#117 - Don't Wait for a Crisis: How to Talk with Aging Parents

Eric Blake: Welcome to another episode of the Simply Retirement podcast. I am your host, Eric Blake. For those of you who were waiting on pins and needles for part three of our series on understanding annuities, and I know my producer Wendy was doing exactly that, you're just going to have to wait until next week to hear about annuities and taxation, because today I have a guest that I am really excited about.

Today's conversation is also a very personal one for me, because my family has been impacted by a number of difficult conversations over the last few years regarding the health and well-being of my grandmother, who is now 91. And as I've shared over past episodes, I am so fortunate to have five generations of women still in my life, counting my two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter as a woman at this point.

And sometimes, you know, important decisions about the health, and more importantly, the care of our aging family members are made by choice, but sometimes it's out of crisis. Our guest today helps families have those conversations before a crisis makes the decisions for them. Tammy Clay is an aging and change coach, founder of Clay Senior Consult, and a motivational interviewing practitioner with more than 15 years of experience helping families navigate some of life's most difficult conversations.

And one statement from Tammy immediately stood out to me as I prepared for today's conversation, and it speaks directly to our audience of this podcast as well. She says, "I help adult daughters have the aging conversations they've been avoiding before a crisis has them instead." Tammy, welcome to the Simply Retirement podcast.

Tami Calais: Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Eric Blake: Absolutely, I've been looking forward to this for a long time. I just want to start here. I think the quote that I just read perfectly captures why having this conversation today is so important. I just want to start: why do you think so many families avoid these conversations until life forces them to be had?

Tami Calais: Well, there's many, many reasons. I think, and I talk about this actually quite a bit, but I think it's easy to avoid the conversations when we don't have the communication skills, and I think that's the tangible, easy thing for us to fix. I also think a lot of families avoid these conversations due to not quite having an articulation or conversation about what respect is.

So they often think, "Oh, it's being respectful to not talk about it," but actually we're losing our aging parent's voice when we don't talk about it. And then the third thing that I think is really common is we're all so busy.

Eric Blake: Mm-hmm.

Tami Calais: And so these conversations take time, they take some energy, they take some real emotional bandwidth, and that's something we don't always have in every single moment.

So especially, again, I'm a mom of two little toddlers right now. I know there's a lot of moms out there and dads out there. When you're trying to manage family life but you've also got an aging parent, it's really hard to slow down.

Eric Blake: Absolutely. You know, I've intentionally built a large part of my professional network around people who support older adults and their families, because that's such an important part of the work that we do in helping women prepare for retirement. And sometimes that means helping clients who are experiencing health challenges themselves and involving their adult children in the planning process.

Other times it might be helping a client who may be navigating these conversations with their own aging parents. And many of the professionals that I network with have actually been on the podcast, but you're the first person that I've met whose primary focus is helping families learn how to have these conversations before a crisis happens.

What led you to dedicate yourself to this type of work, helping families in this way?

Tami Calais: Well, let me share a story with you, because this is what really hit me. Back in 2014, I was working at a senior living community. They had independent living, assisted living, and memory care.

And it was this beautiful fall afternoon, and this gentleman, an adult son, came in to look for his aging parents, and he said they were, quote-unquote, "fine at home." They had a little bit of memory loss, but they were doing okay, so he just wanted to start gathering some information, as he should. And we took a tour, we said our goodbyes, and he went on, you know, with his day and his week.

About four weeks later, he called me in a complete crisis. He said his aging parents had gotten into their car, something they did every single week to go to the grocery store, but instead of making it into the grocery store, they got lost. They ended up driving eight hours out to the Blue Mountains and were found alive by a park ranger, but very disoriented, dehydrated, and very confused.

And so Steve, this gentleman, called me, and he was like, "I clearly can't wait on this anymore. I am forced to make decisions." But more importantly, when he came in to see me, at this time I was 25, maybe 26. This is like a 42, maybe 45-year-old man. He's actually crying on my shoulder.

Eric Blake: Wow.

Tami Calais: So wrought with guilt and anxiety, because he's like, "We never talked about what they wanted."

Ever. And then, because we never talked about it, now it feels like I'm doing something to them and not for them. And I think that's the big distinction that really motivates me. It's one thing when we have a conversation about things and your adult children are now just enacting your wishes, versus feeling like adult children are forced to make decisions for you. And that's what really motivates me, because I want to see senior citizens, I want to see their voice in every room into their 80s and 90s, and I want adult children to not feel that immense guilt and exhaustion from doing something to their aging parents.

