Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

10 Reminiscence Therapy Tools, Technology, and Techniques for New Year

 

Use Reminiscence therapy to capture family tales of aging parents or clients in the New Year

Do you use reminiscence therapy? Do you know how to use a reminiscence tool? Have you lost an aging parent and wished you had asked them more questions to reminisce about their past, your family history, and your childhood? Have you dabbled in ancestry and realized -too late- that you should have just listened closely to the stories your parents told you then written them down before they died?

Start Now! Use reminiscence therapy to make this New Year the year you collect the stories in your own family plus assist your aging clients by using 10 reminiscence therapy tools, technology, and techniques.

1. Use empathetic listening. This means to make all the messages you are are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting-  all saying, “I want to listen to them.”

2. Use empathetic listening then 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.

3. Start somewhere with a question then use empathetic listening. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story and see if they will follow along.”What was a New Years Resolution that you made and kept” ” Do you remember your favorite doll ” What was your first day of school like”

4 . Music is just next to memory in the brain. So you want to use music as a reminiscence tool. This can be done through Alive Inside. So use Alexa, Spotify, to play  40’s 50’s  60’s music or especially when they were teens. Why? Sexual awakening when we are teens and the background music of that time deepens memory when they were teens  –when they were teens  NO Surprise. Simple ways to spark reminiscence when you visit older family members -bring their teenage music on your phone.

5. Use more reminiscence tools. Look at old photos together. Photos trigger memory even with dementia. Choose ones from a period of time the person currently remembers, which could be the person as a young adult, teenager, or even a young child.
6. Play music from their teenage years. That is a powerful reminiscence tool. It is the background to the most emotional period of anyone’s life and deeply lined into memory.
7. Another reminiscence tool is food. Serve food that is a family tradition or specialty, particularly ones that have an element of memory attached from family celebrations. like Mom’s Briscut, Dad’s Sunday Supper lasagna, or “Aunt Helen’s Lemon Cake”.

8. Story Worth was started by Nick Baum, a tecky who was, and in a way, a long-distance care provider for his parents in Sweden. He was curious about their past and invented the app based on his own need to gather his family history through reminiscence therapy in book form. My husband is a teller of past tales as a California Highway patrolman, then Hippiedom, then as top marketing director for Pacific Cookie Company, the best cookies here is the west.

Our daughter Kali gave him Story Worth as a holiday gift 2 years ago. In the first 12 months of the COVID, he recorded 40 stories or memories from his past. They were all published by Story Worth Book, saving in print the precious reminiscence that would have been lost but now saved in a  book that we gave to our adult children for them and generations to come.

This is a gold star reminiscence tool that gives you a brilliant way to capture reminiscence and I  recommend it to adult children who want to enshrine personal memories in print that otherwise would be lost when they reach back for them..

9. Life Bio-  a reminiscence tool,online template of biography and autobiography questions that have been carefully crafted

 

10. Quick Voice Recorder  a reminiscence tool to catch the memory on your phone

Reminiscence in aging is a part of a whole new domain in aging called quality of life or attending to the older person’s need for joy through activities that stimulate the mind. Reminiscence does that- so find out more about how you can increase the quality of life of older people after the holidays and all year long by building a quality of life reminiscence program like Lifespan’s Well Being program in Santa Cruz, Ca.

Thank Your Employees Taking On Call While you Celebrate Holidays

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Did You  Give a Happy Holiday Thanks to Your Staff?

Did you thank your employees for working over the holidays? This week is Christmas when we offer thanks to our friends, loved ones, family. But what about your employees this holiday month. How will you thank your

employees, the very people that power your business and profit and may be on call for you right now on New Years?

“Truly, from bosses I liked, anything was great because I appreciated that they thought of me. From “bad” bosses, anything would annoy me. You can’t make up for being a jerk with a token of any kind once a year.”

Ideas for inexpensive but really appreciated gifts to thank your employees – this holiday season- gift cards to grocery stores or department stores, a gift certificate from Amazon all given with a nice personal handwritten note.

Staff 

 

How To Thank Staff  All Year 

  1. I  did a blog about your need to bill 85% of your client hours. When a care manager does bill’s 85% write them a handwritten thank-you note being
  2. Be grateful all year long for having the amount of productivity to keep the business thriving. Handwriting is not a lost art. It sends a message that you take the time, personally, to really celebrate what the employees do for your business.

2. Send a handwritten thank-you note to thank your employees, to each staff member during the year applauding something they did. Be grateful by thanking your staff for something specific may be the ultimate reward. If you do it selectively yet authentically, a thank you note may be pinned above your employee’s desk for years. Create a formal letter recognizing your employee’s achievement. Sign it and use the company’s seal to give the letter something extra. If you really want to do it right, frame it.

3. Thank your staff by naming an employee of the month, each month in your newsletter with their picture. Give them a gift GCM-pix-3.jpgto tell them you are grateful for their hard work. Create a formal letter recognizing your employee’s achievement. Sign it and use the company’s seal to give the letter something extra. To thank your employees right, frame it too.

4. Be grateful this year, if you do not feel safe hosting an in-person party, to thank your employees, by having a virtual employee holiday party and mail gifts ahead of time to all employees for being such excellent care managers and for billing the 85% you need them to the bill so you will all have employment. It is late now so try New Years.

5. When COVID is gone, someday, to thank your employees, plan employee picnics, birthday parties, anniversary parties to thank them publicly throughout the year.

6. B.J Curry- Spitler, one of the first and I might say the greatest care managers, founded Age Concerns in San Diego in 1982. and knew how to be grateful to her staff. She was a master at thanking her staff.  To thank her employees, she gave gifts of massages to her care managers. A brilliant gift, a massage recognizes the tough emotional work that care managers do and their need to take care of themselves- which you as their employer are doing.

Thank your staff throughout the year.

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE WEBINAR

Sign Up for My New Years Webinar 

11 Clinical Steps to Work with Dysfunctional Families-Post Holidays –

Thursday, January 6, 2:00 PM 3:30 PM Pacific 

 Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday

Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional families who found coal in their stockings.

 

 Learn how to:

Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders

 

Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family

 

Master the 5 Clinical Tools – you need – to solve these problems with your clients

 

Learn Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families

Sign -Up Even if you cannot attend & receive the recording the next day 

 

 

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

 

     

 

     

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