Parenting Your Parent

There’s no manual for parenting your parent. Google doesn’t prepare you for the mental shift it takes to switch roles with the person who once raised you. For me, it happened at a crossroads in my own life, while separating from my fiancée, and while becoming a first-time parent myself. To say it was challenging is an understatement. When looking back, my initial thoughts were; confusion, transformation, honor, enlightenment, and yea, sometimes downright annoyance.

When my mom first came to live with me, it wasn’t out of choice or convenience. She was physically sick, (in and out of the hospital) mentally depleted, and far from the strong, commanding presence I had known growing up. My personal struggles (heartache, uncertainty, and the pressures of new fatherhood) suddenly took a backseat. My focus shifted to her recovery. I was the one keeping her on schedule, changing her diet, monitoring her moods, nudging her back toward health. It felt less like caregiving and more like parenting.

That realization shook me. I had always assumed I could lean on her experience, especially as I stepped into fatherhood myself. Recalling sitcom segments where grandmothers provided infinite wisdom, I thought, “She had raised me, so surely she could guide me.” But slowly I began to see the cracks in that assumption. Maybe she hadn’t parented in the way I thought she had. Or maybe the generational gap simply makes my style of involvement look different as I took a more intentional, hands-on approach. Whatever it was, I stopped looking for her to fill a role she couldn’t.

Part of that gap is the world itself. The influx of social media and instant information has given me resources my mother never had access to. Sleep training hacks, parenting forums, child nutrition studies, even the ability to fact-check family remedies in real time, all at my fingertips. The irony is that I thought I would be leaning on her wisdom, but instead I found myself teaching her. Teaching her about balanced meals, about mental health check-ins, about why routines mattered. I wasn’t just parenting my daughter; I was re-parenting my mother with knowledge she never had access to while raising me.

And yet, when I step back, I understand why. My mom was a single mother raising me and my older brother. She worked constantly, carrying the weight of providing for us with little room for anything else. Cooking from scratch, slow evenings at the table, being fully present were luxuries she couldn’t always afford. It was less about parenting and more about survival. Keeping the lights on, making sure we had what we needed, and sacrificing her own rest so we could at least have stability. What I sometimes interpreted as absence was actually endurance. Perhaps that commitment to us is a lesson in itself as to the level of transformation required to parent.

I recognize the contrast. Not long ago, I was a man on the move—traveling freely, chasing experiences, with little to tether me down. To go from roaming the world to parenting not just forward, but backward was a shift I never saw coming. Some days I felt like I was living two lifetimes at once, sandwiched between the innocence of new beginnings and the weight of decline. It was exhausting and humbling all at once. My days had a gravity they never had when I was free-floating. The man who once lived for the horizon is now rooted in responsible, present, necessary.

Still, amidst the frustrations and role reversal, there were moments of joy. Surprises that softened the strangeness. One evening I introduced my daughter to a Disney movie from my childhood, assuming it was a shared classic. I looked over and realized my mom was watching it for the very first time. Her laughter was childlike, her eyes wide with the same wonder I saw in my daughter’s. That moment stunned me. I had always assumed she had seen everything I had, that she had passed down a world of experience I was simply inheriting. But the truth was, she was just now finding the time to discover new aspect of the world. That realization was oddly comforting. We weren’t reenacting old roles, we were writing new ones together.

What I’ve learned is that parenting your parent is less about role reversal and more about perspective shift. I began to see her not just as “Mama,” but as a human. Flawed, fragile, doing the best with what she had. I learned that love sometimes looks like patience, and sometimes like setting boundaries. I also learned that being a parent, whether to a child or to the person who raised you, requires letting go of the fantasy of perfection.

And maybe that’s where the honor comes in. My mom’s story as a single mother was about giving everything she had, even if it didn’t look like the picture of parenting I once imagined. Now, in her season of need, I get to give back to her not as repayment, (because there’s no repaying a mother) but as recognition. Recognition that the circle has turned, that her endurance gave me room to grow into a father who can be more present, more intentional, more informed. Recognition that strength takes many forms, and sometimes the strongest thing you can do is keep showing up, even when the world doesn’t give you much to work with.

But the more I sit with it, the less it feels like a circle and more like a spiral. Each generation doesn’t just return to the same place, we expand. My mother’s layer was survival: doing whatever it took to keep me and my brother afloat. My layer adds intention: using time, resources, and knowledge to parent with presence. And now my daughter is watching, absorbing both my mom’s grit and my care. Carrying her forward in ways I can’t yet imagine.

In her eyes, I hope the spiral keeps widening. That perseverance and empathy become her inheritance. That she sees responsibility not as a burden, but as a path to becoming. Parenting my parent has shown me that love doesn’t just circle back, it grows outward, generation by generation, better than the last.