Eric Blake: Well, I think that's one of the themes that kept coming up as I was learning more about the work that you're doing, was this idea of connection over control. You know, when we love someone, especially when it's a parent, our instinct is often to jump in and give advice or try to fix whatever their problem might be, right?

But you teach something that's a little bit different. Can you explain what you mean by connection over control, and why that approach leads to better conversations?

Tami Calais: Yeah. Well, first off, there's, oh man, oh gosh, there's so many different ways my brain is going. First, I want to recognize our aging parents want connection with us.

They want our time and energy. Going back to why we avoid the conversations: because as adult children we're so busy and we're doing things, and in addition to that, we're in the heights of our careers. In your 40s and 50s and sometimes 60s, you are the decision-makers at your job, so you are getting paid lots of money to hear about a problem and make fast decisions.

But with our aging parents, that's not what they need. They actually need connection over that certainty or control that we think we're trying to help with. And so the other thing that happens with aging parents is they're actually often ambivalent about these changes, whether it's thinking about maybe getting someone to come in for in-home care, whether it's thinking about, you know, hiring or going to an assisted living, or maybe it's just hiring someone to help with housekeeping or home maintenance or whatever it is.

They start to become ambivalent about this, and it means that they're torn between two things. I want, you know, some help with this, but I also like the status quo. And when we come in, we have a handy-dandy visual for those who get to see it, and they're looking at both sides of this teeter-totter, and one side says, "Oh, I'm going to do this," and the other says, "I'm going to do this." All of a sudden, when we take a stand on one side, it actually causes them to defend or articulate and spend their time talking about why that side matters.

And so oftentimes adult children actually start the conversations in a way that forces their aging parents to defend their position, to articulate why a solution doesn't work for them. And so my goal is to help these families come into these conversations a little bit more neutrally, so we can help your aging parents be the one to articulate what the next steps are.

Eric Blake: One of the things that, again, I found so interesting, and it was why I was looking forward to this conversation so much, is, you know, I've experienced a lot of this in my own family. And, you know, where I'm at, actually, my experience as a retirement planner, I can have a little bit of insight into some of these things because we see it on a regular basis. But it's just, it is different when we're talking about your own family.

You know, my grandmother is 91, my aunt and my mom are in the exact phase you're talking about. They're both business owners. They're both in control. They like to be in control. You know, I shared that my aunt actually lives right across the alley from my grandmother, so she's right there.

She's right in the middle of it on a regular basis, and my mom's here in the Dallas area, and she kind of deals more on the financial side of things, you know. And they've done an amazing job working together, but there's naturally going to be these different clashes and who should have the most insight.

And I'm not even sure what the right question is with that, but when you're talking about multiple siblings, how do you open the conversation? What's the first thing I might be thinking about?

Tami Calais: Well, if we're talking about navigating conversations between families and who's doing what, I think it's so easy for us to get caught up in the what's and how's of doing something.

Who's managing A? Who's managing B? Who's managing C? When, in reality, we need to have a conversation about something deeper first, which is who's going to be involved.

Eric Blake: Okay.

Tami Calais: So let's start with who wants to be involved and what our strengths are, and then we can start to divvy out who's going to do A, B, or C.

But sometimes it's easy for us to dive into the what's and how's versus getting focused on the right things first.

Eric Blake: All right, I think that's great. So let's imagine someone might be listening, and they're thinking, "You know, I know we need to have this conversation with our aging parent, but every time I think about bringing it up, I freeze because I don't know what to say."

How would you encourage that person to begin? What are some of the first questions they can ask that might open the door without making their parent feel like they're losing their own independence? That's actually a big part as well. I know my grandmother's experienced that.

Or feel like the parent's being told what to do.

Tami Calais: Yeah. Well, I teach. Actually, I'm going to be launching this fall a program called Hard Conversations Handled Well: Aging Parents Edition, and it's a five-week program for people to learn how to have these conversations. But one of the first things we learn isn't actually a question or anything. We learn how to create a safe space, and then we learn how to state our intention.

