Tough Conversations

Solutions Through Compassionate Communication.

Time to Hang Up the Keys?

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If a discussion about driving between an adult child and his or her parent is difficult, imagine how challenging an older adult’s interior conversation is when deciding whether to continue driving.

Say, you’ve reached the age of 85. Been driving almost 70 years. Maybe been in an accident or two. Only one speeding ticket on your record.

Your last physical pronounced you hale and hardly. But there are warning signs: Getting harder to park? Some scratches and scrapes you’re hiding from the family? Didn’t see a mother and her infant in the crosswalk until almost too late? Getting harder to see at night, or maybe seeing double?

(Difficult as it is to give up driving, more than 600,000 drivers ages 70 or older voluntarily stop driving annually, according to a 2002 study in the American Journal of Public Health).

Aware that ending driving can be a body blow to one’s independence, how can we know when it’s time to hang up the keys?

1. Look at AARP’s ten warning signs that tell you whether to limit or stop driving. They include getting lost in familiar places, having trouble following road signs, and reacting more slowly to unexpected situations.
http://www.aarp.org/home-garden/transportation/info-05-2010/Warning Signs Stopping.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also has a safe driver self-evaluation test. (www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/olddrive/OlderDriversBook/pages.

2. Take a vision test or any number of AAA or AARP driving evaluations.

3. Try out a virtual driving test websites like Drive Sharp. Drivesharp tests your reflexes in different emergency situations. www.drivesharp.com. Your score may indicate whether your reflexes are quick enough to continue driving.
Finally, remember the differences between an issue, emergency, and a crisis:
An issue is recognizing that your behind-the-wheel skills have declined.

An emergency might be last week’s fender bender or getting stopped by a cop for cruising past a stop sign.

A crisis could be the child you haven’t hit or the pile-up that hasn’t occurred…yet.

Sig

Stopping the Driving/Retaining Some Self-Respect

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A recent issue of The Washington Post carried an article about how to encourage elderly parents or relatives to stop driving due to a real or perceived inability to safely handle a vehicle.
The article cited a number of instances where a family decided to overtly or surreptitiously take the car keys from an elderly parent or relative. Tactics ranged from keeping or even hiding the keys to conspiring with a family doctor to inform the elder that he or she is no longer capable of driving.
These are not ‘tough conversations.’ They amount to a mandate. Or an intervention. Or worse, a preemptive move against an older driver. How humiliating this must be for the elder, even if he or she lacks the capacity to safely operate a vehicle any longer.
Unless the driver in question suffers from dementia or another debilitating illness, he or she should participate in the conversation as a stakeholder in his or her transportation future. Only when an elder is part of the conversation, feels respected, and contributes to the plan does this qualify as a ‘tough conversation.’
Tough conversations have stages. First is problem recognition: does the elder have sight or hearing problems? Slower reflexes? A tendency to lose his or her way in once familiar surroundings?
Next, prepare for the conversation by identifying resources, in this case transportation services. Fourth is the most difficult: namely engagement. What follows is decision making, devising a plan and implementation. While the discussion may get hot and heavy, the elder remains a player, not a side-lined has-been. Tough conversations are inclusive. Sometimes lengthy. Rarely easy. And at times unproductive.
But they preserve an elder’s dignity and self respect. And most of all, if conducted with care and patience, they strengthen the family fabric.

Sig Cohen