I enjoy a column in The Washington Post entitled “Family Almanac.” It’s written by Marguerite Kelly, who has a smart and sensible approach to raising children, managing the teenage years, and adapting to changing roles within a family.

Today’s column, What to Overlook, and Not, With an Aging, Anxious Mom, is a different story, however.

In it, a daughter complains that her agoraphobic mother of 78 is losing interest in her own grandchildren. The daughter writes that her mother makes excuses for not seeing the grandchildren, such as that her home is “too messy for visitors.”

Kelly encourages the daughter (and her sister) to hire a housekeeping service to clean their mother’s house while she is out running errands with one of them. “Although she probably will explode when she sees what the cleaners have done, don’t take her complaints personally,” writes Kelly. “In her heart, she’ll be relieved and may even want them to come back in a few months.”

No, no, and double no.

This approach takes all the control away from the mother, and gives her every reason in the world to distrust her own daughters. It disrespects the mother.

Just two days ago I overheard a lunchroom conversation at the office in which an adult granddaughter bragged about how she “cleaned” her 80-year-old grandmother’s apartment while the grandmother was in the hospital for a few days. She threw away “old” copies of National Geographic magazines, for example, because she “knew” her grandmother would never read them.

But from the grandmother’s point of view, whose to say she’ll never read them? Perhaps she was storing them for a purpose. Even if the magazines have no purpose at all, it should be the grandmother’s decision to throw them away.

Don’t toss out a person’s dignity along with the “trash.” If you think your elder needs help with organizing and cleaning out their living space, work with them to make it happen rather than go behind their back. As Aretha sings, it’s a matter of respect.

– Lori Woehrle