(Pictured: Laura Tamblyn Watts heads Canada’s national seniors advocacy organization).

Laura Tamblyn Watts is the chief executive officer of CanAge, Canada’s national seniors’ advocacy organization. She teaches subjects related to law and aging at the University of Toronto and has worked as a lawyer defending elders’ rights. She lives in Toronto. In the following Q and A, she talks about issues covered in her book, “Let’s Talk About Aging Parents: A Real-Life Guide to Solving Problems with 27 Essential Conversations” (www.theexperimentpublishing.com).

You’ve written academic papers and are a regular media guest and keynote speaker on aging issues. What made you want to discuss aging in this format?

I wanted folks to be able to get the kind of insider information and practical tips I can give them based on decades of experience in this field. But listing a bunch of facts and to-do lists can be overwhelming. This book is friendlier than that—I’m giving the straight goods in a safe space like if we sat down together over tea and talked out what was going on with your parents, your family, and how to keep your head on straight in all the confusion and emotions.

What makes your book relevant right now?

We are in the largest demographic shift in all human history, and we mostly don’t have the tools to deal with the issues that will arise. This book can help people identify key issues to look out for so they can get ahead of them or address them as they come up. There is plenty of information on the medical side and no shortage of caregiver stories, but nothing that actually helps you help your aging parents.

Have you noticed mistakes that the children of aging parents seem to struggle with most often?

It’s divided into two pretty even camps, both of whom have no idea what’s coming their way. The first group assumes everything is sorted—that their parents are fine now and will be fine, and that things have been arranged already. Too often, it probably won’t and isn’t, and they haven’t. When things start to go wrong, the process can be too late, much more expensive, and way more difficult.

The second group assumes that as the adult kids, they get to make the decisions, and that their parents should do what they are told. Good luck on that one! Older adults are still adults. The same way that you don’t want them telling you what to do when you are 50, they don’t want you telling them what to do when they’re 80, and they’re happy to tell you so.

This is where the 27 conversations in the book come in. They are meant to help start those discussions early, so you know and understand what the jumping off point is and where you need to help your parents make their own choices.

Can readers still use the advice in your book if they don’t have a traditional family or a good relationship with their parents?

The notion of family is important—this book never assumes that the readers have a middle class, white, heterosexual, urban, nuclear family. That’s one,  frankly quite rare and simplified version  of it. Most families are messy. There are families of biology, marriages and divorces and new relationships, difficult siblings, as well as families of choice, diversity, and all sorts of complexities. This book addresses all those glorious versions. There is even a chapter about what to do if you hate your parents, have been estranged, or were ill-treated by them.