Siblings Archives ⋆ Page 2 of 13 ⋆ Cathy Cress

How is a Geriatric Care Manager a Care Connector With Mid Life Siblings ?

September 23, 2017

We are creeping towards to holidays which means often seeing our midlife sibling. At times we are estranged from midlife sibling or we are polite at a family gathering but there is no real connection.siblings

Aging life or geriatric care managers are care connectors. They cannot do everything themselves for the family nor do they have the skills to do that. What they have is the skill to connect to the right resource, especially for a family caregiver.

Emotional resources can link a circle of care for the direct family caregiver. These emotional supports could and should include adult siblings .Siblings are the longest and deepest relationship in any person’s life. Reconnecting midlife or aging brother’s and sisters, through the circle of care, is a critical GCM task but to achieve this, the care manager may have to depend his clinical skills in helping siblings with forgiveness or reconnecting siblings who live long distance.

Midlife siblings have often spent the last 30 years tending to their own families .So the point of reconnection with middle aged brothers and sisters often happens when they are still working or just retiring — unexpectedly thrown into a crisis in parent care.

This is where the GCM needs to have clinical skills to can help with healing this sibling disconnection-often short circuited by an old sibling wound that helping the sister and brother work together as a circle of care . You replace the shorted fuse in the fuse box.

If the family is dysfunctional, the care manager becomes a care connector and links the right resources that might include an mediator who specializes in aging families or a Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in Aging (hard to find)

In Handbook of Geriatric Care Managers 4th edition you can find chapters on mediation, working with the nearly normal family and dysfunctional aging family, siblings, family meetings and care connection.

It may be 2 months away till Thanksgiving but a an aging parent crisis could happen tomorrow. Reach Out now.

With Irma’s Carnage- Do You Need a Midlife Family Meeting to do an Aging Parent Disaster Plan ?

September 18, 2017

Warning- close your family floodgates as New Orleans closed theirs after Hurricane Issac and Katrina.

September’s catastrophic disaster with Hurricanes Irma and Harvey hitting near the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina should conjure up a midlife sibling nightmare. It brings back the now recurring goblins of Katrina -the most gruesome weather cataclysm where 39 elderly residents died, trapped or abandoned in retirement centers and 1400 elder overall died in Katrina’s watery wrath.We just plunged into the horror again with Irma where, so far 8 elderly have died, with criminal charges pending and new regulations by the governor, after he was accused of not responding to calls from the facility. On Irma’s heels with now have Maria and Jose, which should terrify adult children enough to take emergency action to protect their parents.

This recent confluence of hurricane deaths and hurricanes looming right now, should be a deafening shout to you and your midlife siblings that you need to convene a midlife sibling disaster plan family meeting to protect any aging family members-, no matter where your elderly parents live or what level of care. You need that disaster plan because older people are more likely to die in catastrophes than any other population. As I pointed out in my last blog, just because they are in a facility – they are not safe– in fact, Katrina and Irma tell us perhaps they are more in peril.

So before Maria or another hurricane, tornado, earthquake, flood, or any disaster hits, you need to have a midlife sibling family meeting to come up with a disaster plan for aging family members. I posted this a week ago but after Irma ‘s carnage, I have revised my list

What would be the agenda of that midlife sibling disaster family meeting?

If your loved ones are in a FACILITY- do not trust the facility to handle the situation. Look at what just happened in Irma.

1)Get a copy of the facilities disaster and evacuation plan.Compare it to state regulations. If it does not include calling the family before the disaster, consider moving your loved one or make sure that is changed.

2)Appoint a sibling to be in charge of reading the disaster evacuation plan and be the contact person.

3)Call your state facility licensing body and find out the state regulations to see if they match the facilities- CCRC, Assisted Living or Nursing Home

4) Have a telephonic family meeting before the disaster if possible

5) make sure the state requires backup generators for heat and air conditioning- a flaw in Florida’s regulations in Irma

If the loved one is LIVING AT HOME alone or with an adult child.

1) Create a disaster plan for the older person. This would map out what each sibling and family member needs to do

2) Create a disaster team. This would include every adult siblings all over the country, family nearby, caregivers and neighbors.

4) Include someone on the team who can carry heavy objects like wheelchairs.

5) Name a substitute caregiver if the regular one can’t get there.

6) Make an evacuation plan for your aging family member’s house. Where is the nearest Red Cross shelter

7) What disaster supplies do you do you have on hand? Get list from your local Red Cross

8)Find out how many people do you need to make the move to safety or a shelter?

9) Put all of the above in writing.

10) Share a copy your disaster plan with everyone. E-mail copies to everyone on the family disaster team including all adult siblings, neighbors and friends.

11) Get everyone’s agreement especially midlife siblings and the older person. Be a unified disaster team.

12 ) Call a geriatric care manager to manage the plan or help you create it with your elderly parents, if you live long distance. They can do the heavy lifting, can help moderate a family meeting- can research state laws, be there in a disaster immediately, create and implement a disaster plan for your parent, that you approve and can be part of.

Professionals check out the chapter “ Preparing for Emergencies” in my Handbook of Geriatric Care Management fourth edition,

Professionals Check out my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family, Jones and Bartlett, with its chapter on Family Meetings and the Aging Family by Rita Ghatak, director of Stanford’s Aging Program.

What’s a Filial Crisis in the Nearly Normal Family?

