How to make conversations with aging parents a little less awkward

Talking to aging parents and family members about their future can be tricky, but Megan Johnson says the sooner, the better.

The Halifax-based research assistant, 36, is a secondary caregiver to her father, who is in the late stages of Alzheimer's disease. Navigating tough conversations was only more difficult after the diagnosis, she said.

"It's easy early on to brush off the conversations and say, well, that's a future problem," said Johnson, who is also a member of the Canadian Caregivers Advisory Network.

Canada's population is rapidly aging. According to Statistics Canada data from 2021, the number of people 85 and older is expected to grow by three times in 2050. And by 2065, the country will be home to over 87,500 centenarians, projections suggest.

As people live longer, it's creating what Laura Tamblyn Watts, the CEO of Canada's national seniors advocacy organization CanAge, calls a "club sandwich generation" of caregivers.

"We have about six generations going now," she told The Sunday Magazine's Piya Chattopadhyay, noting that caregiving is no longer necessarily linear.

That means people in their 90s could even be supporting their aging children who have dementia, while that generation's children are supporting their own kids, she says.

Although discussing the needs and wishes of someone who is aging can be tricky, there are ways to mitigate some of the discomfort, both experts and caregivers say.

After his diagnosis, there were a lot of conversations that Johnson needed to have with her father.

Many revolved around his care: what are Johnson and her mother's role be in his care? Where does he want to live? Others were more administrative, like whether he wants a funeral.

Those conversations started in a variety of ways.

"They can be unwieldy," she said. "Sometimes they happen by sitting down and kind of hashing it out together at a table in a really direct way — like, what would you want in this scenario?"

But often, they begin more naturally, like out on a walk when there's an opening to explore difficult questions.

"The conversation happens over a long period of time, and often happens in these kind of small, organic ways," she said.