Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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How Do You Find Forgiveness Through The VA?

July 23, 2015

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Forgiveness for adult children  for alcoholic parents is fighting a lifetime of nightmares . As a result of my path is forgiving my alcoholic PTSD ridden Dad I wrote an entire chapter on Forgiveness in the Aging Family in my book, Care Manager Working with the Aging Family 

My inspiration was again living with my aging Dad and only seeing him in the here and now and not as the drunk Dad of my childhood. The VA helped by providing the wide range of services in the GRECC program  for him and I was helped my teaching filial maturity and realizing this was my own life challenge.

 

I also found my Dad saved me and my whole family. His entering our family in California moving from Atlantic City New Jersey made us a whole family with 4 generations and the great grandchildren, grandchildren and really me- adored him.

My daughter Jill said as we knelt before his dead body. “We thought we were saving him and he saved us.”

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, Forgiveness, Getting VA Benefits, GRECC Program, Mom Loves You Best Forgiving and Forging Sibling Relationships

Dread Memorial Day with Midlife Sibings?

May 23, 2013

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Are you dreading the Memorial Day family barbeque?  . Will your estranged brother be manning the barbeque while you drink too much beer?

Are you a midlife sibling at war with sister or brother? Worse than that, do you feel like you and all your siblings are in not only a dysfunctional family but also an aging dysfunctional family?

What’s an aging dysfunctional family? Well they are very much like a war zone. Clans remain at war with each other, like the 1980’s Serbian conflict or the Iraq war pitting the Sunni’s against the Shia.These tribal battles have gone on for centuries and have the same bloody roots of the dysfunctional family -repeated from one generation to the next.

The hallmarks of the dysfunctional aging family, are after decades as a motley clan there is still not enough love in the family. The now midlife children have to fight for what little nurturance their older parents can bring to the ancient rickety nest they built.

Nurturing is often missing in the dysfunctional aging family because the aging parents themselves probably got little nurturing themselves as kids and on and on back down the family line. Parental neglect and abuse are frequent in the history of the aging dysfunctional family.

The now older parents can suffer from serious mental health problems such as schizophrenia or are bi-polar. Health and addiction problems like alcoholism are frequent.  Family interaction and communication, -parental treatment of siblings, brother and sister treatment of each other stepparent interaction and interface of everyone in the family has wrought deep tissue damage that never healed.

These aging dysfunctional families generally negotiated all of life’s developmental phases with great difficulty. The role in the family, especially the parental one, was murky with a poor, abusive or mentally unfit leader of the family. The rules in the family were unfair ambiguous or full of double binds. There is deep-seated ambivalence. Finally the last life transition in the aging family, the care of the declining parent, implodes the family, which had little balance to begin with. They are asked to care for parents who did not care for them, thus reeking havoc on an already disorganized aging family.

So good luck at the Memorial Day family gathering and perhaps consider hiring a geriatric care manager if you sibling war is affecting not only rituals like family gatherings but also the care of your aging parents. The GCM can help you end the constant hangovers and /or acid reflux.

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging parent, aging parent care, assessing the caregiver, blaming familiy members, blood brother, celebrations with siblings, dysfunctional aging family, dysfuntional family, estranged siblings, family meeting, geriatric care manager, geriatric care managers, half siblings, holidays with aging parents, irate siblings, Marriage and Family Therapist, MFT, midlife siblings, Mom Loves You Best Forgiving and Forging Sibling Relationships, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, NAELA, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, sibling emotional violence, sibling family meeting, sibling rivalry, sibling team, siblings feuding, visiting aging parets during holidays

Solve Adult Sibling Problems Cathy Cress on WHBC Radio Tomorrow

February 10, 2013

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Tomorrow morning I will be on radio show Wriggling in the Middle , 8 AM EST ,speaking with Dr. Merle Griff and DeLores Pressley Wriggling In The Middle hosts  on how adult sibling relationships affect the caregiving process in the aging family. This is especially important when an older person needs care or home modification.

Tune in

 

Radio- Wriggling In The Middle

News Talk 1480

WHBC Radio in Canton, OH.

the show is broadcasted live from WHBC.

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: adult sibling, aging family, aging parent crisis, blaming familiy members, Care Managers Working with the Aging Family, crisis with aging parents, geriatric care manager, geriatric care managers, half sibing family meeting, half-sibling, inheritance, midlife sibling team, Mom Loves You Best Forgiving and Forging Sibling Relationships, role of youngest siblings, sibling family dynamics, sibling teamwork, siblings and caregiving, step siblings

To Deal With Sibling Squabbles_Parents _ Nuture Yourself

August 19, 2012

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If you have siblings with issues between them, look to yourself. Are you running on empty? Most young mothers I know don’t really nurture themselves. Between work, parenting and household chores, they never put themselves on their own to do list.

 

If you are a Mom or Dad of teenagers or young children and your kids are struggling with sibling rivalry, avoid a future sibling “I Hate You” story- 40 years from now by caring for yourself. Taking care of you as the caregiver is key to caring for others.

