Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Make a Plan to Help Aging Parents Cannot Celebrate Holidays Together

December 16, 2020

HOLIDAY GATHERING WITH AGING PARENTS NOT SAFE

Dr. Michael Osterholm, Disease Expert U of Minnesota has warned against  gathering in person with elder family members on the Holidays
“We need somebody to start to articulate, ‘What is our long-term plan? How are we going to get there? Why are we asking people to sacrifice distancing? Why are we telling

people if you really love your family, you won’t go home for Christmas and end up infecting mom or dad or grandpa and grandma.’ We don’t have that storytelling going on right now, and that’s every bit as important as the science itself,”

 

NEED LONG TERM PLAN STARTING NOW

So adult children need to start making a long-term plan. What are they going to say to their aging parents to convey they do not want to infect or even expose them to covid-19 so you cannot celebrate the holidays together? They cannot come to your home for the festivities and grandma and grandpa cannot go to theirs.

This takes, as Osterholm suggested

creating a story and learning how to tell stories if you do not already know.

HOW TO TELL A STORY 

Vaile Wright, senior director for health care innovation at the American Psychological Association. suggests starting the story by explaining how much you care about your family“I feel it’s in my family’s best interests to be more strict, so we’re not going to travel for Christmas.” This type of language, she said, makes the other person less defensive, since it doesn’t come across as “You aren’t doing the right thing so I can’t come to visit.”

SIGN UP FOR MY WEBINAR

 

Sign Up for My January Webinar  

 Working with Aging Dysfunctional Families- January and February-Long Day’s Journey into Night- 

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

 

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 st

 

 

 Learn how to:family-charis1-226x300.jpg

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, Coronavirus safety elders, CORONAVIRUS Stay at Home Plan, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid Holiday Remote Visit, COVID Webinar, COVID-19 Webinar, Families, FREE WEBINAR, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, HolidaySeason and COVID, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, TELEHEALTH HOLIDAY PLAN, Telehealth with GCM, ZOOM CHRISTMAS, ZOOM HANUKKAH, ZOOM THANKSGVING Tagged With: aging family, aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, COVID & Christmas, COVID & Holidays, COVID & Seasonal Flu, COVID VIRTUAL CHRISTMAS VISIT, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday COVID Celebration, HOLIDAY VISIT TO FAMILY PLAN, nurse advocate, nurse care manager

4 Ways to Keep Family COVID-safe if you go Home for Christmas

December 14, 2020

 

 

4 Ways to Keep Family Safe if you Travel to Grandma for Christmas

 

Are you planning to travel over the COVID river and through the mask-free woods to Grandma’s this holiday season?

How can you possibly stay safe? Do you trust your friends and family members to follow the standard safety protocols? Will they wear face coverings, maintain physical distance, and keep surfaces sanitized? Has anyone experienced symptoms recently or had contact with a person who is infected?

Answering these questions before you go may make those already awkward dinner conversations a lot less uncomfortable and may prevent you or aging parents from dying this holiday just as the vaccine is here.

CHECK THE COVID RATE WHERE ARE GOING

NPR has suggestions about traveling on the holiday  for adult children who must travel to Grandma’s on the holidays. This includes first checking out the COVID rate in the area where Grandma lives by using NPR’s coronavirus tracker to check this.

CHECK THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE INVITED 

Thanksgiving--2003png.png

The CDC says check out where others are traveling from and the number of people at the gathering among other guidelines from out very maligned by the Trump administration but storied science-based lead healthcare agency.

Travel Off-Peak Time

The Atlantic Magazine, a highly respected and historic magazine recommends, traveling off-peak or traveling a few days earlier, safer for you to drive, stay with Grandma or family, not friends and follow those basic guidelines, masking, distance, etc. Thanksgiving-Travel-2_20151119-171457_1.jpg

Read ALL & Find Common Thread of Safety

 

Check them all out and see what is repeated over and over and also what is feasible for you to travel to Grandpa and Grandma, stay safe yourself, keep elders safe and alive next holiday season after the vaccine.

