hard issues.