And so often we get our intention kind of confused with the solution that we're going after, versus what's really in our heart. So there's a difference between, "Hey Mom, I want to talk to you about assisted living." That's solution-forward, right? That's not really our intention. That's the intention maybe of the conversation, but that's not our intention as a family member.

Versus, "Hey Mom, I love you. I love you so much that I want to make sure your voice is heard even into your 80s and 90s, and so we follow your wishes and not what we want." Those are two very different statements to start with. And so the first thing I teach people is to aim, which is how do we cultivate a statement that is true and authentic for you but focused on what your intention is?

What is your love for them? How do we create a safe space for them in that moment? And then, what are we trying to talk about that we want to help with? Not what we want to solve, what we want to help with.

Eric Blake: What that reminds me of is the conversations that I've had in the last six months or so, probably. But, you know, unfortunately, these conversations, the initial conversations, start happening years ago.

But that's one of the things that happened for us. You know, in our family, hospice was like a four-letter word. We just didn't bring it up to my grandmother for a long time. But one of the things the hospice nurses helped with, we really had to get to the point where we explored this, was just how to reframe it a little bit differently, to say, "It's not about the term hospice, it's what advantage, or what kind of care, is involved in this."

And once my grandmother kind of understood what there really was to it, how much more care she could actually get and stay in her own home, which has been a priority the entire time, we just reframed it a little bit, as far as why this was going to be helpful for you, how it was actually going to make you feel better, less stress on the family. You know, she does have 24/7 caregivers in addition to the hospice, but just less stress across the board.

And it was simply, how did we reframe that conversation so that she understood why it would be so helpful for her?

Tami Calais: Yeah, in two ways. So the first thing I think of when someone says, you know, "Hospice is a dirty word for our family," my first thought process is going into empathetic, reflective statements.

So what is she feeling? Like, what do you think she felt in the moment when you guys talked about hospice, or tried to bring it up?

Eric Blake: The thing with hospice, and I've had hospice experts tell me this, is, you know, that it means my life is almost over, right? That it's coming to the end.

Tami Calais: Yeah. "I feel like we're talking about my death. I feel like we're talking about me dying."

Eric Blake: Right.

Tami Calais: And sometimes when we talk about actual feelings that people are having, I think Dr. Dan Siegel wrote a book called The Whole-Brain Child, and he talks about this. Granted, it's a children's book, but I think it's the same thing for aging parents, too.

When we start to recognize when people are in protect mode, like your grandmother was probably in a little bit more protect mode, when we start to acknowledge and recognize the feelings that they're feeling, it calms their amygdala, and they can start to get into connect mode, where they're ready to talk about things.

And so even just acknowledging, yeah, it's scary to talk about hospice because it feels like it's the last step for you, and you're not ready to acknowledge that. Even a statement like that can help her feel like, "All right, Eric gets me. He understands where I'm coming from." And then what I'd add to it, I think your hospice guide was so great in laying out the framework of what hospice does. But I think one question you could also ask to explore that, if you focus on curiosity, would be, "Well, what do you think hospice does for the family, and what do you think it doesn't do?"

Number one. And then, "How do you think hospice would help our family, not just you, but all the immediate children, in supporting you?" Because then it gets her to articulate maybe some of her fears and challenges, but also maybe her misunderstandings of what hospice actually is.

Eric Blake: Hey everyone, it's Eric. Hope you're enjoying today's episode.

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Now, back to the episode. I noticed, obviously, we talked about, you know, being overwhelmed and the stress that all this causes. If somebody's sitting out there saying, "You know, again, I just don't know where to start," what is a first step or two? Where would you encourage somebody to start if they're in this process and they realize, "Hey, you know, I really do need to have these conversations. I just don't know where to go." Where would you suggest somebody start first?

Tami Calais: Start with stating your intention, you know, your heart to help, and then ask a curious question. Maybe that curious question is, "What does thriving look like for you in five years?" Or maybe that curious question is, "How did you feel about that fall the other day, where you laid on the floor for 24 hours?"

Yes, I've had seniors experience that. You know, being curious about their feelings and their world is what's going to open up connection for all of us, and I think that's the hardest part. Not saying we don't want to connect with people, but again, we're busy. We're busy individuals. And so it's so hard to come into conversations ready to connect when we're going, "Okay, I'm managing so many things."

