When Your Parent Is Aging: What a Geriatric Psychologist Wants Adult Children to Know

Watching a parent age is one of the strangest experiences of adult life. You're not a caregiver yet. But something has shifted. Maybe they're more forgetful than they used to be. Maybe a recent phone call left you unsettled. Maybe you just have this feeling you can't quite put into words.

You're not imagining it. And you're not alone in it.

At Sound Insight Psychology we work with a lot of adults who are right here, in this in-between place where something feels different but nothing has reached a crisis point yet. We sat down with our colleague Alice Verstaen, Ph.D., a geriatric psychologist who has spent her career working with older adults and their families, to talk about what this stage actually looks like and what tends to help.

What most families get wrong about timing

Most families wait until something goes wrong before they reach out for support. A fall. A diagnosis. A scary conversation. By then everyone is already in reaction mode and the emotional weight has been building for a long time without anywhere to go.

Dr. Verstaen sees this constantly. "People who have lived long lives bring very different perspectives into therapy. Their experiences shape how they cope and what they value." Understanding those perspectives before a crisis gives families time to actually talk, to process their own feelings, and to figure out what they want the relationship to look like going forward.

What you might be feeling right now

There's this particular kind of grief that comes with watching a parent age that doesn't really have a good name. It's not grief exactly because your parent is still here. It's not anxiety exactly because nothing terrible has happened yet. It's somewhere in the middle and it can be surprisingly heavy.

A lot of the adult children we work with are carrying that weight quietly. They're managing careers, their own families, their own lives, and somewhere underneath all of it is this low hum of worry they haven't really dealt with. Therapy gives that somewhere to go.

The window that doesn't stay open forever

Dr. Verstaen talks a lot about relationships in later life and how the focus naturally shifts from quantity to quality. For adult children that's actually an opening. A chance to deepen the relationship with your parent while there's still time and capacity to do it with some intention.

That window matters. Therapy can help you use it well.

You don't have to be in crisis to come in

This is probably the thing we say most often. You don't need a diagnosis, a crisis, or a specific problem to bring to the table. If you're an adult child watching your parent age and feeling the weight of that, even if you can't fully explain why, that's enough.

As Dr. Verstaen puts it: "It's never too late to learn new ways to navigate what's ahead." We'd add it's never too early either.

We offer telehealth therapy across Washington state. Every client works directly with a PhD psychologist, and we're private pay which means no insurance constraints and care that's actually built around you. If any of this resonates, reach out. We'd love to talk.