(serious) how did your parents change as they got older? Are there really big personality changes on top of possible/likely health complications?
(serious) how did your parents change as they got older? Are there really big personality changes on top of possible/likely health complications?
2 months ago
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About The Author
They both seriously mellowed out, my dad in particular. My mom was never *that* high strung but she had her moments. My dad was often a raging prick when he was younger, though. Now he’s much less so.
My mother stopped being a battered woman, divorced my abusive dad, and developed wisdom.
Never treated mental health disorders which now run and ruin there lives and are the cause of some of my issues. I have a very strained relationship with them. It’s hard to hear your parents speak about how there quality of living is to the point where they can’t turn the heating on anymore etc.
But even if I could give them 5000 a month it wouldn’t change anything and it wouldn’t be enough. It hurts knowing I’m missing something essential. I have no one to ask for guidance or advice I just have to wing it and have for a long time, it’s weird feeling like an orphan when your parents are still alive.
I love them but am unable to forgive them. I will help if I can still though, with food or a Bill but I rarely interact with them
It’s tough.
I don’t think my parents changed it’s just that as I grew up I started to understand things more and perceived them differently now I look at them in a completely different way I used to back when I was 8 or 9 and that’s what made it feel like they changed at least personality wise
Dad died when I was a young age probably 2-3 or something and when I see my mom she’s tired from work she only comes back home at like 11:30PM so most of the time never she her at the house I really jest feel bad for her now it’s a big change she used to be kind fun and energetic but now I’d be lucky jest to talk to her..
Update: so I asked my mom when my dad died and she said he died when I was 7, I don’t know why but I must have forgotten about that-
They’re the same exasperating people they always were
My father lost his organizational skills, and both his communication and his temper became erratic.
It turned out he had a brain tumor.
My mother got eccentric and frighteningly religious once I moved out
Apparently my mom was kind of a diva when she was younger. She’d frequently spend 10k+ in one shopping trip on clothes she’d never wear. Really into fashion and worked in the fashion industry. My dad on the other hand didn’t care at all about his looks or clothes and focused solely on climbing the corporate ladder.
Now that they’re older, my dad is the diva and splurges on self care, clothing and insists on dressing like an Italian mafia member for some reason. My mom picked up finance, business and investing knowledge and became a sigma (fe)male who buys all her clothes from Costco because it’s cheap, and allegedly she’s too old to be pretty (definitely not true, my classmates all thought she was a movie star and I’m proud of her excellent fashion sense). They’re both still goofballs though with a great sense of humour.
They changed from Fox News right-wing to Truth Social right-wing…
Besides that, my mom is slightly less of a workaholic and my dad has really thrown in the towel with giving a shit what other people think about him and honestly I admire that a lot.
My mom has changed quite a bit. She was always a very good mom and a fairly optimistic person. She has become rude, unpleasant, and incredibly cynical as she has gotten older. I think a lot had to do with my grandfather’s (her dad) death. He was a sweet, wonderful man. Grandma on the other hand was, well, like my mom is now: rude, unpleasant, and cynical. Grandpa took care of her but he died suddenly and unexpectedly. After grandpa died, my mom had to start being the one to take care of grandma. She didn’t really have a great relationship with her mom but it kind of feels like having to care for her mom turned her into her mom.
My dad has become the sweetest, mellowest (if a bit hapless) dude in his old age. He was the strict one growing up but now he’s a very sweet and loveable guy.
My dad’s autistic spectrum traits became more noticeable (he’s the parent I take after the most, though I was never formally diagnosed), and my mom got a lot softer (we had quite a rough relationship for awhile, and a good one now).
went from addicted to pills to addicted to heroin and now living on the streets willing to do anything for a hit
They’ve definitely mellowed. Both have had more mental health challenges. Mom’s doing better now, but the past few years have been rough for dad as he deals with that and a recent autism diagnosis
My mom was never a very smart woman, but I swear, the older she gets, the less intelligence she seems to have. And that sucks, because she wasn’t all that smart to begin with. D:
They callmed down and got more understanding. They took their time to talk and understand instead of getting mad instantly.
Dad went from republican to democrat with trump era
my dad got depressed so I guess he changed a little but I don’t know it was a long time ago he got diagnosed so I forgot what he was like before
My mom used to be against raising minimum wage, but now she supports it.
My mother has become just a tad more nice over the years. Which is like saying your pet took a single step. Nothing fantastical. Otherwise she is mostly the same.
