When Ritual Celebrations Turn Into Kick- Boxing

Celebrations, (like Thanksgiving coming up) Mother’s Day, Hanukah, Christmas, and Father’s – any holiday— can be a nightmare with adult siblings and the dysfunctional family. You have to show up, yet you prepare for the daggers or uppercuts – either wielded by you as a sibling.

Tips to Save the Holidays

1) It is a holiday event, not a family meeting. If you want to talk about personal issues, make a date to get together with your angry sister/brother.

2) Remember that it is Thanksgiving and not all about you. Keep a positive attitude for the sake of your aging parent if they are there, your own kids your nieces and nephews and your adult siblings.

4) Call ahead as a team effort to arrange the sharing of the food for the meal, if it is at someone’s home. Call every family member. Do not exclude. Again to build a team effort.

5) Call ahead and arrange to split the bill if at a restaurant – ahead of time- again team effort and no embarrassing credit card bargaining at the table that only brings on more fights.

6) Keep your alcohol in check. You can’t control anyone else but you can control and even change yourself. We all say things we may regret with lots of nervous drinking.

7) Check out in-person family meeting tools and some free online meeting tools so if you have an aging parent you can arrange care between siblings with online after the holiday get meeting- not in midst of holiday visit.

8) Hire an aging life care manager to facilitate a family meeting.

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Ten Clinical Steps to Tame the Turbulence of the Holiday Season in The Entitled Concierge Family

Join me for my free webinar and learn how to come to the rescue of Long-Distance, dysfunctional and entitled families who find coal in their stockings. Give frantic entitled adult children hope when they call desperately call this holiday. Learn the 10 Steps to tame holiday turmoil from Cathy Cress MSW, the author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management. Thursday, November 21, 2019, 2 PM- 3-PM PST

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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 chaos
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

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In the film version of Tracy Letts August in Osage County . Julia Roberts (the eldest daughter) attacks Meryl Streep (the pill popping aging mother) at a ritual family gathering- the elder Dad’s funeral after he commits suicide.

In the dysfunctional family, there have been symptoms of problems such as alcohol abuse, drug abuse, child abuse, or emotional abuse, like the demeaning mother the character Meryl Streep plays in August in Osage County. These dysfunctions usually create barrier to nurturing and this affects everyone in the family system.

The family system is also marked by ambivalence and all adults and children live in a love hate relationship with other family members. (Julia Roberts character and all the daughter both love and revile their mother ).

As systems resist change, it is even more difficult for members of the dysfunctional family to move to make changes when their parent needs care, like Meryl Streep does in August in Osage County. Julia Roberts and none of the daughters will care for their despised mother.

The nearly normal system is shaken to its core by the parent being dependent. However, a care manager can guide the family members into reorganizing their family roles when the parent can no longer act as head of the family, while acknowledging the shift and changes they need to make both emotionally and practically.

The members of the dysfunctional family who may have experienced a lack of nurturing by their parent and have no role model of caring. They are angry and resentful at caring for the parent, and thus will find it difficult to provide the practical and emotional care that their aging parent needs. The challenge to the adult child of the dysfunctional family is how to meet the dependency needs of the here and now old-old parent when the parent did not meet them dependency needs as a child. That is why they need a highly experienced aging life care manager, who can work with dysfunctional aging families.

The challenge to the care manager is to bring the adult child of the dysfunctional family into the here and now and see their parents for who they are-: an aging dependent person, flawed and imperfect, but a human being who needs their love, support and nurturing.

Why Do Adult Children Hate and Love Parents in Aging Dysfunctional Family?

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