Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Best Tool for Dysfunctional Family on Holidays- Hope

December 8, 2019

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Hope is the Best Tool on the Holidays

During Christmas and Hannaka family caregivers, especially in the dysfunctional family can be drinking or numbing themselves from the pain of caregiving. They will ruin the holiday celebration one way or another. Maybe they are drugging themselves with the telly or abusing prescription drugs. Depression and anxiety ( rife among caregivers) are predictors of increased alcohol use. Social isolation, which is experienced by some caregivers, is also predictive of increased alcohol use.

 

How do you as a geriatric care manager change the script for these aging dysfunctional families – family caregivers and older members who are supposed to care for but can’t. How does a professional GCM make the characters transform? 

 

It’s actually simple –but loaded with skill- give them hope. You need to and use yourself to give them hope that things will change. It’s the best tool a geriatric care manager toolbox- especially on and after the dreaded holidays.

 Use of Self

The use of Self is perhaps the most powerful tool for geriatric care managers. The use of Self provides families with guarded optimism. GCM’s have to offer a vision of the future that is based not only on a desire for hopeful outcomes. This has come from our own clinical knowledge and belief that change to their nasty crippled, family system is indeed possible.

By being direct, empathetic, and nonjudgmental, we become a holding bay for stressed caregivers, creating a place of safety, confidentiality, consistency, and support. Finally, GCM’s offer our clients a model of perseverance. By not giving up on the possibility of positive change and by exploring all options, the GCM enables families to feel that, regardless of the outcome, they have done all that they can to support the older adult.

Be like Judy Garland  on the holiday offering hope


Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Let your heart be light
From now on
our troubles will be out of sight

Give the” Merry Christmas – next year

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Filed Under: Aging Alcohol Abuse, caregiver, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Loneliness, Long distance caregiver, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, alcohol on the holidays, Alcolhol abuse in the elderly, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays with aging parents, My Dysfunctional Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Use of Self

15 Alarm Bell for Holiday Visit With Aging Parents

December 6, 2019

ALARM BELLS FOR AGING FAMILY  HOLIDAY VISITS

It’s almost Christmas and Hanukka and time for the family visit with older relatives. If you suspect festive cheer with an aging family could devolve into some scary scenes, here are some red flags to put in a checklist and share with your midlife siblings before the holiday celebration.

Perhaps your older parents have piles of junk mail, dirty clothes, unwrapped gifts when Mom used to shine through her color-coordinated presents. All are cause for the sibling 911 alarm- then action.

You can use this list to assess your parents or older family members during the holidays and compare notes on a post-holiday conference call. If all midlife siblings have the same criteria, it makes easier to agree on what to do and what to flag as family New Year’s resolutions. 

Below is a list of red flags. If you saw any of these problems on Thanksgiving or Hanukkah or face them on Christmas- now is the time to do something about it. Use this is a checklist.

Alarm Bells List for Visiting  Aging  Long Distance Relatives During the Holidays

  1. Unpaid bills
  2. Missed appointments
  3. Clutter in a home that was once always neat .
  4. Refusing to go to medical providers
  5. Not taking care of activities of daily living: cooking, bathing, dressing, housekeeping, etc.
  6. Entering contests, credit card maxed out on shopping channels
  7. Recent fall

POST-HOLIDAY EMERGENCY PLAN

When midlife adult children return from the holidays, the family can have a family meeting alone or with an aging professional and look at the problems on everyone’s list, agree on the top red flags and start helping the long-distance family.

Don’t wait till you and your midlife siblings are shocked out of sleep by late-night calls from brothers and sisters, frantically telling them of a crisis with aging Mom or Dad. Don’t force yourself and the other adult children to book last minute, high-cost flights, and gather in scary, sterile hospital rooms with brothers and sisters they have not really communicated in years.

Call an aging life or geriatric care manager for help 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, 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, Long Distance Care, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging life and geriatric care management, aging life care managers, care manager eldercare manager, check list for holiday visit, danger signs for holiday visit, geriatric care manager, holidays with aging parents, nurse case manager, visiting aging parents during holidays

Can Blue Blue Christmas and Hanukkah Come From The Aging Brain Losing Power ?