"I have 10 minutes to manage you," which is a different energy, versus, "I have 10 minutes to connect with you." I think the shifting of roles is a big piece that we don't talk about enough with aging parents, and just in general, because I think that's a big piece of why people feel a little uncomfortable as they have aging parents. Their role as an adult child starts to shift from an adult daughter or son to a little bit more of a manager or a caregiver.

But we have to remember aging parents are going through that same shift too, and they're feeling uncomfortable as well. Sometimes they don't want their adult child to be their manager or caregiver. And so again, just articulating that and saying, "Hey, I'm starting to notice that I'm showing up and managing versus connecting with you.

"Do you feel the same way? And what are your thoughts on that?" That just opens up a whole different conversation, right?

Eric Blake: Right. But it's so hard. It's so hard to do that, to be vulnerable. I mean, there's vulnerability, excuse me, let me get that word out, across the board on both sides. And that's where I think...

That's why I think a lot of this is so difficult, because you're giving up independence. And, you know, if you think about the adult child, now this is probably a bad way to put it, but, you know, the adult child becoming the parent.

Tami Calais: Yep.

Eric Blake: And I know you've talked a little bit about that as well, that not feeling like that's your role, that you becoming the parent is not really what your role should be.

But it's so hard not to feel like you're taking on that role. So how do you, is there a way to avoid that mindset, maybe?

Tami Calais: Well, I want to have empathy for adult children, because then I'm in the same boat too. We're busy people, we're in the height of our career, where we're making decisions all the time.

So it's natural, when you're making decisions for your family, to just loop your aging parents into that. But the mindset shift that I would encourage people to make is to remember that your aging parents, they've made decisions for 80-plus years. They know how to make decisions, unless they're incapable mentally, AKA they have cognitive decline.

You know, we want to support their autonomy for as long as possible. Our job isn't to, you know, manage them or go into parent mode for them, but our job is to get curious and help them start articulating and making plans for their own future, so the responsibility doesn't land on us. They're the decision-maker, and we just enact their wishes.

That's a much better place to be.

Eric Blake: Right, no, 100% agree. That's awesome. So I wanted to ask you another question here. You know, as I've mentioned, a lot of our clients that we work with in our wealth management practice, or retirement planning practice, are in that area where they're the older adult looking at...

You know, they've got adult children who are trying to navigate these decisions. But a lot of our listeners, when we're talking about retirement planning, you know, our focus is on women over 55, who are in the retirement planning phase. One of the things I'd be curious to get your thoughts on: if someone listens today and thinks, "You know, I don't want my own children to face these same challenges one day," what are one or two conversations you would encourage them to begin having now?

Somebody maybe in their 50s and 60s who, at some point, will likely fall into this category of, "Hey, somebody might be helping me make these decisions." What are things they could do today in preparation for that phase of life?

Tami Calais: You know, one of the biggest things that I hope to impact this world with is helping people have conversations, aging parents, whether you're in your 50s or 60s, with your adult children about how you raised them.

And in reality, if you're in your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s, and you've raised good kids, you also just need to tell them, "Hey, I've raised you really well. I've raised you to discern the right things to do and the wrong things to do, and I trust you that no matter what happens, you will have my best interest at heart."

And I think that conversation alone would be the most powerful thing: letting your kids know that you trust them, and that you raised them right. You did this intentionally to make sure that they'd have the right discernment to make the right decisions at the right times. But besides that, I think there are many other things to talk about.

You know, making sure you have an estate plan in place, making sure that you talk about your finances, to your point. Making sure you talk about your finances and what you have available for your retirement, if needed, you know, if you need assisted living or memory care, or anything along those lines. I also think it's healthy to talk about, you know, who's going to be the supportive decision-makers.

Obviously, when you do an estate plan, hopefully you put in a power of attorney, and you want to talk about that a little bit, why that person's going to be the one to lean on. And what are the signs and indicators, this goes for many different things, for finances, for health, for driving, that things are changing, that your adult children should start to say, "Hey, I've noticed some things. How are you feeling about this?" But I think when people start to, again, whether you're in your 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s, when you start to identify your own indicators of, "Hey, that would be a little bit concerning, you know, if I ran three stoplights in a row, or if I had, you know, three fender benders in a month," or whatever the indicators are.

When you start figuring out what those are, it helps everyone go, "Huh," when that happens. And it's not so much an adult child going, "Uh." It's now everyone going, "Yeah, things might be changing."

