How to Talk to Your Parents so They Will Listen — and Stay at Home
Anger, anguish, and anxiety. This is what your emotional life may look like in the time of COVID-19. Then you call your parents* and realize — some of them are going out, visiting friends, and now they want to travel and see their grandchildren. Is there anything you can do?
Yes. I am a life-span developmental psychologist who studies emotion and motivation across the life span. Here I will highlight three reasons for why staying at home can be so difficult for older adults. I will give you some ideas of how you can talk to the older people in your life. And I will talk about how you can deal with your own emotions.
But first, let’s get a few things out of the way. Physical distancing and staying at home protects everyone. Especially older people who are at serious risk to get ill or die from this new virus (to be clear, they are not the only ones at risk). And the good news is that, overall, older adults are more likely to endorse behaviors to help prevent the spread of the virus than their younger counterparts. But not all older adults who could stay at home actually do stay at home. And maintaining this behavior will get more increasingly difficult over time. So what can you do to help the seniors in your life stay at home? You can only try to change someone’s behavior if you understand it.
Why Staying at Home Can Be So Difficult for Older Adults
Staying at home is difficult under the best circumstances, for all of us. But especially so for older adults. As people age, their motivational and emotional systems get tweaked in powerful ways. Older adults are all too aware that their time on this earth is limited, and they may want to make the most of now. In normal times, older people benefit enormously from these emotional tweaks — so much, in fact, that older people tend to be happier than their younger counterparts. But these emotional tweaks can get in the way in this pandemic for the following reasons.
- The positivity effect. Older adults are masters in turning their attention away from information that is threatening, upsetting, and negative (think pandemic) and towards information that is calming, uplifting, and positive (think non-pandemic). A massive body of scientific work has documented age-related shifts not only in attentional but also memory, motivational, emotional, and interpersonal processes — in the service of making negative emotions smaller and positive emotions bigger. Yet, when older adults cannot avoid negative emotions, they run the risk of becoming overwhelmed. Thus, some older adults may tune out the pandemic tune altogether. For other adults, being home alone with just their thoughts and nowhere to go can be a frightening place
- Not at risk? Some older adults may not think of themselves as at heightened risk for COVID-19 — because old age carries a lot of stigma. Although life expectancies have increased dramatically and older people are, on average, doing better than at any other point in history, people’s views of what it means to be “old” have not caught up. In fact, age stereotypes have become increasingly negative across the last 200 years. What’s more, people of all ages tend to view themselves as better off than “most other people my age” and this effect appears to be particularly pronounced for older people. From this perspective, COVID-19 may seem like something that “other old people” would get, not oneself.
- Connections count. Humans need social connection — especially so in late life. Older people tend to want to spend time with the people they love, their family, friends, grandchildren. These close connections serve powerful functions, they generate a bridge into the future, they give life meaning, and they are deep sources of positive emotions. And there are real risks to social isolation and loneliness, which are amplified in late life, and in fact, enhance mortality. What’s more, physical touch has profound benefits (hand holding, for example, reliably reduces threat) that cannot be replaced by virtual connection. So, disconnection from other people may be extraordinarily painful for older adults.
What to Say and How to Say It
If you are close to an older adult who is not up for physical distancing or tired of staying at home, unleashing your frustration and despair will be tempting, but it may not help. Instead, approach a conversation with two things to consider — what you say and how you say it.
- Take the gentle road. Relationship researchers know that conversations about disagreements need to be infused with lots of positive emotions in order to get anywhere. This may be especially the case when you are talking with older adults. How in the world do I generate positive emotions in the midst of conflict, you may ask. Older adults may know a secret or two here. In our own research, we have found that, as people age, they tend to infuse their conflict conversations increasingly with humor and validation. And they tend to really dial down on combativeness, defensiveness, tension, whining, and other negative emotions. Moreover, research shows that if there are negative emotions, they become especially problematic for older people. So it may be a good idea to take the gentle road in this conversation: Soft start-up. Trust in the power of kindness and compassion. And know that positive emotions may be able to open not only people’s hearts but also their minds.
- We must protect each other. Now what can you say? There are powerful collaborative efforts underway that highlight how social and behavioral science can support communication in the context of COVID-19. This is a rapidly evolving research field and we know from life-span developmental research that strategies that work for younger adults may not always work for older adults. And vice versa. Some promising messages for older adults may be:
- “We must protect our families, friends, and fellow citizens” (Just-in-time research indicates that this kind of message is most effective for boosting intentions to curb the spread of the pandemic.)
- “I know you are young at heart, but your age puts you in a risk group.” (In an ideal world, we would do away with negative age stereotypes altogether, but this will need to do it for now.)
- “We are all in this together.” (“We”-messages may be especially effective in late life.)
And once you are on the same page, talk through the logistics. How can they get food and other necessities. How can they find or maintain a routine. How can they keep in touch with the people they love via social media, phone calls, and chalk messages on the side walks (more on this in another post). This will be vital and, if you are lucky, you can be one of their lifelines in a sea of uncertainty and threat.
How You Can Deal With Your Own Emotions
There is no guarantee that your parents (or anyone for that matter) will listen to you. And your anger, fear, and sadness may at times be overwhelming. At the same time, you may be filled with deep love, affection, and compassion. What should you do with these emotions? There is no simple recipe, although research suggests that suppressing your emotions by not showing them can backfire. And positive thinking may not always help. But there are many other ways to deal with emotions that modern affective science is studying and that religious and philosophical traditions have long recommended that could work for you. One of them is acceptance — embracing your emotions without judging them so you can eventually move through them. Again, we lack good data, but acceptance may be a good on-ramp as you are getting ready to take the gentle road to talk with your parents (see above).
Bonus Question(s)
Life is precious and, as any older adult will tell you, all too short. As you are getting ready to pick up the phone to call your parents, your grandparents, or a senior from your community, let me add that sometimes, instead of talking, the best thing may be to listen. At other times, you may simply want to go through some logistics. Yet, sometimes, you may be ready for something deeper. Here are 36 scientifically-tested questions that build interpersonal closeness, even among strangers. There are many other questions that are not on the list, including one that may be so important to ask in this time: What is your favorite memory of us together?
*and grandparents, aunts, uncles, other relatives, friends, neighbors, and other seniors in your community