December 3, 2019

As Elvis Predicted

Many families have a Blue Blue Christmas-or Hanukkah. Why does an aging crisis occur so often during the holidays? How can so many desperate adult children get care managers on the phone and howl about Mom or Dad in December? There are a million bad reasons, – too much alcohol, too many folks who do not get along and drink that alcohol.  But the physical basis for all of this misery in an elder is often a loss of executive function and IADL’s and ADL’s

Why ADL’s and IADL’s.

It takes  IADLs- (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living) shopping for gifts, cooking ritual meals and ADL’s walking to shop,decorate serve a ritual meal, climbing ( getting all those decorations out of the attic), grooming ( Mom can be found – in a “messy ensemble” at the feast) by the older person in charge of the holiday to pull it off.  Then add depression to the aging stew – widowhood, loneliness and you have the challenges to an elder, usually the woman in the family,  in managing this entire titanic ritual.

Crash of Executive Skills

The holidays in aging families can be a disaster for another neurological reason. Mom or Dad’s Executive Skills have crashed just like a computer.

Executive functioning involves the ability to organize, plan and carry out a set of tasks in an efficient manner. It also includes the ability to self-monitor and control our behaviors and multiple other cognitive functions and to perform the goal-directed behavior. It can be described as high-level thinking skills that control and direct lower levels of cognitive functioning.

Planning for the holidays takes those high level thinking skills -to execute and carrying out 25 different major tasks according to a study in the UK- Just think, planning a  specific holiday ritual menu,( brisket and latkes or popovers and beef prime rib )- then shopping for it cooking it, planning the ritual items in the celebration – a menorah and

Hanukkah bush, Christmas tree, and creche buying them or getting them out of storage on and on.

Why we may end up with burned brisket or turkey.

This is a massive task event/ planning job taken on by one woman usually and as executive functioning power down in her brain- the computer-, which is our aging brain starts to crash- the result- the family freaks out because Mom forgot the ritual steps.

That’s why we need aging life or geriatric care managers to help divide the tasks when Mom cannot do this any longer

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel to learn More- Geriatric Care 1 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, case manager, Concierge Senior, Dysfunctional aging family, Families, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, case manager geriatric social worker, Executive Skills, Functional Assessment, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, holidays with aging parents, IADLs, nurse advocate, nurse care manager

5 Signs That You Are Working With A Dysfunctional Family Over The Holiday

November 3, 2019

Scary Holidays Coming to you

We just passed the fun scary holiday Halloween. It previews the beginning of the real scary holidays for the aging dysfunctional family. These families visit their aging relatives and often find a shocking decline. Raised in a rickety nest, adult kids from a dysfuctional family lack the tools to care for their needy parents in this crisis as they were usually not cared for or nurtured as children.

Whether you are a care manager, geriatric care manager, aging life care manager, case manager or aging professional- this list below is what you will see when you do an intake with these difficult dysfunctional families.

Thanksgiving will open the holiday season and then we face Hanukkah and Christmas. Learn the signs now to work with your new clients and keep them

Signs of the Dysfunctional Family

1. Contentiousness – Old fights erupt; the family gets into arguments with one another about old issues.

“ Secret Santa bull. I got Laurie and she never got a decent gift for my kids all these years so I am never being her damn secret Santa”

2. Anger – Family members express physical anger, emotional abuse, and financial abuse.ed6855aa32d877d7fc1ef9ee757e0f17-98.jpg

“ Take Mom and shove it. I am not taking care of her over the holidays. She was an awful mother to me”

3. Distancing & cut off – Some siblings or parents have nothing to do with family and may not speak to parents or siblings for long periods of time.

” Aunt Kathy and I have not talked for a year-she didn’t even come to Mom’s funeral, so, of course, I am not inviting her to the first night of  Hanukkah or any night”

4. Fusion – Family members, such as the mother, and eldest daughter, blend into one another. For example, the daughter sounds acts and has the same prejudices as the mother.

“ Freddie and Dad might be the same damn person -never taking care of their kids. I buy gifts for Michael Freddie’s son and even put him through private school and high school –Fred never paid child support- or helped- just like Dad. Mom paid for us both to go to college. Freddie is just a damn clone of Dad”

5. Denial – Adult siblings do not see a decline in a parent, do not face reality and do not take care of the parent if he or she cat-dog-fight.jpgneeds care

” Do not tell me Mom can’t wrap her own present and I should” She was always giving us unwrapped gifts. She’s selfish and

always has been.