 

The catch phrase is to “balance work and family”. I am talking about balancing three things-work family and you –filling up your own self- before the other two plunge out of balance

Try joining-enrolling in activities that help you care of yourself will help your kids move through the shoals of sibling issues because you feel healthier. You might choose yoga, massage, journaling, meditation, a book club, or a gym membership. Mindfulness could be a practice you could investigate.

 

Keep a diary; just a few sentences a day to tell yourself what you did that day to care for yourself. Just taking a walk, getting your nails done or sitting alone for 15 minutes can count as self-care.

 

Don’t tell yourself you don’t have time. Caregivers of the elderly end up the hospital before the person they care for. That’s one caregiver taking care of one person. Mom’s care for multiple kids and at times sparing siblings.

 

Delegate household tasks to the whole family- give siblings chores like setting the table taking out the trash, starting basic meals. Forming a sibling team actually helps build healthy siblings relationships plus helps you – balance your needs and theirs.
Young children who have brother and sister problems, demand time and attention from the parental caregiver. Your first job is to care for them, but you cannot do that if you’re not emotionally strong and centered yourself.

 

Getting to that point means caring for the caregiver and using caregiver tools to make yourself the best mom, dad, step mom, or step dad you can be. You can help yourself overcome present and future sibling rivalry issues by making a list of activities to nurture yourself so you have all the energy and centeredness it takes to deal with sibling issues.

Being parent/ caregiver, who nurtures yourself, brings your nurturing skills with your young siblings, back into your life.

Filed Under: Siblings Tagged With: blood sibling, brother, Cain and Abel, caring for a yourself as a parent, Cathy Jo Cress, comparing kids, comparing siblings, estranged siblings, help with kids, involve Dads more, mindfullness, Mom Loves You Best Forgiving and Forging Sibling Relationships, New Horizon Press, sibling, sibling rivalry, siblings fighting, sister, You Tube, You Tube Mom Loves You Best Channel

Use an Agenda For an End of Life Sibling Family Meeting

August 18, 2012

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Setting an agenda for the siblings family meeting about end of life is critical and should be done before the meeting. It is your GPS to success.
Here is a case example. I once did geriatric care management for an aging woman who was dying. Her first husband had died a few years before and had immediately married her old high school boyfriend, who had dumped her, 50 years before..

She now had terminal cancer, had a gastric tube and had lapsed into a coma. She had given her new husband power of attorney for health care. He wanted to take her off life support but did not want her to come home nor did he want take care of her himself, with the support of Hospice. The old boyfriend wanted to have her cared for in a skilled nursing facility. A sibling family meeting took place at the hospital with all the step siblings, the new husband and the hospice social worker as mediator. Her blood children wanted her to go home, the place where they grew up, with 24-hour care, Hospice and life support removed. The new husband’s children, her stepchildren agreed with their Dad decision to take her off life support and move her to a nursing home to die, without 24 hour care. The hospice social worker, skilled in mediation, met with everyone, including her elder law attorney, pre the meeting and used those individual meetings to create an agenda.

An agenda allows all parties know ahead of time what you plan to discuss and is a vital part of the process. Research on care management of elders and midlife siblings a shows that any family meeting is not up to scratch when siblings go into it with an agenda

The elder family member, if present, adult siblings and power of attorney for health care, need to be clear on the meeting’s purpose or agenda

The facilitator or mediator must meet with the older adult and midlife siblings and power of attorney beforehand and individually discuss their point of view about the main problems to be solved, set goals for the meeting and use all information to create the agenda. For example if the meeting is whether to return home to die or go to a facility, then that subject should be discussed in each individual meeting and on the agenda.

The mediator or facilitator should also consul other professionals like physicians and hospice case managers or nurses, and elder law attorney’s, if involved, with a release of information, for results from medical tests, legal documents, or other the types of information that may be needed in the sibling family meeting to make decisions and discuss end of life. Any of this information that is pertinent to the goal of the meeting should be on the agenda. When the meeting begins, it is good for the mediator or facilitator to review the meeting goals and to clarify if specific decisions need to be made.

The end of the story is the dying elderly woman was moved to an excellent skilled nursing facility with 24-hour home care and Hospice. Life support was removed and she died three weeks later, her blood children at her side. The moral of the story is – do not marry that high school boyfriend who dumped you- and – use and agenda for a sibling family meeting about end of life. .

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging family, blaming familiy members, blended family, blood sibling, case manager, Cathy Jo Cress, death, dysfunctional aging family, elder care crisis, elderlaw attorney, end of life, end of life family meeting, family meeting, geriatric care manager, half siblings, Hospice, hospice for elderly parent, marry your old boyfriend, mediator, midlife siblings, Mom Loves You Best Forgiving and Forging Sibling Relationships, parent care crisis, power of attorney for health care, sibling, step siblings, You Tube

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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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