Our family is Chinese - father, mother, daughter (me). My grandparents immigrated about 3 years ago on a parent visa because they wanted to live with us in Australia. Unfortunately, we have nothing in common with them, and we aren't close. Because of this, the household has a very tense atmosphere-- even though we live under one roof, it feels like two families are living there. I think the effects are more poignant because we remembered being relaxed and free to move around the home before they came and now we don't have that relaxed feeling. It doesn't feel like "home" anymore.
We don't understand why they feel the need to cling on to my dad (their son), to the extent of following him overseas and intruding on our family since they were financially and socially fine back in China (all their friends and relatives are back there)!
It's hard to articulate the magnitude of the stress we're under as well - we want them to be happy but at the same time them being here disrupted our family life in only a negative way.
Right now, we don't know what to do. We want to live apart from them. We think having an open discussion is the best way to communicate this but we doubt they'd be honest with their feelings. My dad has checked up on them countless times before, and they'd always say they're "fine" but it's hard to believe because they don't know english, they're very quiet, they don't have many friends/no close friends, or any interest in spending the rest of their days in a fulfilling manner. Also, it's almost certain they'd interpret our desire to live apart as abandoning them.
We wish we could find a way to communicate our feelings, and for them to honestly communicate theirs so we can find a living arrangement that doesn't cause so much misery... I've looked at counselling but it's hard to find one that deals specifically with the Chinese parent-adult child relationship. Any advice is appreciated: this has been going on for 3 years already...