Thoughts and Suggestions from an Aging Psychologist.

The Very Reasonable Notion of Reasonable Risk

In my last post, I wrote about the internalized script that guides our ideas and colors the images we hold about our current and future self. This script is unique to each of us and greatly informs our experiences, roles, and relationships, especially our intimate ones.

Over the course of our lives, we embrace and enact multiple roles. While the title of the role remains constant (for example, son, mother, etc.), the expectations of each role change. Nothing exemplifies this more than the roles of parent and child and the resultant “goodness of fit” between generations.

A Story from Clinical Practice

This post is a recounting of a case from my clinical practice years ago. A case is a story. A story has a plot line, and different people in the story play different roles.

As a therapist, we identify the roles and the perceived role demands for the individual in that role. We know from training and experience that conflicts, especially in close relationships, often develop where the role performed is not a good fit with others’ roles and impedes the individual’s attempt to get their needs met.

Every role has requirements that inform how we perform the role, how we appraise our success in executing it, and how our role performance is perceived and assessed by others.

This defines a frequent source of conflict between older persons and their middle-aged children.

The Story

I remember it well. It was an exquisite exemplar of intergenerational conflict reflecting disparity in the working definition of a single term.

A man called my office to set an appointment, knowing that I specialized in older age. When we met, he reported that he was having a very hard time getting along with his father. They historically had a warm relationship but now were on the verge of not speaking to each other. He hoped that meeting with me would be helpful.

He told me that his mother had passed away a little over a year ago, and now his eighty-seven-year-old father was living alone in their house. While his father appeared to be managing quite well, a snarly issue evolved that led to the conflict between them.

The Daily Routine

He explained that his father’s house was perched on a significant hill. Every morning since his father’s retirement years ago, he would walk down the hill to a mini mart at the bottom of the street to buy his daily newspaper. He would then walk back up the hill to the house to have his second cup of coffee while reading the newspaper. This was his routine.

However, the son reported that his father has aged considerably since his mother’s passing. “His balance is not very good. His gait had slowed. He looks a little unsteady.”

His father no longer drives, and his son takes him to his appointments and has arranged for his groceries to be delivered to him every week. The son recently purchased a subscription for the newspaper to be delivered every morning to his father’s front door. His father had thanked him for this.

The Discovery

However, recently when he stopped by, he noticed there were two papers for each day in his father’s reading area. When he asked his father about it, his father confessed that he was still walking down the hill to the mini mart, buying the paper, and walking back.

And so, the battle began. The son called his father stubborn and accused him of being unaware of the risk he was taking. “And it was an unnecessary risk!” The father would not agree to change his behavior. This went on until the son contacted me.

Maybe, he thought, if he brought his father into my office, I could talk some sense into him. I responded that often a meeting together with a professional could be helpful, and certainly worth a try.

The Meeting

The son and his father came to the office the next week. I asked the son to wait in the waiting area while I met with his father alone before meeting with them together.

The father was clearly primed for the meeting. He expressed great unhappiness with the rift that had developed with his son, with whom he had always been very close. He acknowledged he knew well that he was dependent on his son in a number of ways and understood that this dependency would likely increase over time.

“I’m closer to ninety than eighty now,” he said, and was quick to add, “but I get along pretty well.”

When son and father were together at the meeting, I asked that each, in turn, state their message—simply what they saw as the center of the problem that brought them here.

The Son’s Message

I am his son, and my father is an old man. My duty is to take care of him, to keep him safe. I love him and I want to have him here for a long time, as long as I can.

I know that it is not easy for him to get around. I can see that, and I want to make it easier for him, and safer. I do not want him taking unreasonable risks.

Walking down and up a hill for a newspaper, no matter what the weather, when the newspaper is being delivered to his front steps, is an unreasonable risk.

The Father’s Message

It feels important for me to continue to do whatever I can for as long as I can. I know my walking isn’t like a young man’s. Because I am not a young man.

It is important for me in order to do what I can—to feel like me, feel like myself. I appreciate my son wanting to take care of me. I know he loves me. But I need to live whatever life I have left, feeling like me as best I can.

And it’s not just the newspaper. I’ve known the man who runs the store for many years. He’s an older person too, like me, and he knew my wife. So, with the newspaper I get a little conversation, and it’s often the only conversation I have that day.

So maybe I take a little risk. To me it’s a reasonable risk. It’s worth it to have a conversation and get a little exercise with the walking and then read the newspaper. To feel like myself in the morning.

A little conversation and a paper. You don’t get that with a paper that’s thrown on your front step.

My Message

I expressed appreciation to the son for his love and care of his father. And I recognized that he is very troubled by the recent rift between them. And that he wants very much to repair this and return their close and loving relationship.

I expressed to the father that I recognize that he feels exactly the same way.

The Key Issues

The key issues are around the terms “risk” and “reasonable.”

I applauded their agreement regarding the risk. They agree that an older person who is a bit unsteady on his feet, walking up and down even a familiar hill, was a risk, especially in inclement weather.

But they differ in what they consider as being reasonable. Our task is to identify what is “negotiable” and set a mutually acceptable contract. I asked if they agreed to this, and how long they thought it would take to get to a mutually agreeable contract.

The Contract

The father agreed that if the weather was rainy, snowy, icy, or too cold, he would not go out to buy the newspaper. They insisted that they set the “degrees” for “too cold.” The son agreed to this, too. It took about five minutes for them to agree on the contract.

I asked if they thought the contract was over. They said yes. But I said, “I didn’t think so.”

Addressing the Deeper Need

The father mentioned some things that would help reinforce his acceptance of the contract. He enjoyed a conversation with someone around his own age. He wanted conversation in any form.

He had lost his ability to drive. He had lost the conversations in the supermarket. And most important, he lost his wife. He was clearly lonely for socialization.

So, I asked their permission to add to the contract. The addition was for the father to get connected with the Senior Center Program(s) in their city, enabling new opportunities for learning and new friends with whom he might even discuss the newspaper that he was reading in the morning.

I suggested that the son extend his generosity and secure a car service to transport his father to and from the Center. (This was pre-Uber.)

Resolution

They both agreed to my additions to the contract, smiled, stood to leave, and hugged each other. I smiled too and told them they could contact me any time if needed. But I had confidence that they’d do fine.

What Do You Think?

This case illustrates how the same behavior can be viewed through entirely different lenses depending on one’s role, age, and life circumstances. The son saw unnecessary risk. The father saw necessary connection and autonomy. Both perspectives were valid within their respective contexts.

The resolution came not from forcing either party to abandon their viewpoint, but from finding creative ways to honor both the need for safety and the need for meaningful social connection and independence.

What are your thoughts on this intergenerational dynamic? Have you experienced similar conflicts in your own family relationships?

Contact me. I’d love to hear back from you, especially about any creative ways you’ve put this to use.

Photo by the author’s family