I am 90 years old and I often lose my temper. My wife often have difficulty in dealing with me. Since I have difficulty in controlling my temper, I just Googled and found this useful information to share with you.

As an adult, it’s pretty unsettling when you witness your parent having a temper tantrum for the first time. We tend to think of tantrums as only pertaining to small children or teenagers, but the truth is that emotional outbursts can occur at any time in life. Acting out merely boils down to a loss of composure triggered by strong feelings like anger, sadness, fear or any combination of the three.

The thing about watching an aging parent have a temper tantrum is that it just seems so wrong on so many levels. Many family caregivers are mortified and have no idea how to handle their parent lashing out in a way they’ve never experienced before. Understanding the reasons behind an outburst is crucial for determining the best way to handle one without losing your temper, too.

Why Aging Loved Ones Act Out

Seniors throw temper tantrums for a whole host of reasons. Often, it’s a result of the personality changes brought on by Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Certain prescription medications can have negative side effects or interact with one another, causing mood swings and irritability. Emotional fits could be the result of anxiety or depression over one’s worsening health. However, the most difficult reason to accept is that the senior in question is misbehaving simply because they are stubborn and want to get their own way.

If you are weathering the emotional ups and downs of an aging loved one who has dementia, there really isn’t much you can do about it. Outbursts are common with many kinds of dementia and at various stages throughout the progression of the condition. As tempting as it is to try to reason with someone who is cognitively impaired, the truth is that this will only make matters worse. You can contact your loved one’s doctor and inquire about medications to help with anxiety and new dementia behaviors like severe emotional outbursts. Otherwise, keeping their surroundings calm, familiar, structured, engaging and upbeat is the best you can do to prevent dementia-related outbursts.

Any sudden changes in a senior’s behavior are a cause for concern. It may point to an adverse reaction to a medication or an underlying medical issue, such as a urinary tract infection (UTI), unmanaged pain or poor sleep. Infections like UTIs can cause unusual behavioral symptoms in seniors that are not common in younger individuals. If a loved one begins acting uncharacteristically angry or upset, it’s important to contact their doctor immediately for a check-up.

All these factors can contribute to an elder’s bad behavior, but for the sake of this article, let’s focus on aging loved ones who have temper tantrums for no apparent reason other than wanting to get their way. Some family caregivers have dealt with a parent’s stubbornness and manipulation for their entire lives, while others are seeing an increasingly unflattering new side of their aging Mom or Dad.

Regardless of whether a loved one has never been able to manage their anger or disappointment, or it has been a slow transformation as they’ve grown older, eventually we get fed up with their unkindness and lack of emotional maturity. This breaking point is usually when family caregivers finally make the decision to take a break, hire outside help, stop being at their care recipient’s disposal 24/7 and establish some much-needed boundaries.

It gets dicey when your loved one (often a parent) starts yelling and making demands, or better yet, tells you that you don’t love them or that you are an uncaring person! In my coaching work, I hear about experiences like this all the time and it’s painful. Senior tantrums often escalate even further when you inform them that you’re going to be taking some time away from their needs to focus on your own. So, what do you do?