Welcome to FT.

The seven year "use 'em or lose 'em" is not really 7-years from when you earned the miles in the case of miles earned before 2007 when this was announced. What your parents should be concerned about is the 1-year inactivity rule which requires at least one transaction (deposit or redemption) each year. You've acknowledged this, so I assume you are depositing 25 AE miles from a box of Quaker cereal or granola bars.

IIRC the 7-year rule was introduced in 2007, so it won't be until 2014 or 2015 that the miles might vanish if not used. And any miles earned after 2007 (or whatever the start year was) will last a full seven year from the date earned.

Since we are still four or five years from the "witching hour", you should easily be able to calculate when your parents' miles were earned. However, AE will start providing a "counter" in another couple of years so we will all know when miles will start to expire, like other carriers with such expiries now do. And if you redeem miles between now and then, the older miles will be withdrawn first so the longevity of the remaining ones will be maximized.

If you do want to use their miles, as noted, intra-Asia awards (with Asia I or Asia II) can be a good value at 20K for economy, best at 30K for business, not so great at 50K for first (unless you do something like NRT-BKK/SIN-NRT). Most of Southeast Asia and China/Korea/Japan are in Asia I, South Asia and Malaysia in Asia II.