Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Technology Tools to Help with Reminicsence Over the Holidays

December 17, 2017

 

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Reminiscence isn’t new. Before the printing press, storytellers and bards were how history was recorded- in the new mind not on tape.

 

Oral storytellers gave us the Odyssey and another valiant tales. History exists in their family, and Ulysses or Penelope might be sitting in their living room this holiday season.


Here are some tips to use if their want to capture these family tales during this holiday season—a perfect time to do this. Use empathetic listening if you can. Make all the messages you are are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting- say, “I want to listen to you.”

Ask questions that prompt the story but don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking. Recording on your i phone , ipad etc is simple and non-intrusive 

 

Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story and see if they will follow along. “That chair there are sitting in, where did their get it, Mom?” Pick an ornament off the Christmas tree and show it to dad to see if he can tell its story.

Reminiscence is sparked by the senses, and buried memories flow into our brains. That’s why the holidays are a perfect time to have their older family members share stories with them. The sense of taste spurs memories. Just think of making that pie that tasted a lot like their mom’s, a brisket, traditional Christmas pudding, latkes 

Here are two technology tools to help you with this legacy building for your older client

Life Bio

Grandma’s Pie

Check out my Book Handbook of Geriatric Care Management with more tools for legacy building written by David Lindeman Director Of the Center for Technology at UC Berkeley and Julie Menack of 21 st Care Solutions

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, case manager, elder care manager, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, nurse advocate Tagged With: aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, holiday with aging parents, holidays rituals, reminicsence technology

Are You Ready for Post Thanksgiving Inquiry Calls From Long Distance Care Providers

November 27, 2017

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Long Distance family members are caregivers under constant stress. They have been flying or driving to both visit aging family members for a long time. These caregivers at a distance usually understand that their parents are deteriorating with age and are savvy enough that they have researched options and already found you on the web ( a reason to have a great website).

When the family gathers on Thanksgiving and everyone can see problems with an older person like memory loss or ambulation problems- the family may agree to call a care manager. Or the very stress of the holiday season on top of caring for an aging parent long distance may push the designated long distance care providers over the edge to seek help and call you.

More than 7 million American Families care for older family members from afar. This holiday season many of those long-distance families will come home to an elder Mom or Dad’s house and find a scene they saw coming but still fill them with white fear.

Unpaid bills litter Dad’s desk. He refuses to go to church when he was a devoted churchgoer all his life. When the daughter put 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 when he was an easygoing guy all his life.

At that point, the daughter may pull out her phone and call an aging life or geriatric care manager because she cannot fly home without getting help. Are you ready for these desperate calls?

Give frantic adult children hope when they frantically call this holiday.

So be prepared for their inquiry and know the needs of long-distance families well plus the resources in your area that you can suggest in your inquiry call. Do not give away the store in your call but let them know that you are an expert in the needs of long-distance care providers and an ace navigator in your area that can find services and choices that are perfect for their needs.

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging life care manager, aging life inquiry, aging life or geriatric care manager, care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, long distance care provider, long distance family on holiday, nurse care manager

When Cut Off in The Family is a ” Phantom Limb” at Thanksgiving – Katie Holmes Brilliant Role

November 22, 2017

Thanksgiving can be the gateway to the dysfunctional families worst time of year- the holidays. You face family across the table you despise or just both love and hate. Or there is that empty seat- the uninvited guest- the brother-sister, aunt, son, daughter who you never invite- the cut off-family member. 

But since this leaves the family with that “phantom limb”- like the awful sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached and where it was is pulsating in pain- families reach out for someone to fix it.

The ordinary aging processes are made far tougher when a family has a history of dysfunction. Aging professionals, like geriatric care managers, have their greatest challenges in working with these “difficult” families around this time of year.

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves effectively in the face of eldercare challenges and crises. These families are under more stress as they move from long-established roles into uncharted territory.

What if they “ cut off” their Dad years ago and now he had a severe stroke-what do they do?? Someone has to take over Mom or Dad’s care and these dysfunctional midlife adult kids are heavy ambivalent or just don’t want to do it.Now that the holidays are arriving – they have the same attitude about attending the family Thanksgiving dinner.

Pieces if April is my favorite aging dysfunctional family  ” cut off ” Thanksgiving film. Made as a comedy in 2003, it touches death and dying, sibling rivalry, mother-daughter estrangement, interracial love- and Alzheimer’s all fueled by deep family fault lines and how to cook a turkey on a broken stove.The film manages to make the old theme of fraught family Thanksgiving, crisp, funny and ultra worth watching.

 Shot in 3 weeks for a measly $350 K, it received a Sundance Film award and accolades for its pedigree cast including 21 year old Katie Holmes as the grunge Goth daughter who her family has ” Cut Off”,.Patricia Clarkson as the dying  Mom who distains then forgives her rebellious eldest child and Alice Drummond as the demented grandmother who comes along and plays the most rational person in the film in her obliviousness to the family  holiday freak-out.

