
Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management
At family rituals, like Thanksgiving next month, adult siblings often are often brought back together. If you are one- will it be a happy feast or wrecked by holiday sibling rivalry??
As Gail Sheehy said in her book, Passages in Caregiving, we think that siblings will automatically support each other when aging parents fall apart. Sheehy quotes sociologists, Karl Pillemer and J. Jill Suitor, on sibling rivalry, in a study they did conclude that siblings are inherent rivals and the biggest source of stress between human beings.
If you are a midlife sibling, perhaps you have a brother or sister to whom you hardly speak because of sibling rivalry. Maybe you are about to see your siblings at the coming Thanksgiving feast, even on zoom during COVID, and anticipate largely ignoring him or her or doing chitchat as you seethe the inside. If you fit this description of sibling rivalry, you are in the same lurching boat as uncounted baby boomer siblings all over the world.
That wound from childhood may still ache enough to keep you on the furrowed path your family followed when you were young. Now, however, you and your adult siblings, nearing or at retirement age, may need to come together again to be part of a niece or
nephew’s wedding or christening, help plan a parent’s anniversary dinner, or, most important, oversee the increasing care of elderly family members.
I suggest you watch Pieces of April, a fabulous Thanksgiving film ( lead 21-year-old Katy Holmes debuts in a standout performance) where the film’s dysfunctional family revolves around adult sibling rivalry. The film is also about interracial couples, and in the end, around a catastrophic illness of the aging parent, where the siblings need to resolve their differences. It also makes it a trifecta with dementia. The grandmother, who has dementia is taken out of her nursing home to join the dysfunctional Thanksgiving feast and offers surprising sanity to the sibling-rivalry drama.
If you recognize this problem in your own family, seek counseling before coming the holidays engulf you. Contact the Aging Life Care Association to find help before a parental crisis.
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holiday sibling rivalry
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WEDNESDAY, November 16th, 2022, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST
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Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care
Management
Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care
Management
THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Tuesday, November 16th, 2021, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST
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