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.

Build Back Better Bill Could be Transformative- BUT -Running out of Time

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Time About Out To Pass Build Back Better Bill

Biden’s Build Back Better Bill is dying. Decades of divestment have cost American families in time, opportunity, and money, with the greatest impacts landing on communities of color, seniors, the disabled, women, and LGBTQ+ people. Building a stronger, more equitable future requires investing in good jobs, quality care, education, and housing.  Senator Manchin and Sinema are blocking Biden’s Bill.

The Build Back Better Bill includes significant investments in our children, families, elderly and disabled 

Seniors will get New Medicare Hearing Benefit

Biden’s ill includes lowered drug prices, Medicare Part D Benefit Redesign according to Kaiser Foundation. But the bill also includes new  Medicare benefits  for seniors in:

  1. ACA Marketplace Subsidies
  2. Lowering Prescription Drug Prices and Spending
  3. Medicaid Coverage Gap
  4. Medicaid Home and Community Based Services and the Direct Care Workforce

Expanded Home & Community Based Care Included

Biden’s Build Back Better Bill , offers so much in caring for families, kids the elderly. In addition to expanding Child Tax Credit payments and ensuring the lowest income families receive the full benefit, would invest in-home- and community-based care services for the aging and people with disabilities; provide pre-k for 3 and 4 year-olds; invest in housing, child care, and nutrition programs; create good jobs, and so much more

Biden’s Bill would provide four weeks of paid medical leave, so the United States can join the rest of the industrialized world in giving its people the dignity of paid time off for a family or health emergency. So, if an aging parent or child is sick or there is a newborn, family can care for them and get paid.

 

 

Write or Call Your Congressman Fast Before Mansion and Sinema Destroy Biden’s Bill

Sign and send a letter to your Democratic senators: Care is infrastructure. The Build Back Better Act must include substantial investments in our families and communities.

 

Here are some quick tips when writing a personal letter or what to say on a call :

  • Keep your letter short or call and to the point;

  • Remind them that you are a constituent;

  • Share your personal story about your career as a care manager,  a social worker a nurse, a geriatric professional and your  client’s needing care, client’s  caring for a loved one, or the plight of a care worker
  • Emphasize that the majority of Americans support investing in human infrastructure, include: expanding Child Tax Credit payments, and ensuring the lowest income families receive the full benefit, investing in-home- and community-based care services for the aging and people with disabilities; providing pre-k for 3 and 4 year-olds; investing in housing, child care, and nutrition programs; creating good jobs; and more;
  • Encourage them to keep pushing to ensure investments in the care economy remain in the Build Back Better Act.
  • PLEASE DO THIS NOW ESPECIALLY FOR SENIORS IF YOU WORK WITH THEM

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