Well… my dad did drugs as a teenager and smoked and drank a lot. Now he is trying to stop my grandmother, who originally quit but picked it up after I almost died, I know because she told me it’s my fault, to stop smoking and drinking. He’s pro weed and psychedelics but stuff like M and other Coke he’s against.
Mum went from being a left-wing, peace loving woman to a right-wing conspiracy ‘truth seeker’. She was a nurse for 30 years and loved research, but now hates vaccines and references YouTube videos as research.
As they grew older, Dad talked less and listened *more* – while Mom, on the other hand, talked more and listened *less.*
With my father he got more likely to believe the news. Before he’d question most things even if he agreed with them on their face. Now, not so much. Between that, his memory constantly failing him and the sudden spikes of extreme aggression that flare up more regularly and we think it’s early signs of dementia. Especially since a number of older family members of his had it. Makes me nervous about whether it’ll hit me down the line.
My mother mellowed out a lot. Growing up she was always going off her head at the drop of a hat. A very violent person to the point that I had to be removed from the house for my own safety on a number of occasions throughout my childhood. Now, she’s trying to be a more decent person but she can sometimes be really clingy. All her children are essentially adults now. I moved out and the others are all at an age to do so. I think she’s kinda panicking about that and going overboard to keep us in her life.
Sedentary lifestyle post retirement and now moderate dementia.
The other is having to deal with it on the daily and it’s worn them down. They’ve never been good at communicating and asking for help which doesn’t help.
They’re very much the same, but on steroids. My mum’s hypochondria especially.
my dad and mum divorced about 5-6 years ago and i have seen such an improvement with my dad he’s found new lady who isn’t the nicest but that’s ok, he used to be a very grumpy man but now he hits you with all the jokes and would do anything for me but my mum. my mum is a middle aged teenager, dad and i are pretty sure that she has a personality disorder. she drinks and goes at partying at the age of 45 way to much and has 3 kids she never looks after which includes me my dad is mature but my mum isn’t and don’t get me started on what she wears, she’s always so out of it which makes me question if she’s on anything.
My mom changed pretty drastically starting when I graduated high school. Growing up she was always very much an authority figure, very “It’s my job to be your parent not your friend”. She was loving, and made raising/taking care of my sisters and me her top priority, but it always felt very business-like. We had everything we needed from her but she was still a stern person. I wouldn’t go as far to say *cold* but maybe stoic, or just serious would be a good way to describe her.
It feels like as soon as I was an adult and that certain level of responsibility to “be my parent” was lifted, things changed a lot. The way she talked with me was more casual and friendly, she’d let me in on family drama (something she never did when we were kids), she’d send me jokes and memes, etc. And it’s bizarre because she’s still the same person (obviously accounting for the fact that people naturally change over time), it’s just that our dynamic/relationship is very different. I think it’s really nice.
Mine were emotionally abusive. As they aged… It was a lot more drama and the expectation that I would physically and financially provide for them.
Heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol are bigger issues with Boomers than it was with their parents, and those diseases are striking earlier. I know many Boomers who had some variety of the above by 50, compared to their parents.
So it’s a coin toss. I see friends who have been caring for very sickly parents for many years.
My parents died from theirs in their 50s and 60s.
Dementia becomes increasingly common with age. There’s roughly a 50% shot of it by age 85.
My dad has anxiety and my entire life he has had the tv or radio blasting the news 24/7. Now local news is just trump brainwashing blather being Chinese water tortured into his brain all the time.
So like that. He’s always been a sexist racist homophobe but it was largely unexamined.
Well, series of events, trauma from their families, financial and emotional instability made them a shell of themselves. They now live as sort of roomates, don’t smile, laugh or anything. I’ve been a witness to seeing my parents become shell of themselves. Never had a childhood or adolescence, and now as a young man, I still see them more and more a shadow of their past selves.
As of right now, there haven’t really been any big personality changes or health complications. Both my parents are reaching sixty so any health issues they’re experiencing now are things like ache joints. My dad has always had pretty bad tremors and can’t write legible worth a damn, but that’s been the case for the better part of the past 15 years.
What has changed, from my perspective, is how they interact with me. Anymore, it’s like having two older close friends who support me in my own decisions. They’re not interested in raising me anymore. They did that already. Now they’re there to listen and give advice on real life stuff and to ask for my help when they need it. If they are anything like their parents, they’ll be independent for the better part of the next twenty to thirty years now, then I’ll need to start stepping in to help take care of them.
it’s different for my parents who are both retired now. they’ve both changed in different ways since my mom has retired about 4 years ago.
