Reminiscence isn’t new. Before the printing press, storytellers and bards were how history was recorded-
Oral storytellers gave us the Odyssey and other valiant tales.Ulysses and Penelope may be coming to your Memorial Day Barbecue this coming weekend.
But storytelling only works if the teller remembers the lines. Family history has to be captured when the older person still remembers. So holiday events are a perfect time to tap into that font before it flickers.
Tips to Capture Elders Stories
Here are some tips to use if they want to capture these family tales during Memorial Day weekend with aging parents—a perfect time to do this. Use empathetic listening if they can. Make all the messages you are are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting- say, “I want to listen to them.”
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.
Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story .
See if they will follow along.” Did you go to Memorial Day parades when you were a kid or march in one after the war ( pick his war).” Did your parents have barbecues to start the summer ?”. “What was it like being drafted into to service ? Where did ou serve?
Music is just next to memory in the brain .
Alive Inside and can be used for elders with dementia. So 50’s Rock and Roll, Little Richard , Bill Haley and if they are older the Four Freshman. Play elders music at your event and ask older vets or their wives or widows for stories of the Vietnam War, Korean War or Iraq.
Two technology tools to help you with Remiscence for your older client
Story Worth is a legacy building tool that can help families create a book of memories through weekly
easy prompts of questions to ask the older person the create a weekly story about their life resulting in a book after one Year . My daughter gifted it to her Dad and he and the whole family loved the legacy book that was created
Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone and used Dictation to transcribe the memories into written word to print.
Check out my Book Handbook of Geriatric Care Management with more tools for legacy building written by David Lindeman Director Of the Center for Technology at UC Berkeley and Julie Menack of 21 st Care Solutions
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a family can use a practice called reminiscence therapy to help combat the frustration, confusion, and depression that can often accompany dementia and even bring joy to the older person
Easter eggs, create easter baskets, do an Easter egg hunt, serve an Easter brunch or dinner, get them involved, let them watch, allow them to help if possible, serve them ritual food or to taste it and ask when how they experienced these rituals, when they were young. If you have old albums of pictures from their childhood of them at Easter, look and the photos with them. Then listen.
shopping, plus ambulation. Then add depression – widowhood, loss and you have the challenges of aging in managing this entire titanic ritual. Many times the aging Mom can no longer balance all these plates and the holidays shatter with the crashing dishes.
like they did the nights of the crying newborn or the rebellious teen, and are thrown off balance by the sometimes sudden and usually unexpected loss of their anchoring aging parents, like when they find Elderly Mom is unable to pull off running the holidays Indeed, what must happen in this new developmental phase is that the adult child must evolve beyond the needy child, (I will still have Mom pull of the holiday as she always did) he or she has been, depending on his or her parents for that fiscal, emotional, social support and ritual organizing parents, like managing of officiating over the Christmas or Hanukkah celebration.
the parents and the adult child’s point of view. The really need a geriatric care manager’s services
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 
portrays the most miserable of dysfunctional families. Alcohol, secrets that have been kept by all for generations splatter the pages of this great play like it does in all the ruined holiday’s children of dysfunctional families recall with horror. 