Sign Up for My January Webinar  

 Working with Aging Dysfunctional Families- January and February-Long Day’s Journey into Night- 

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

 

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 st

 

 

 Learn how to:family-charis1-226x300.jpg

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

 

 

 

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

Filed Under: Aging, aging family crisis, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, Blog, Christmas Travel Safety COVID, Coronavirus safety elders, CORONAVIRUS Stay at Home Plan, COVID, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid Holiday Remote Visit, COVID Webinar, COVID-19 Webinar, Cut Off, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, HolidaySeason and COVID, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Pandemic, POST HOLIDAY CALLS, POST HOLIDAY SEASON, Safe Holiday Visits to Grandma, Telehealth COVID-19products, TELEHEALTH HOLIDAY PLAN, Travel Safely COVID Christmas, Virtual Christmas Virtual Visit, Webinar, Webinar ALCA GCM Tagged With: aging family, aging life and geriatric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, coronavirus and seniors, CORONAVIRUS WEBINAR, COVID & Holiday Season, COVID Driving to Thanksgiving, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, COVID VIRTUAL THANKSGIVING VISIT, COVID-19 prevention, GRANDMA VISIT THANKSGIVING, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving COVID Travel, Thanksgiving Webinar, Thanksgiving with aging parents, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family

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

December 6, 2020

      

 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

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Blog, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid Holiday Remote Visit, COVID-19 & Care Management, COVID-19 &Shelter in Place Plan, COVID-19 Emergency Plan, Cut-Off, Dysfunctional aging family, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, HolidaySeason and COVID, Senior Isolation, Senior Loneliness, sibling rivalry, sibling sharing care, Sibling Strife Christmas, Sibling Strife COCID, Sibling Strife COVID, Sibling Strife Holidays, Siblings, Virtual Family Meeting, Virtual Family meeting COVID Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, estranged midlife sibling, geriatric care manager, nurse care manager

How Storytelling Can Give Elders A Happier Family Thanksgiving

November 21, 2020

Want to increase aging parents and everyone’s enjoyment at Thanksgiving? Try storytelling using Thanksgiving memories.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person  through reminiscence, storytelling, and oral history even elders with dementia

This Thanksgiving, if you really do travel to a family home or grandma’s house, travel safely  If not make the safest choice, stay home and use zoom and include your elderly

parent. You can do this if they can use a computer or have a family member or friend who visits often and who lives nearby and is in their bubble serve and share Thanksgiving dinner at their home and use zoom with them to see other family members on the holiday.

Share Your Thanksgiving Story

If you are at a family member’s holiday dinner, ask everyone to tell their favorite story about a Thanksgiving dinner. Start with midlife members to get the idea and then ask

again parents to share their story. It will bring extra thanks to Thanksgiving by learning about an elder’s past and giving them the opportunity to share, which sometimes they do not do in the hubbub of family talking.

  The “telling ” also means someone documents. That magically gives the elder and a child social interaction and connectedness. Elders vividly recall their past by telling

from vignettes in their life – especially life in their 20’s, which sparks the richest recall called the “20’s bump”, according to researchers.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

So try this at Thanksgiving and it becomes intergenerational. The older person is given a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may not have heard all the details of their grandparent’s or parents’ life before. My 10 grandchildren have grown up with their now 80-year-old grandfather telling them exciting stories of when he was a California Highway patrolman.So a dual dose of a BeccaJulia-94.jpghigher quality of life for both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence.

Capture Your Families Past Before It Is Gone

 Many midlife adults now do ancestry and regret that they did not ask questions of older family members when they were alive. Capture that past now on this family holiday. An aging professional or a geriatric care manager can suggest family or friends record the Thanksgiving story as oral history using technology like an i Phone or i Pad.

StoryWorth For Thanksgiving

Another great idea to capture reminiscence when elders are safely sheltering in place is giving them StoryWorth. 

Last Christmas my daughter, sent this gift to my her Dad and both he and I love it. Each week  StoryWorth sends a question to my husband that prompts him to write about his past. He writes his reminiscence out longhand and I easily use the dictation on my phone and email his story to Story Worth.

At the end of the year, my daughter will order a bound book of all the stories- a whole collection of memories that she might never think to ask and will be saved for her and her children to pass on family history. I will order a copy for all her three siblings. Equally important, my husband, who has been sheltering in place since March with me, really enjoys writing about his past and the prompts have brought many vivid memories back to him.

SIGN UP FOR MY WEBINAR

8 Ways to Tame the Turmoil of the Holidays & Twindemic in the Aging Family

 Learn how!

