Have you been in a situation when a parent (or maybe a spouse or friend) won’t take life saving advice? I am thinking about driving, exercising, taking medications, or staying off the roof! Every one of us believes we can continue to do things we have always done — drive a car, ignore the need to exercise, skip or stop taking a pill that annoys us, and climb up on the roof to fix a drainage issue! What if any one of those activities is actually dangerous? How do you convince your friend, your spouse, your parent that they need to change their behavior?
A friend’s mother drove a car way past the time when it was safe for her, or anyone else on the road for that matter. There were dents in the right front of her car where she was hitting mailboxes because her eyesight was failing. The family asked a driving supervisor to evaluate her, and to the astonishment of everyone, she passed the driving test! Luckily, she never had a bad accident before she died, but everyone held their breath. My father drove until he was in his late 80s, but he was beginning to weave around a lot. When we sat him down and talked to him about how he would feel if he hurt someone else with this behavior, he pretty rapidly agreed to give up his keys. Not every senior is quite so compliant.
Sometimes families have to use the local physician to persuade their loved one to do the right thing. Other times it means taking away the ladder that so enticingly offers a chance to fix the drain pipe. And too often no matter how you do it, it causes conflict and anger and can even ruin friendships.
There are a range of actions you can take, from persuasion to outright coercion. But whether it is direct or indirect, carefully consider the impact on your relationship. If the friend or parent won’t take their medications, an appointment with the doctor might convince them. If you feel their behavior is dangerous to others as well as themselves, more drastic actions may be necessary. There is a woman in my retirement community who is still very angry at her adult children for taking away her car. She doesn’t remember that she kept getting lost while driving. What she remembers is the anger she still feels about how they went to her doctor, who notified the DMV. I’m not sure how they could have done it without engendering that anger, but it has caused a real rift with her family.
Whatever solution you choose, it is always a good idea to try persuasion first. Then, enlist other members of the family or other friends to participate in the discussion, being careful not to “gang up” on the person. If you cannot change the behavior by persuasion or discussion, try involving a third party who is not a relative or friend — the physician, a counselor, a more distant friend of the family whom the person trusts. And finally, if all else fails, and you feel the person is not endangering others, leave them alone. I know that may sound like a cop out, but unless the person is cognitively unable to act in their own best interests, it may be that you have to let them live (or die) with their own decisions.