They're Your Parents, Too! How Siblings Can Survive Their Parents' Aging Without Driving Each Other Crazy
Francine Russo · 2010
They're Your Parents, Too! How Siblings Can Survive Their Parents' Aging Without Driving Each Other Crazy (2010) is a book by Francine Russo on Family & Caregiving. Journalist Francine Russo maps the emotional minefield adult siblings enter when parents age, old childhood roles, caregiving imbalance, deathbeds, and inheritance, and how to get through it without losing each other.
The rare caregiving book that admits the hardest part isn't your parent's decline, it's your brother.
Two of the ideas you’ll keep
The Clif summary of They're Your Parents, Too! How Siblings Can Survive Their Parents' Aging Without Driving Each Other Crazy pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first two.
- A parent's decline doesn't just create logistical problems, it reactivates the family system you grew up in. The competent one, the baby, the peacemaker, and the black sheep all get recast in their childhood parts without anyone announcing it.
- Siblings raised under one roof did not grow up in the same family. Birth order, the parents' age and finances at the time, and who was the favorite mean each of you carries a different, equally sincere version of the past, which is why your memories of Mom contradict each other.
The other 5 — and the full 11-minute summary — are in the app.
What’s inside: 9 chapters
The whole summary runs about 11 minutes, read or listened to.
- The Family You Thought You Left
- You Didn't Grow Up in the Same Family
- The Alarm Goes Off
- The One Who Does Everything
- The Cast You Didn't Choose: Spouses and Distance
- Talking Before It's Too Late
- The Room at the End
- Dividing the Stuff
- Growing Up at Last
Finish They're Your Parents, Too! How Siblings Can Survive Their Parents' Aging Without Driving Each Other Crazy tonight.
Read or listen to the full summary in about 11 minutes, then keep the ideas with a minute of review a day. Start with the 2-minute quiz — no card required.
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