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