My parents are 57 and 63. My mother is erratic, forgetful, and when she gets mad she sometimes screams and throws things. My father is slowly going deaf, getting slower and more stubborn and forgetful as well. They can be infuriating sometimes, but I know that they’re aging and I can’t be mad at them. How do I deal with this, especially early on in preparation for further down the road?
So, I’m uncertain if the parent’s behavior (screaming and throwing things w/ the mom) has been like this all the time and OP is finally getting fed up with it, or if it’s really a sudden change.
I’d definitely first consider the advice from others in this thread to check environmental toxins or health stuff with the parents, esp. if the behavior of mom is a sudden change–but if that checks out ok, or if the mom screaming and throwing things has been present OP’s life, it’s not a bad thing to consider this advice above.
How you handle parents who were good (or decent enough) parents when they decline is different from how you handle abusive parents. And this advice here is solid for if OP’s parents are abusive.
I imagine the people downvoting it are people who grew up with stable parents who maybe did descend into (normal) decline and thus are thinking of their own experiences and can’t imagine what it’s like to have genuinely bad parents one’s entire life, or the harsh boundaries one has to set to win yourself free of them.
But OP does need to take context into account (including stuff they might not have put in their story) and evaluate if the screaming/throwing things is actually new, or if it’s always been that way and they’re finally getting fed up enough to want to break free.