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Trying to resolve the hurt or wound in the aging family is important because adult children need to achieve filial maturity--the crisis they face with the usually unexpected care of their aging parent. These old unforgiven sibling hurts and wounds, most time gouged in childhood, hold adult children back from achieving filial maturity with their frail parent and working as a team with their midlife sibling.
Filial maturity is a term coined by social worker Margaret Blenkner in the 1960’s .The adult child needs to see their parent for who they are in the here and now-a person in need of their care rather than the haunting or loving parent they experienced 20-40 years ago. If the parent was loving then adult children need to accept that their aging Mom or Dad are no longer “ rocks’ of support. If the parent was ‘haunting’ the adult child needs to forgive the past and move into the present
Forgiveness in the aging family is critical because these past wounds keep aging siblings living in a disturbed past of bullying older brothers, or big teen sisters with new Macy’s prom dresses ,when the little sister wore hand me downs .
When middle-aged siblings can’t shake themselves out of this past- it prevents midlife siblings from working together to care for their aging parent. A lack of forgiveness leaves the family care for the aging parent stymied . As a family unit, the midlife siblings cannot overcome this filial crisis or moving successfully through the last developmental phases of the family, the care of a Mom or Dad .
The pressure cooker to make things right demands that professionals who have a background in aging not only understand the value and the process of forgiveness but use it as a tool with midlife siblings and aging parents, before death stops the clock.