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE WEBINAR. 

5 Ways to Tame the Turbulence of Holiday Meltdown in Aging Families

 Learn how!

  • How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
  • How to give hope to frantic children who call, after seeing their aging parent struggling with the rituals
  • How to sell services to desperate adult child callers   
  • How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaosfacebook-holiday-post-4.png
  • How to use financial forecasting to prepare for growth during the holidays
  • Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Dysfunctional Aging Families so the  client chooses you

THIS FREE  WEBINAR IS NOVEMBER 21, 2019 FROM 2 PM – 3 PM PST

 

SIGN-UP NOW

 

Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel  Geriatric Care 1

Filed Under: Aging, Blog, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager Tagged With: aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional aging family, holidays with aging parents, nurse advocate

Can’t See Aging Mom Easter or Passover-7 Ways to Make Her Feel You Are There

April 17, 2019

Absent Long Distance Care Provider Holidays Answers

If you are a long distance care provider, or a care manager that works with one, what’s the best way to keep in touch with the long-distance elder if you can’t visit on coming  Passover or Easter.

Easy Low-Touch Non-Tech Ideas

Use low touch—the old-fashioned communication elders grew up – the Post Office and telephone. If you can’t see Mom or Easter or Passover, send a card. Older people came from a generation where cards and mail were really meaningful. It is easy and really touches elders who love opening the little personal mail they get, especially from family. These heritage links are a great way to support a far away elder. Non-tech, they cause no stress on their part. Even we boomers who walk haltingly through the tech world of 40 characters forget that connecting with a stamp or a call is so familiar to an older person. Plus you give that feeling of warmth they always got when they  “ opened” “ or “ answered” something real (not virtual); Try having the whole family sending a card even kids. A flooded mailbox on Easter or Passover fills their heart.

Let Mom or Dad Smell The Affection

If and you can’t see Mom or Passover or Easter she or he if Dad, is not religious, mail holiday care packages —bake or buy cookies or small loaves of bread. Bake it with your children and send samples along with actual photos of everyone baking in the kitchen or buying treats.  Even if they crumble a bit, elders will smell the affection.

Easy Option -Holiday in a Box 

If you can’t see Mom on Passover or Easter, send a “ holiday in a box. Easter and Passover are coming up. Send a basket of kids drawings, candy, nuts, home baked or purchased Easter Bread or cookies or Matzah that reflects the holiday celebration plus a gift certificate for an Easter brunch or dinner with a friend.  Give Mom joy in a simple package. For an extra special surprise, arrange an invitation to a Passover or Easter dinner with a friend or through your parents’ synagogue or church

Passover in a Box

For those adult children who are time-deprived, and can’t see Mom over the holidays, order Passover in a box on Amazon if you have little time and want to send something special. Same goes with Easter in a box with delicious Easter cookies.

A Little Help From Aging Parents Friends

Skip that holiday in a box, if you can’t see Mom on Passover or Easter you can create a circle of care .Get the app  Lots of Helping Hands through neighbors, friends, people in your elder’s place of worship or a group they belong to. Then you can ask if they can arrange to include your older relative or friend in the Easter brunch, egg hunt or Passover meal. You will then have an entire support team your elder with a whole circle of support in the future and not feel so alone.

Make Aging Tech for Holiday Gift

Send a high tech gift, if you can’t see Mom or Dad over Easter or Passover. Send a high tech device that your loved one can really use and figure out. I just ordered the Esky Wireless Locator because I keep misplacing my glasses.

How Care Managers Help Get for Long Distance Care Providers

Care Manager can do lots of things for a family member who is long distance and can’t see Mom on Easter or Passover. Julie Menack in her chapter “Long Distance Care Providers” in my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family lists tasks long-distance care providers can do to make their own lives and their long-distance loved ones saner, sounder and happier

Find a Care Manager Through Aging Life

If you want to investigate an Aging Life geriatric care manager in your parent’s own town find a professional who can help you do all this so you can remain a son or daughter and less stressed caregiver.

 

Filed Under: Adult children, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Blog, branding, Easter, Easter gifts Mom, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Grandchild gifts for grandma, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Care, marketing to long distance adult children, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Passover, Quality of Life Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging life or geriatric care manager, case manager, Easter, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Gifts for Easter 0r Passover, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays with aging parents, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Passover, Reminiscence on the Holidays

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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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