....simple question-how was your interaction
with aged when u were 20/ This gives an insight of how the conversation looks to the young..The reason is most
folks feel age is contagious~ were as the opposite
is what matters.Validate what elderly feel-
a20something has difficulty touching the reality
that occurs when we age/her grace is timeless;
humor;wisdom-these and others translate!!!!
Are relavant- don't get caught up in minutia;
Mundane
I grew with 2 90+yrs sisters/I was17
The chasm gets bridged when a relatable life
event passes the knowledge "gran" has acquired
that has or is VALUED- perceived or not(tell
her it's important,even if it's it barely qualified).?
Socially , old educate young-cooking ,travel
style,education,society-open ended questions
will receive the most heartfelt insight of grand
life.Be prepare to go for hours!!! .?...

My stepdaughter left my wife sobbing today, and they are 24 and 59 respectively. Lack of intergenerational empathy quite often rises to the level of intergenerational cruelty. There's a reason that there are several brochures at the local senior center offering help with "elder abuse".

Abuse of [grand]parents by adult [grand]children is not uncommon but it happens mostly in the shadows because people are ashamed of it and shamed by it. Parents fear their children's behavior will be judged a failure on their part in raising them. There is also denial because of the unthinkable nature of it. Also, it often involves gaslighting and similar tactics that are hard for ethical people to counter.

My wife and I agree that her daughter is not mentally well. In my view it's probably borderline personality disorder and some empathy failures that probably rise to the level of sociopathy, plus some impulse control issues. It's definitely a power trip for the daughter. She gets off on it. She's ruined many a family event. She's already barred from family vacations (at her age, she should be paying her own way in any event) and now if I have anything to say about it, she's barred from family Thanksgiving. She literally pinched and punched her mother when she got set off about a matter so trivial you'd laugh if I shared what it was.

She has a brother, 2 years older, raised by the same parents, went through the same experiences, with a completely different result. He is seriously considering cutting off contact with his sister, because she mistreats him as well. He is always a gentleman to his mother. I find him totally admirable. He has some anxiety issues that he struggles with, but owns his own shit and would never take it out on others.

I don't pretend to understand what is up with many young people when it costs them so little and benefits them so much to practice basic civility and kindness, and especially, generosity and respect to their elders. But one has to keep a few things in mind:

1. As children get older, progressively, they bear more and more personal responsibility for their own moral [mis]deeds.

2. There is no law that guarantees children will have similar personalities to their parents, or that they will not, through some accident of gene expression or experience, have neuroses or personality disorders, no matter how expertly they were raised.

3. In practice, most children spend the bulk of their time with their asshat peers, especially from middle school on. Most of a parent's chance to influence their mental and emotional development happens in the early formative years. After that it's hard to compete with school, schoolmates, popular media and the opposite sex, particularly in the throes of the testing culture in American schools in the past couple of decades. My wife's kids would come home from school, eat a hurried meal, study from then until 1 or 2 am, go to bed, rinse and repeat. And their switching back and forth between mom and dad's home in a post-divorce situation produces further obstacles to unified discipline ... again, in practice, usually.

Given all this, it's a wonder one of my two children is still alive and speaking to me, or that one of my wife's children isn't a complete jerk.

Being a parent is just one more of those things I wish I'd really understood before I embarked upon it. I'm so tired of worrying about stuff I'm supposedly responsible for yet have so little control over, I can't even give expression to it. Nature trumps nurture pretty much every time, and it can be such a crock.

Yes it is very sad that this is happening. I don't know how old your daughter is but you need to have a good talk to her about empathy, bring it to her own life with examples, maybe about her friends and yourself. Ask her if she will feel and treat you if get old and forgetful too, and if that doesn't work use foul language.

My nieces were pretty rude and mean to my mom, their grandma, in their teens and early adulthood...but as my mom and they got older, they became very respectful and concerned about her. They often speak of how they are glad they came around because now that she has passed, they have no regrets about how they treated her...they were wonderful and awesome.

I think I helped turn them around by grabbing them by their shirts and calling them fucking ungrateful bitches when I heard them one day. Maybe a firmer speaking to would do them some good.

I too find the lack of empathy shocking. When did we stop caring about anything other than our damn selves. I have been making an effort for a while to push empathy on my young daughter, to try and make her see that she might be in the same position as someone she would otherwise look past.

I've often wondered that myself. I've seen so many younger people be rude to older people, even their own relatives! I recently went thru this with my daughter-in-law three weeks after my husband past away. I have not had anything to do with her since she behaved so horribly toward me. Narcissism seems to be on the rise with way to many people these days.

there is still time to learn,