* my mom was the main bread winner for the family. she had a really high paying consulting job that made life really easy for us, but man was it super draining on her mentally and physically. because of that, she was fairly high strung and always serious, snapping at small things cause she couldn’t help it (and she always apologized for it). she was tired all the time and towards the end of her career, she would just go straight to bed when she came home. after she retired, she REALLY mellowed out, and it seemed like she was enjoying life a lot more! the snapping stopped, she goes to bed really late now instead of at 9pm on the dot, she’s more open to trying new things, she’s become a lot more politically open minded as well, etc. i’m really happy to see how my mom has blossomed ever since she retired – she deserves it!
* now my dad on the other hand i think has become the opposite. growing up with my mom constantly out and about for work, my dad was the main one to take care of me and my siblings. he never resented my mom for her hard work, in fact i feel like he really enjoyed the role of being the caretaker and spending time with us. however ever since my mom retired, i think my dad has been a bit anxious about having a steady income (even though they have plenty of retirement savings to keep them VERY comfortable). he started working in real estate with some big wig investors, and ever since he started working on those investments, his demeanor has gotten much more serious. before my dad was super relaxed, always making us laugh and brought so much levity to the dinner table. nowadays he’s very serious, constantly lecturing us about whatever it is he thinks we’re fucking up, he snaps at my mom now and it infuriates me because that woman is simply just trying to help (but to be fair to my dad, she snaps at him too sometimes unwarranted). i deadass think he’s going through a midlife crisis which i don’t want to make fun of him for cause it’s natural, but i think he needs to recognize that he doesn’t need all the fancy stuff or to look younger for him to be taken seriously. i hate seeing him and my mom argue and it seems like it’s happening more and more lately (i guess that’s what happens when you’re both in the house 24/7). i love my dad to bits, he’s a fantastic father, but geez big guy you can afford to take a chill pill or two and come to the park with us.
sorry for the giant dump.
My mom changed but not my dad. He still smokes cigarettes while my mom quit a year and a half ago. She now used flavored vapes. Pretty sure my dad smokes half a carton a day. When me and the family were moving to a new house a year ago after living in a neighborhood for 15 years, my dad was being emotional about it. I asked my mom why he’s feeling like this, she said “he’s just afraid of change”. So yeah, I feel like my dad won’t change his ways.
As a kid and even in my 20s, my mother was hypervigilant, a narcissist and closed minded. As she started watching shows like Sopranos, I kid you not – she changed a lot. Becoming sick really changed her too. I’m still learning from her journals that she suffered from anxiety and depression a lot – which I have now too. We became good friends towards the end of her life and got along quite well. Now I really miss her.
Both of them started to take better care of their health. They both stopped drinking nearly as much, started following better diets, and my dad lost a lot of weight within the past few months. On top of that, my mom embraced her gray hair and stopped dyeing it after 20 years.
Outside of physical stuff though, they both softened their beliefs a lot. They used to be pretty homophobic, but once my best friend from high school came out as a lesbian, they softened a bit. When I came out as bisexual, they softened a lot. When my aunt came down to visit she asked if there were any boys I was seeing, and my mom interjected with “or girls!”.
I’m really happy for them.
When I was in high school, my mom got really depressed and emotionally unstable. It’s likely around menopause time. She went from being super mom to crying all the time, mom. She was just.. sad all the time.
Then she started to get better, and when I had my first son, I was 21, and she was 51. She was so hands-on and wanted to visit him, take him everywhere, and be so close with him.
She was diagnosed with hashi motos and fibromyalgia a few years ago and that brought more changes. She’s even more emotional, pretty forgetful and constantly fatigued. The chronic pain is rough on her, I feel bad. For a while she got depressed again and became more hands off with my kids. Not her fault, she just didn’t have the energy.
Then she quit her job because of the pain and opened an etsy store because it was easier on her. Her store was doing pretty well she invested in an industrial laser engraver and started a laser engraving business.
My dad became interested and he went from serious-business-guy to making bracelets!
They now have a dream of running a business together, with plans to expand and add new things to their store. They’ve both found gratitude in what they have and decided they want to live while they still can. They joined a jeep club and are the suppliers for all the jeep club swag in the jeep catalog. At 60 years old they’ve found new purpose. They’re also amazing grandparents