If you do an online search on how older people can most successfully relate to their offspring, it’s telling that most of the resources concentrate on the issues the children have in “dealing with” their aging parents. You’ll find plenty of articles like “The practical challenges of caring for an elderly parent” and “Struggling to cope with your aging parents,” but you'll be pressed to find anything about the choices that older people have when dealing with busy, frustrated, difficult and demanding offspring with a tendency to think they know what we want better than we do ourselves. This is of course rather tongue-in-cheek, but as long as we are seen as the problem and they are assumed to be a necessary part of the solution it’s hard to see how generations within a family can best work together for the common good.

The perception of “old as burden” isn’t helped when there is a strong presumption that children – which too often means daughters – have a duty to make caring for their parents a priority, often at a time when the physical needs of the parent are increasing and the everyday pressures on their adult children are peaking. Alongside a lifetime’s experience of knowing exactly how best to irritate each other, aging parents and their children are expected to find mutually respectful and supportive ways of co-existing. It’s a tall order, but unless we plan to die without dealing with such challenges, now is very much the time for developing real and realistic communication with our children.

It’s important not to have expectations of our children that we haven’t discussed and agreed with them. We can’t assume that the blood link automatically makes them responsible for our wellbeing, though if we have a good and clear relationship with our offspring they may well be an important part of our mutual support network. “Mutual” is the key point; where we can willingly, happily and comfortably support our children and they us, our children can be a true blessing, but we must never take anything or anyone for granted.