“Love your parents. We are so busy growing up; we often forget they are also growing old”
A parent is a person who brings up and cares for another. Parenting is taking care of someone in the manner of a parent. Parents learn parenting by taking care of their children and they adjust to new role functions. It is the same for children when parents become old children are parents of their parents and they should adopt a new role.
Parenting has many aspects of care physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and financial, sometimes it is a burden for parents to the upbringing of children. Parents do all possible things to make their children good people and give them the best things in their life. When parents are old it is the responsibility of children to make their life comfortable.
Last year in the month of April my mother started breathing difficulty, I have taken her to hospital. The doctor on duty checked her, informed me she is critical, and shifted her immediately to ICU. I was sitting in the waiting lounge and recalling all memories, of how parents have taken care of us all siblings, with love, care, patience, guidance, sacrifice, and support for their children. My parents were independent and never expected children to take care of them.
When children are growing up parents’ age also increases. I realize my parents need to be taken care of when my father got a heart attack at the age of 62yrs and then slowly aging problems started with my parents such as cataracts, hearing problems, digestion problems, loco-motor problems, hormonal imbalance, neurological problems and difficulty in day to day activity.
We, siblings, started taking responsibility for a family with the involvement of parents in all aspects. Spending time with parents, listening to life experience stories, taking them for short trips & shopping, singing & dancing with them, fulfilling wishes, taking them to the hospitals for health issues, providing them all assistive devices vision glasses, hearing aids, cane & wheelchair, made some changes in the house for their day to day activity, expressed our love to them by cuddling, kissing and hugging. Parents should not feel ignored, so involving them in discussions and asking them to take the final decisions, never leaving them alone, and giving priority to them.
My father passed away in 2017. My mother was in ICU for 40 days but till her last breath, she opened her eyes to my call. She passed away at the age of 83 yrs.
We siblings were thinking, how we are able to perform parenting roles when others feel so difficult? The answer is we have observed our parents parenting our grandparents, and unknowingly we siblings learned to parent. Parents transferred the legacy of parenting to children by parenting their parents it can be called reverse parenting.
We, siblings, feel blessed that God has given us Strength and the opportunity to be parents of our parents. Hope we all take legacy of parenting the parents, prepare others for the role of reverse parenting, and make aware