Who can forget what it was like to give our kids the keys to the family car and watch them pull out of the driveway on their first solo ride? Fostering independence is one of the most important parts of raising a teenager. If our kids act responsibly, they win our trust and earn more privileges. If they don’t, we’re in for a long ride holding them accountable at every turn.

Then, when our mother and father get older, some of us find ourselves in the exact same position except this time it’s our aging parents. Complaints about Dad’s erratic driving coming from our mother who’s terrified of getting into the car. Or from our father telling us, “Your mother’s driving 40 miles an hour on the freeway. Cars are honking and speeding past us at 75, and she won’t listen when I tell her to get out of the fast lane!”

Talking to your aging parents about the changes in their lives can be difficult. But they are a necessary part of being a good son or daughter, as you will see in my new book, Raising an Aging Parent. Conversations about things like giving up their car keys after they’ve been driving for 50 years or more, moving out of the family home and establishing Advance Directives can be especially difficult. But when the time comes, whether precipitated by a harrowing drive with Dad, a near-fatal accident, or a new health concern that could render them dangerously unfit to drive, we need to have “the talk” with them. And when we do, it’s essential that we approach our loved ones with patience, understanding and loving support.

Let’s use the difficult conversation about their driving as an example of how to approach highly sensitive situations when they arise.

The first step is to have an exploratory conversation with trusted family members — especially siblings and close friends — where you can express your safety concerns, talk about options and propose constructive solutions.

The second step is to gather the facts. Getting your ducks in a row is critical. Organize and write down your talking points for getting them to reconsider driving simply and clearly. Show empathy for how difficult this loss of freedom will probably be. And come up with practical suggestions for helping your parents adjust to the possibility that their driving days may be coming to an end.

The third (and perhaps most critically important) step is to decide who is best qualified to have the talk with them, given their state of mind. You parents may be ready to give up driving; they may know that their ability to drive has been diminished and that they’re putting themselves and others at risk. Or they may be in complete denial, resisting even the slightest suggestion that their driving isn’t up to par. The person who’s best suited to talk with them might be you or another family member; or a physician, priest, minister, rabbi, or close friend. It must be someone they trust implicitly, someone who’s an effective communicator and who can reason with them about an issue as sensitive as this one. The goal of this step is to come up with an effective plan for who and how to best approach your parent.