September 7, 2017

In the nearly normal aging family when the parent figure in family ages and begins to suffer the losses of getting old. Then the filial crisis occurs. What’s that-? The midlife adult children need to learn to learn to balance love and duty to their aging parents with independence. These midlife children must create a two-way relationship instead of the parent sending, love, money and be nurturing only one way. This throws adult children in a nearly normal family into a tailspin. It has always been a one-way street – ending with them. Were they selfish – no? That’s what good parents do- nurture their children through all the stages of life. However, this new stage takes a two-way streetaby

Baby boomer children, are shocked and baffled when their now aging parents are no longer that John Wayne father figure who can root out every bad guy depending only on his gun and horse. When their Dad or Mom need to ask for support following to loss of health in old age, their adult children are thrown into crisis. This crisis has been labeled a filial crisis by pioneering social worker Margaret Blenkner. Blenkner, a breaker of new ground in the social sciences was the first director of the Benjamin Rose Institute in Cleveland and introduced the concept of the filial crisis. This crisis, she theorized, happened when the adult child realized that their parents were not invulnerable. Like the Twin towers crumbling after America ‘s 911, these adult children saw their impregnable parents start to disintegrate and with it the supportive bulwarks f After a life time of seeing their parents as the indomitable during their often indulged, financial, economic and emotional support, even in their children mid-life.

This filial crisis is, in essence, a new developmental phase in life, the loss of your parent’s independence and their dependence on you.

The healthy family is also thrown off balance by this shock to the system. The person who took the lead role on the family stage has not shown up or forgets their lines.At this giant pause in family play, the family system, even in the normal family must face the loss of control in the system because the parents or parent figures usually have that control. When they can no longer manage on their own, or function as the main gear or guide that moves the family system forward even the normal family is thrown off balance.

Professionals Check out my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family , with its chapter Loss Dependence, “Filial Maturity and Homeostasis in the Aging Family“, Leonie Nowitz and Cathy Cress, Jones and Bartlett, to learn more about a Filial Crisis in the Nearly Normal Aging Family

How Can You Improve Your Midlife Sibling Relationship Post Labor Day

September 5, 2017

Did you spend Labor Day with midlife and care of your aging parents came up. Did you wake with a horrible hangover- either from too much booze or just amplified emotional tension that turns you inside out next morning.

Perhaps it involved arguments over aging parent care? If dealing with your siblings gives you a royal headache, the tension may have been made worse by the conflagration of alcohol and /or age old rifts between you and your siblings that started in childhood.

It may be time to look into the roots of your family script before your parents do need care or if they need care now.

Did your step, half or blood sibling do something long ago that’s still a weeping wound in your mind? Does it keep you apart or in each other’s faces – – especially awkward- during a holiday gathering when families were flocking together consuming mounds of barbecue & pot luck food and sharing old stories or recent family news

If the main villain in the family tragedy is a sibling or step sibling or half sibling – here’s a post-Labor Day quiz to see if you need help from someone like a geriatric care manager

Find out if have a sibling “ I Hate You Story”. Maybe you did not think you needed this test few weeks ago. Post Labor Day – if you know you need the test now- here it is.

Take the test below.

1. Have you told your sibling story more than once to the same person?

2. Do you play the sibling events more than two times in a day in your mind?

3. Do you find yourself speaking to the sibling who hurt you even when the person is not there?

4. Have you made a commitment to yourself to tell the sibling story without being upset then found yourself agitated anyway?

5. Is the sibling who hurt you a central character in your story?

6. When you tell your sibling story does it remind you of other painful things that happened to you?

7. Does the sibling story focus primarily on your pain and what you lost?

8. In your sibling story is there a villain?

9. Have you made a commitment not to tell the sibling story again and then broken your vow?

10. Do you look for other people with similar sibling problems to tell your story to?

11. Has your sibling story stayed the same over time?

12. Have you checked the details of your sibling story for accuracy?

If you answer yes to five or more the questions, there is a good chance you have a sibling I Hate You “ story. To end brother or sister blood step or half sibling blood feud and make peace makes forgiveness as a gift to you.

Try a change of season resolution and welcome autumn by taking the – a step towards sibling forgiveness and parent care with the help of a geriatric care manager to hopefully make the next holiday, sometimes the dreaded Thanksgiving with siblings will be spent hangover free with the parent care issue resolved

Professionals Check out my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family , with it’s chapter Working With Adult Aging Siblings Jones and Bartlett, to learn more about working with feuding midlife siblings.

Have You Had a Family Meeting With Aging Parents to Plan for Disasters Like Harvey?

September 2, 2017

The Hurricane Harvey disaster in the Texas this week should tell you that you need a family meeting to prepare any aging family members in any place you live ,( especially long distance )facing global warming and normal catastrophic weather events- tornados, hurricanes, polar vortex and floods like the once in a 1000 year one now in Houston. You need a disaster plan because older people are more vulnerable than any age group.

What would be the agenda of that disaster family meeting?

1) Create a disaster plan for the older person. This map out what each sibling and family member needs to do

2) Create a disaster team. This would be all adult siblings all over the country, family nearby, caregivers and neighbors.

Share your disaster plan with everyone.

Include someone on the team who can carry heavy objects like wheelchairs

Name a substitute caregiver if the regular one can’t get there

3) Make an evacuation plan . Where is the nearest shelter, what supplies

Do you have on hand? Get list from your local Red Cross

How many people do you need to make the move to safety?

4) Put all of the above in writing. E-mail copies to everyone on the family disaster team including all adult siblings or create a closed facebook group hand share there.

5) Get everyone’s agreement especially midlife siblings and the older person.

For more information, the University of Florida, Home of Disaster filled hurricanes has a great set of directions.

6) Call a geriatric care manager to manage the plan if you live long distance

Professionals check out the Preparing for Emergencies-chapter in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management fourth edition , by Liz Barlowe on Disaster planning

Professionals Check out my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family , with it’s chapter on Family Meetings and the Aging Family by Dr. Rita Ghatak of Stanford

How is a Geriatric Care Manager a Care Connector With Mid Life Siblings ?

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