The normal family is the hand grenade compared to the nuclear bomb of the dysfunctional family
When both are faced with a filial crisis of aging parents being dependent and the adult child needs to take over they cower or explode.
How Do You Know a Dysfunctional Family
1. They lack the ability to resolve conflicts 
They have frequent psycho-social blockages that prevent the family from growing emotionally. They fail miserably at moving through all family stages and orchestrating family rituals.
2. They Cannot make Life transitions
Most life transitions in the family, like birth, adolescence, and marriage have been very difficult to make, marked by a lack of support from the parents. Every holiday might be drunkenly be ruined. The parental figures are usually not in charge, nurturing, or able to establish establishes clear rules. They have never created an excel spreadsheet on tasks to do to orchestrate a holiday. Like a disease spreading down generations, they never knew how happily celebrate anything together, as their parents wrecked ritual occasions as well.
3. There are murky roles in the family 
The chief role of the parent characterized by a lack of leadership of the family and the ability to nurture the children. Mom rarely became the high priestess on Hanukkah or Christmas or any family ritual gathering, the family members generally do not believe the parent is there for them and can be depended upon. The dysfunctional family is colored by bloody strained relationships and unresolved conflicts and ruined ritual memories.
4. They inspire great literature
The family is the inspiration for great literature. O’Neil’s wrenching plays A Long Day’s Journey into Night” portrays the most miserable of dysfunctional families. Alcohol, drugs, and secrets that have been kept by all for generations splatter the pages of this great play mirroring all the ruined holidays’ children of dysfunctional families recall with horror. Prince of Tides a tale of a southern dysfunctional family gives us a timelier glimpse of a family whose center can never hold together and whose blood oozes all over everyone from one generation to the next. Award-winning plays and films, like Tracey Letts August in Osage County about a ruined ritual funeral from hell when Julia Roberts tries to beat up drug-addled, drunk presiding mother Meryl Streep.
Rituals Bring Out the Worst in this family
When an aging Mom does not make the very small things she was able to pull off like the Latkes or the Christmas cookies she always made every Hanukkah and Christmas, or cannot pull off big things like the daughter’s wedding someone has got to be the cook and family organizer, and resentments skyrocket – tempers flare – and the torch just might never get passed.
The family is again thrown into crisis. That means someone in the tribe has to take over -yet the dysfunctional family has no model or spreadsheet for any transition in power. They cannot pull off any ritual celebrations or even family Taco Tuesdays. Most critically when the rudderless head of the family needs care, these adult children cannot care for a parent who did not care for them.
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shopping, plus ambulation. Then add depression – widowhood, loss and you have the challenges of aging in managing this entire titanic ritual. Many times the aging Mom can no longer balance all these plates and the holidays shatter with the crashing dishes.
like they did the nights of the crying newborn or the rebellious teen, and are thrown off balance by the sometimes sudden and usually unexpected loss of their anchoring aging parents, like when they find Elderly Mom is unable to pull off running the holidays Indeed, what must happen in this new developmental phase is that the adult child must evolve beyond the needy child, (I will still have Mom pull of the holiday as she always did) he or she has been, depending on his or her parents for that fiscal, emotional, social support and ritual organizing parents, like managing of officiating over the Christmas or Hanukkah celebration.
the parents and the adult child’s point of view. The really need a geriatric care manager’s services
Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family Master the 5 Clinical Tools – you need – to solve these problems with your clients Learn Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families 
love you” and “ I hate you” and it only takes a few drinks and snarky remarks to start a fracas.
or safely in person 
life. He’s drinking too much at the local pub. When the daughter puts the post-turkey leftovers in the refrigerator she finds moldy food on every shelf. When asked about the bills and the moldy food, Dad gets really angry at them when he was an easygoing guy all his life. They consider picking up the phone and screaming at 911
with Loneliness and isolation on the holiday
paid others to meet their needs (as opposed to families who must themselves find and orchestrate ways to meet basic and complex needs themselves or with the help of the extra-familial system). Often these families have household staff, i.e., nannies, butlers, drivers, private pilots, cooks, and maids. They may have available to the business and family lawyers and accountants, as well as, teams of medical professionals and concierge physicians. Consequently, in almost all situations they are uninvolved in processes, especially those that are difficult, stressful and time-consuming. ( Fine and Newcombe- Entitlement in the Aging Family, Care Managers Working With the Aging Family)
normal families and have been well parented although you will find a mixture of dysfunctional aging families. Their adult children tend to be supportive of their parents, although again you will find a mixture of dysfunctional families in this category.