  • How to sell services to the desperate Aging Family during the holiday surge
  • How to give hope to frantic children who call when their aging parent struggling with Loneliness and isolation on the holidays
  • How to help the Aging Family make holiday visits remotely or safely in person
  • How to counsel the Aging Family to track aging decline &Twindemic risk in loved ones
  • How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
  • How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
  • How to use financial forecasting to prepare for business growth during the holidays

Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Dysfunctional family or do COVID Coaching of Aging Families so the client chooses you

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Thursday December 3, 2020 FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Sign Up Now

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, Coronavirus safety elders, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid 19 Webinar, Dementia Activities, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Oral History, Quality of Life, Quality of Life and Reminicance, Quality of Life and Thanksgiving, Quality of Life for elders, Quality of Life with Dementia, Reminiscence Therapy, Remote Thanksgiving Family Visit, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Thanksgving visits during COVID, Therapist Specializing in Aging, Webinar Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent care, aging technology, ancrestory.com, assessing for quality of life, care manager, care plan, care plan interventions, case manager, family caregivers, Family Caregivers using technology, genealogy, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geritaric care manager, grandfather, grandmothers, grandparents, increasing quality of life, LCSW, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, oral history, oral history and quality of life, oral history and You Tube, parent care, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, reminisicsence technology, story telling elders, storytelling and elders, technology for caregivers, You Tube, You Tube and storytelling

How to Help Avoid a Cat and Dog fight at a Dysfunctional Family Thanksgiving

November 18, 2020

cat-dog-fight.jpg

Sparring Cats and Dogs

Especially after some holiday liquid cheer, sour step-parents, angry step-siblings, and mid-life adult kids who have grown up in a dysfunctional family can turn into sparring cats and dogs with teeth bared and claws dug in flesh, at Thanksgiving dinner.

 Why Their Stocking Full of Coal

As if COVID has not made the holidays hard enough for family gatherings, the ordinary aging processes are made far tougher when a family has a history of dysfunction. Aging professionals, like geriatric care managers, have their greatest challenges in working with these “difficult” families.

 

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves

They effectively face gut-wrenching eldercare challenges and crises. These families are under more stress as they move from long-established roles into uncharted territory.

 Why Cut-OFF Ruins Holidays

What if adult kids “ cut off” their Dad years ago and now he had a severe stroke- what do they do?? Someone has to take over Mom or Dad’s care and these dysfunctional midlife adult kids are heavy ambivalent or just don’t want to do it.  They are caught between “ I love you” and “ I hate you” and it only takes a few drinks and snarky remarks to start a fracas.

 

Now that the holidays are soon arriving – they have the same attitude about attending the family Thanksgiving dinner.

 So what to do if you are an aging professional, geriatric care manager, nurse care manager- before the holiday to avoid the scene below.

family-fight-300x223.jpg

 

SIGN UP FOR MY WEBINAR

 

8 Ways to Tame the Turmoil of the Holidays & Twindemic in the Aging Family

 Learn how!

  • How to sell services to the desperate Aging Family during the holiday surge
  • How to give hope to frantic children who call when their aging parent struggling with Loneliness and isolation on the holidays
  • How to help the Aging Family make holiday visits remotely or safely in person
  • How to counsel the Aging Family to track aging decline &Twindemic risk in loved ones
  • How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
  • How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
  • How to use financial forecasting to prepare for business growth during the holidays

Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Dysfunctional family or do COVID Coaching of Aging Families so the client chooses you

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Thursday, December 3, 2020, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Sign Up Now

 

 

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

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, Blog, case manager, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid Holiday Remote Visit, COVID Webinar, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, estranged siblings, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday on call, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, Holidays, HolidaySeason and COVID, Long Distance Care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, POST HOLIDAY CALLS, POST HOLIDAY SEASON, quality of life -COVID-19, Quality of Life and Reminicance, Siblings, Telehealth COVID-19products, TELEHEALTH HOLIDAY PLAN, Telehealth with ALCA, Telehealth with GCM, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving & dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving and COVID, THANKSGIVING BLOG, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Thanksgving visits during COVID, Therapist Specializing in Aging, Webinar, ZOOM CHRISTMAS, ZOOM THANKSGVING Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent Thanksgiving, alcohol on the holidays, care manager, case manager, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, danger signs for holiday visit, drunken holiday, dysfunctional family on the holiday, GRANDMA VISIT THANKSGIVING, Holiday sibling rivalry, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, post holiday parent care, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving with midlife siblings

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