by Terry Arnold
One of the hardest things to deal with when someone you love is going through a crisis is that even your best intentions can miss the mark.
Sometimes it’s just inexperience. Like the time I tried to help my son and daughter-in-law after their first baby was born. I wanted to cook them a meal—something comforting and helpful. But I wasn’t familiar with their glass-top electric stove and ended up burning his favorite cooking pot. And then there were the meatballs I left cooling on the counter—forgetting they had a cat. (I’m not a cat person.) That cat happily ate every last meatball… then threw up all over the house.
To this day, the family joke is, “We love you, Mom, but we don’t know how much help we can take from you!”
Looking back, I learned something important: helping isn’t about showing love in the way you want to give it—it’s about asking what the other person truly needs. It’s a lesson I carry with me now: ask first. Don’t assume. Whether it’s an unfamiliar appliance or a pet you don’t account for, go in with humility and care.
I’ve had to learn boundaries, too. People live differently than I do. They cook differently, organize differently, relax differently. When I step into their space, I try to respect their rhythm, not override it.
As I grow older—and watch my friends navigate aging too—I see this come up again and again. Families trying to help aging parents. Parents resist that help. Tension all around. Often the conversation only starts because of a crisis, like a broken hip or fall.
One of the things I learned in my work with the Houston-area elder crisis program is this: when someone is in crisis, the goal is to return them to where they were 15 minutes before the event. That’s it. You stabilize. You don’t try to redesign their lives or force new systems into place. You don’t impose your idea of how things “should” be. You simply help them regain control.
It’s the same whether it’s a newborn in the house or a broken bone—both can be short-term situations that require extra care. These are moments where we can learn how to help without taking over, how to support without judgment.
Maybe if we got more practice navigating these smaller changes—life transitions, not just life crises—we’d get better at helping each other. We’d learn how to talk about what’s needed, respect each other’s ways of living, and approach bigger needs with more compassion and finesse.
It’s something I’ve been thinking deeply about. And I’d love to know—how have you learned to help? What’s worked, and what hasn’t?