 Watch this classic before the holiday 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, Cut Off, Dysfunctional aging family, elder care manager, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Siblings Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, cut -off, dysfunctional family holidays, geriatric care manager, Katie Holmes, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Going HayWire? Call a Care Manager

November 21, 2017

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The holiday season in the aging dysfunctional family triggers amped up turmoil. Mom can’t cook the turkey, she forgets to wrap presents, Dad’s not just drunk but he’s wandering. Prepare to handle these fractured families when the adult children call a care manager for help.Revisit the Thanksgivings many of these now baby boomers lived in the 1970’s
Kids who grew up in the 70’s will soon have Thanksgiving with their 70 or 80-year-old aging parents.Will they recall the ” Ice Storm”?
In the film, it is Thanksgiving weekend in the early 70″s and a boyish Tobey Mc Guire returns home from prep school to a Thanksgiving feast that his sister starts with this prayer.
” Dear Lord, thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for all the material possessions we have and enjoy. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff us like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.”
So we begin the descent down the cusp of the 1970’s as the nearly normal family shape shifts into dysfunctional in Ang Lee’s brilliant film The Ice Storm.080729-tdy-swingers-hmed-4p.grid-6x2.jpg
Lee’s Thanksgiving classic is the perfect refection of some family’s plunge into the early 70’s season of hell.
If you’re in your 40’s and grew up with parents have gone haywire through 70’s social change, you will remember the ice storm.
Divorce imploded the family, as we knew it. If you were a parent then you may recall, Nixon resigning, key parties, (swinging couples affairs), Watergate, Deep Throat and self-help books or hear David Bowie who did the soundtrack to the film.

With Lou Reed you can loop back to his fabulous song of that spins the period Walk on the Wild Side and maybe recall the template for it the entire era the -book, Open Marriage.

Children of this social tumult may now share another Thanksgiving with the aging parents who put them through hell. What will they do when they find they have to care for those same parents who did not care for them? When they return to Thanksgiving they may call an aging life or geriatric care manager. Are you ready?
Learn more about what you can do for dysfunctional families and give them hope when they call desperately call this holiday. Watch my YouTube Channel Geriatric Care 1 and learn how to work with the dysfunctional family who will desperately call around the holidays

Filed Under: Aging, Blog, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager Tagged With: aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family

Four Types of Aging Entitled Families Who Will Call a Care Manager on the Holiday

November 12, 2017

 Four types of aging families, who can afford geriatric care management and home care long as they have the financial resources, will call you over the holidays. Mom is unable to pull off the ritual of either Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Christmas or New Years or usually all four.You need to have excellent clinical skills to manage these families- get them through the holiday season and stabilized as the ongoing client after the first of the year.

The first two are dysfunctional aging families and take extensive psychodynamic skills. The last two are nearly normal aging families must have the crisis solved and shown tools and resources to arrange care in the future. Many times they can handle themselves after you have established care and a GPS to access the future care they need. But they may also want to remain as your clients for you to manage their care. 

Part of this is drawn from Claudia Fine and Nick Newcombe excellent chapter ” Entitlement in the Aging Family”, Care Managers Working With the Aging Family, Jones and Bartlett)

Narcissistic-Entitled Families:

Entitlement in these families usually develop from a specific kind of “not good enough parenting” in which the parents themselves have struggled with personality disorders, most typically, in this type of family, narcissistic  borderline personality  .( example President Trump)They struggled with borderline personality that went undiagnosed or was formally diagnosed and untreated. The narcissistic or borderline parent essentially does not experience the child/children as separate and discreet from themselves and, moreover, uses the child/children to serve parental needs.  This parent-child relationship is characterized by severe boundary issues in which seduction and abandonment are ever-present dynamics and where emotional unpredictability and instability are constant.  ( Fine and Newcombe- Entitlement in the Aging Family, Care Managers Working with the Aging Family)

 

 Rich and Famous-Entitled Families:

These families are identified by the parents’ socioeconomic, financial and political prominence.  ( example President Reagan)They are families in which all basic needs, services, resources and creature comforts are obtained via income, assets, abundant discretionary cash flow and/or come from the political position, station or power.  Once again, the entitlement of the family is passed from the parent to the child who in turn brings these behaviors and actions to the caregiving milieu and care management relationship.  In this category, the entitlement arises out of a family that is accustomed to purchasing everything.  They look to 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 staffs, 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)

 

Well-heeled seniors,

According to the New York Times, may be middle-class retirees who buy shoes from Payless but have a defined pension can afford care at home when they need it and private care management. They rode the post-war economy, held jobs long term and through that defined pension (no 401K) face a very healthy financial picture in aging.  They worked for city, county, state government are teachers, truck drivers, social workers or were union members in all trades. They had a career at Xerox, IBM, Campbell Soup and big Fortune 500 companies.

 

Professionals- Physician, Attorneys, CPAs

This group made a very healthy living during the late 20th Century, probably had a defined pension and have very lucrative investments that allow them to afford home care and care management. They usually come from nearly 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Blog, elder care manager, Families, Geriatric Assessment, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, home care, Narcissistic Personality, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Webinar Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, Certified Senior Advisors, geriatric care manager, nurse advocates, nurse care manager, well heeled seniors

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Cathy Cress is the leading national expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management. She is author of Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition, Jones and Bartlett, published 2015 and known as the bible of geriatric care management. Continue Reading >

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