Eric Blake: Well, and it's, you know, that conversation, I mean, I would use the fender bender example of, well, it's the adult child coming and saying, "I'm going to come take your keys, you can't drive anymore," versus let's have that conversation. I mean, we've seen that. We have a couple of ladies who are in their late 80s, early 90s, and those conversations were had, and the reactions were different: "Hey, I made the decision to give up my keys," versus somebody stepping in and saying, "I'm taking those keys."

Tami Calais: Yes, and that's where, again, I'm very pro helping our aging parents have autonomy for as long as possible. So the more that we start these conversations and help them start processing some of these things at an earlier age, the easier those conversations are going to be down the road, because, like you said, they're going to go, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, that is a little bit of a concern," versus, "No, I can still drive." I'm not going to say those conversations are still easy. They're still going to be challenging and hard emotionally. But they're going to be a little bit easier because they've been thinking about them.

Eric Blake: Well, and it's also funny to see how everybody reacts to, you know, the changing world we live in, of, "You know, I can give up my keys because now I can just call Uber or call Lyft, and I can get wherever I want to and not have to worry about it."

Tami Calais: Yes. I just was listening, I don't know if you've connected with Belight Care, but I really liked how she talked about a driving retirement. Instead of looking at, you know, stopping driving, just thinking about a driving retirement. And I'm like, "I love that framework," you know, just talking about that in a conversation as well.

Eric Blake: Right. Well, and you touched on it already, but I would love for you to talk a little bit more about the Hard Conversations Handled Well program that you're coming out with soon. Just in general, who's it designed for, and what can participants expect to walk away with if they were to participate?

Tami Calais: Yeah, so it's designed for adult children that want to have these proactive conversations and want the communication skills. So I'm teaching actual skills. We're not just talking about, say, this question or do this. I'm teaching you how to navigate resistance. Number one thing I want people to walk away with: how do I respond to resistance?

Because when you know how, in communication, whether you're a leader, a parent, or, you know, a family member, to respond to resistance, communication doesn't become scary anymore. I know exactly how to handle resistance every time it pops up. So we talk about that a lot. That's a big chunk of it.

We talk about curiosity. We talk about the SNACKS framework, which is how we bring up the conversation. But a couple other things that are outside of communication that are really helpful, we also talk about how to trust what you're seeing with your aging parents, because we start to second-guess that a lot.

And then lastly, we also talk about the shifting of roles and how we navigate that conversation, because, again, like I alluded to earlier, many of us recognize the shifting of roles, but we don't articulate it. And the goal isn't to articulate it to make our aging parents feel bad, but to articulate it as just laying it out on the table and going, "Huh, how do you feel about that?"

And so much of communication that I talk with people about, again, is about learning these skills, but recognizing the subtle parts of communication that we don't realize: our mindset going into conversations, our tone of voice. Those things matter. You can say, "Well, it's your choice, Mom. You decide." That comes across one way.

Eric Blake: Right.

Tami Calais: Versus, "Yeah, Mom, it's your choice. You get to decide." We're saying the same thing, but it's coming across two very different ways. So communication is a skill set that anyone can improve on, just takes some intentional work.

Eric Blake: Absolutely, that's awesome. So for listeners who would like to learn more about the program, but also your work and how to connect with you, what's the best place for them to do that?

Tami Calais: Well, first off, they can connect on social media, Aging and Change Coach, or they can visit my website, agingandchangecoach.com, where I share more information about the program, as well as some one-off consulting I do for families that are going, "Gosh," especially for those that have loved ones with memory loss.

Those conversations are a little bit different. The communication skills are still actually very handy, but because your loved one has challenges with their executive functioning skills, it's a little bit harder to draw things out of them, because their executive functioning is impaired. So we talk about those conversations a little bit differently.

Eric Blake: Very good. Well, we will definitely include links to Tami's website, her program, her social media in today's show notes so you can easily learn more about her and connect with her. Tami, thank you so much for joining me today. I truly appreciate the work that you're doing to help families have these conversations before they become a crisis.

That's it for today's episode. For all the links and resources mentioned, you can visit thesimplyretirementpodcast.com. Please don't forget to follow our show so you don't miss future episodes. And until next time, please remember, retirement is not the end of the road. It's the start of a new journey.