If your aging parent suddenly stops pretending to be interested in your life, something far deeper than rudeness is happening — they've spent decades centering everyone else's story and they're quietly wondering when someone will ask about theirs

Last Thursday, I sat across from my 89-year-old mother at her kitchen table, the same one where she'd served thousands of meals to our family. I was telling her about my grandson's soccer game when I noticed her eyes had drifted to the window.

Not the polite, attentive gaze she'd perfected over decades, but something distant, almost defiant. When I paused mid-sentence, she didn't prompt me to continue. Instead, she said quietly, "I used to run track, you know. State champion, 1952."

I'd heard fragments of this story before, always sandwiched between asking about my work or my children's lives. But this time, she wasn't asking about anyone else. She was simply remembering, claiming her own narrative without apology or transition.

That moment reminded me of something I'd witnessed countless times during my years caring for aging parents while raising my own children.

There comes a point when our elders stop performing the role we've unconsciously assigned them: the eternal audience to our lives, the perpetual askers of questions, the ones who exist primarily to celebrate our achievements and worry about our struggles.

The weight of always asking, never telling

Think about your last conversation with an aging parent. How much of it centered on you? Your job stress, your children's milestones, your home repairs, your vacation plans?

Now consider how many times you've asked them about the texture of their days beyond doctor's appointments and medication schedules.

During the years I spent helping care for my mother as she navigated early-stage Alzheimer's, I began to notice a pattern.

The parents who seemed most at peace weren't necessarily the healthiest or wealthiest. They were the ones whose adult children had learned to flip the script, to become the askers rather than the asked about.

Virginia Woolf once wrote, "Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title."

Our aging parents carry entire libraries within them, stories we've never thought to request. They've reduced these rich narratives to cliff notes, offering only what seems relevant to our current chapter while their own stories gather dust.

When the performance ends

What we often interpret as rudeness or disinterest when a parent stops asking about our lives might actually be exhaustion. Not physical exhaustion, though that may play a part, but a bone-deep weariness of being relegated to a supporting role in everyone else's story.

I remember teaching "Death of a Salesman" to my high school students year after year, watching them grapple with Willy Loman's desperate need to be seen and heard.

One particularly insightful student once said, "He's not really talking to anyone because no one's really listening." Our parents can become Willy Lomans in reverse, so practiced at listening that they've forgotten they have something to say.

The shift can feel jarring. The parent who once hung on every word about your promotion suddenly seems checked out during your update. But perhaps they're not checked out so much as checking in with themselves for the first time in decades.

The invisible years

After spending years feeling invisible as an older woman myself, I've learned that invisibility isn't always imposed from the outside. Sometimes we participate in our own disappearing act, especially parents who've spent decades in service to others' stories.

Your mother who now seems distant during your divorce update once navigated her own relationship struggles.

Your father who appears bored by your career achievements once faced his own professional crossroads. They've compressed these experiences into wisdom nuggets offered only when directly applicable to your situation, never as stories worth telling for their own sake.

I think about my mother's track medals, hidden in a shoebox I discovered while helping her reorganize. She'd never displayed them, never woven them into our family lore the way she did our achievements.

When I asked her about them recently, her face transformed. She wasn't my mother or grandmother in that moment. She was eighteen again, feeling the cinders beneath her feet, her ponytail flying behind her as she broke the tape.

Learning to ask different questions

The questions we typically ask our aging parents tend to be functional: How are you feeling? Did you take your medication? Do you need anything from the store? These questions, while necessary, treat our parents as problems to be managed rather than people with ongoing inner lives.

What if instead we asked: What are you thinking about lately? What memory has been visiting you? What did you dream about last night? What music have you been hearing in your head?

During the period when I was helping my mother through her Alzheimer's journey, I learned that the stories she wanted to tell weren't always linear or recent.

Sometimes she wanted to talk about the dress she wore to her first dance, the way her father taught her to drive, the friend she lost touch with after high school.

These weren't dementia-driven repetitions but deliberately chosen memories she wanted to explore with someone, anyone, who would listen without redirecting the conversation back to the present.

The grace of genuine curiosity

There's a particular grace that comes with genuine curiosity about our parents' inner worlds. Not the dutiful interest we might show in their medical conditions or daily routines, but real fascination with who they were before us, who they are beyond us.

In my previous post about finding purpose in later life, I mentioned how narrative can become more important as we age, not less.

Our parents are master storytellers who've been asked to keep their best material locked away. When they stop performing interest in our lives, they might be unconsciously testing whether anyone will notice they have stories too.

The teenagers I taught for over three decades understood something about stories that adults often forget: everyone wants to be the protagonist sometimes. Not the wise mentor, not the supportive parent, not the interested observer, but the main character whose journey matters.

Final thoughts

If your aging parent has stopped pretending to be fascinated by every detail of your life, consider it an invitation rather than a rejection. They're not pulling away from you; they're hoping you'll lean in differently.

After decades of centering everyone else's narrative, they're ready for someone to ask about theirs. The question isn't whether they have stories to tell, but whether we're ready to stop talking long enough to listen.