How many children have such a high degree of guilt that they can’t make decisions for their parents? I suspect a great many. Fortunately in some families there are children who are highly emotionally involved and others who can remove themselves to see the larger issue. Consider children who are supporting their mother who is blind and deaf to live at home. Mom can’t see to cook food so everything she eats must be microwaveable and easy to open. It takes her twenty minutes to navigate to the bathroom because of arthritis and vision difficulties and she would have great difficulty exiting the home in the event of a fire. The children stop over every other day and paid caregivers come on alternate days but mom makes the situation difficult because she fears having strangers in the house when she is unable to visually supervise their activities. The children are afraid to tell mom it’s time to move to a safer environment for fear she will be angry with them. Reverse the situation and consider if you were the parents and your mother was a child. Would you really want your child living in such an unsafe environment?
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