Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

I’ll be Home For Christmas in Spite of COVID if my Sibling’s Not there

      

 Holiday Films Can Be About Ruptured Relationships        

For many of us, the road home for the holidays is rutty especially this year with rampant COVID. For some, the path has gaping potholes. It can remind us of childhood conflicts between siblings that ruptured our relationship. Adult children who would still gather with elderly parents and siblings may be glad we all should not travel on the holiday this year due to the pandemic, as they avoid the awful holiday with an estranged sibling.

A great film to watch for nasty sibling rivalry with the comic brilliance of Vince Vaughn and  Paul Giamatti is Fred Claus. Fred neglected by Mrs. Claus by favorite son St Nick, who takes all his presents, turns to life as a repo man to get even. It sounds like a dumb film and is a little dumb but has a stellar cast in Kathy Bates, Miranda Richardson, Kevin Spacey, and Rachel Weisz. 

Adult Sibling Rivalry Usually Starts in Childhood

Serious sibling rivalry happens when the damage was done by a sister or brother years ago, leaving a  never healing gash in our mind. In fact, that old wound from a sibling may still fester and ooze enough to lead us to say we believe we don’t want to see the family on the holidays.

We feel we hate our siblings for many different reasons. The chief complaint that lurks in our mind is that Mom or Dad favored them over us. She got the new prom dress for her high school celebration, and a few years later we ended up with her hand-me-down. Dad sent him to a great four-year college, and we were sent to a community college near home. She was the baby so got to grow up with late curfews and loose rules, when Mom and Dad were unbearably strict with the rest of us. He was the oldest and Mom needed him to take care of the bunch of us, so she let him boss us around. He was the stepsibling who moved in and took over half our room.

Sibling Rivalry Can Stop Adult Children FRom Helping Aging Parents Stay Safe From COVID

That can all come back again if adult children do travel back for the holidays, against all CDC and State warnings. Just traveling back could give the adult child or worse, the elderly parent, the unwanted gift, like lethal coal in their stocking,  COVID. But if the siblings do journey all back to the family celebration, they all can open Pandora’s box of the past, picking favorite siblings or parental slights. Whatever happened in their childhood, can flashback like holiday PTSD. If the aging parents are struggling they may look for a GCM, so make sure that skill is on your website and be very sure you have skills in working with sibling rivalry.  My book Care Managers Working with The Aging Family has a chapter in it with tools to work with adult siblings.

Siblings Need TO Work Together to Keep Aging Parents Safe From Pandemic

This is a time when adult parents need adult siblings to work together as a team to ensure aging parents’ safety during COVID. This means not even going home to risk COVID. Adult children staying home also means one sibling setting up a virtual family

meeting to create a family plan to increase aging parents quality of life while sheltering in place alone with rising loneliness and isolation, It means making sure they have and are using all safety precautions against getting the virus and having a family plan if they are hospitalized, then discharged to recover or even to recovering with no hospitalizations if hospitals are full and turn patients away. . A geriatric care manager can offer that to the family.

Start a Coaching COVID Service for AGING Families

So pre Holiday, add Coaching Adult Children  and marketing this skill  to Help their older relatives with COVID risks and use your knowledge of helping adult sibling strife to help them help their

parents as a family team

 

 

Free Webinar

 

Free Webinar

October 7th and October 8th

9:00a-12:30p

 

Lifespan Care Management for Elders  is pleased and excited to invite aging care professionals and community members to join us for a free2-day webinar series.

We have engaged a compelling group of speakers like Taney Hamill  CEO of ALCA and Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management. who will address a wide range of aging and health-related topics including COVID and Quality of Life while sheltering in place, COVID & seasonal flu and COVID and Hospice COVID and AGING LIFE CARE  Resources  and other topics relevant to the interests of aging persons and those who support them; be they professionals, family members, or other concerned parties.  Attendees may come and go, participating in whichever sessions fit your busy schedules and draw interest. There is something for everyone!

Please share this widely. We look forward to having you join us!

For More Information and to Register

Save Post Our Office -Shut Down is Devastating Threat to Elders

The Slowdown by the US Postal Service is Calamitous to Older Americans

They grew up with the mail reaching Americans regardless of their political party. Older people knew it as the beloved circulatory system of their communication and now much more that. For them, it was “enshrined in the Constitution.”  Article 1, Section 8 says: … The U.S. Constitution, in 1789, authorized Congress to establish “Post Offices and post Roads”, because they grew up taking civics, which was zeroed out of the national curriculum to our peril.

 In an NPR interview, a postal carrier states “I mean, for goodness sake, I think the Grand Canyon, we reach people via donkey”.

 Now every American and the elderly seem to be getting their mail by donkey

This slow down to mail is a crisis for seniors. It is about “not getting” the ” Much more than that” I talked about. Older people depend on the timely mail delivery of everything from prescription medications to Social Security checks, to Va checks and free VA meds sent in the mail. The Postal Service says it’s also the leading delivery service for online purchases. They vote online as they do not want to risk getting coronavirus in the crowded precincts or stand in long lines in the November cold. So elders use the PO to get groceries, emergency supplies, pay their bills by mail, get VA Checks, and send the precious cards from their grandchildren.

Shelter in Place Takes meds on-line delivered by PO

During COVID -19, elders medications not arriving on time in the mail becomes critical to their health. Seniors are supposed to shelter in place, so online delivery by the PO gets them the medications they need, delivered to their home. They are told not to go to the pharmacy and risk infections. A whopping 20 percent of adults over 40 who take medication for a chronic condition get those pills by mail order, according to a survey by the National Community Pharmacists Association.

Wildfire Tornados, Hurricanes, and COVID The Trifecta of death this Summer

On top of this, we are in the spine-chilling season of weather emergencies. The West just started the brutal wildfire season where California is now having wildfire tornados. Deep in the hurricane season this month, when climate change has doubled our chance of these fearsome storms the East coast is threatened daily by these mammoth storms actually 2 right now.  In an escalating COVID-19 calamity where elders are the most at risk for death, they are faced with mind-bending double disaster threats.

The CDC is telling seniors to shelter in place

and get their meds and emergency supplies on line in their warning” Give yourself more time than usual to prepare your emergency food, water, and medicine and medical supplies. Home delivery is the safest choice for buying disaster supplies;” But the mail slowdown and nasty weather have colluded to stop this lifeline. So deliveries are not the safest choice if they do not get there before the disaster. Seniors cannot always go to shelter because people are less than 6 ft apart, so older people are going to die at home or end up in the COVID infected hospitals in November Twindemics without all the medication they need. They will die needlessly if their write-in ballot never shows up or they are reduced to standing in freezing lines at the polls.

PO Destroying Huge Machines That Sort the Mail to Slow it

That lifeline is being cut by the head of the Postal Service the US postal service, laying off workers, 33 top supervisors, taking mailboxes off the street dragging off out over 50 huge bar code sorters worth millions and destroying them wrecking the very equipment that makes the mail go fast—–make all those critical ways to destroy the PO- a beloved circulatory system in our country.

Call Your Local Congressman or Woman

If you work with seniors, have them in your family or care for them to do this to help. Call your representative in Congress and tell them you want them to save the Post Office. They want to get re-elected and if enough constituents tell them that this is a critical issue – they act. You might not have had civics but this is how government works, according to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Do not allow our post office our elders our American to dissolve and die. Rage Rage at the Coming of the Night.

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