Holiday Rituals in Aging Family Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

“Do I Need Social Media”

June 13, 2022

Do I Need Social Media?

Do I need Social Media is what some care managers say? Many have a solo practice and it is one more thing to do on top of marketing your business, managing clients paying bills – all overwhelming jobs?? Some geriatric care managers own flip phones and dig in their heels and say what is social media marketing going to do for my kind of business and do I really need it?

Social Media Main Plank of Care Manager Marketing Strategy

It doesn’t matter if you run a solo practice or a big national company. Social media is an essential piece of your business marketing strategy. In the age of conspiracy theories spreading on social media, you can consider giving up personal social media up but not if your use it in your small business like care management

Social platforms help you connect with your customers, increase awareness about your brand, and boost your leads and sales. With more than 4.1 billion people around the world using social media, it’s no passing trend.

4 Ways to Get More Clients With Social Media

So, if you are just starting your aging life or geriatric care management business or are one of those folks who has dug in your heels against Social Media this is what you can do to get more customers using it1. Write a blog

How

Choose Word Press or another blog software and set up an account to start positioning information to potential clients. The platform can add links to social media so you just post easily on your blog instead of going to each social media sight to post

How

Design the format (they have templates), write content, publish on a least a monthly basis, and consider services like Constant Content

3. Open twitter Facebook, Linked in Pinterest Accounts

How

Sign up and learn how to use social media. Best if on your website and automatically posts

Services needed to complete

4. Join Linked in for professional referrals: Develop a Profile, get testimonials, and join Linked in groups like Aging Life Care Asso group

Create a Facebook fan page for your GCM business

Learn to use Pinterest for your business

Create a Twitter account for your business

Join Instagram for business

Sign -up for Google My Business

Lack of Social Media Skills No Time to do? Hire Expert

If you feel you do not have the time or the skills to do this- very likely for folks over a certain age- we did not grow up with this language- hire someone to do this or best bet a grandchild. I have two grandchildren who have helped me over the years, although I now have a webmaster.

You can also have a professional create marketing content, newsletters, and blogs for you using businesses like Elderpages

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interviews with CEO’s major care management software platforms
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Reminiscence on Memorial Day- Serve it to Elders Along With Hamburgers

May 26, 2022

What is Reminiscence- It isn’t new-It’s 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’s 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. If you are gathering at a memorial day barbeque, ask, older family members how they celebrated the holiday that begins supper, when they were young.

Then use empathetic listening.What is empathetic listening? Make all the messages you are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting- say, “I want to listen to you

What is Reminiscence-Asking 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? Where did you serve?

Music is just next to memory in the brain.

Alive Inside 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 elder’s 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 Reminiscence for your older client

Story Worth

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 to 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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Can’t See Aging Mom Easter, Passover-7 Ways to Make Her Feel U Are There

April 12, 2022

Can’t see Aging Mom on Easter or Passover

Can’t See Your Mom on Easter or Passover – Long Distance?

Can’t See your Mom on Passover or Easter as you are a long-distance care provider, what’s the best way to keep in touch with the long-distance elder if you can’t visit on coming Passover or Easter.

Easy Low-Touch Non-Tech Ideas

photo of father and boy coloring Easter egg together as Can’t see Aging Mom on Easter or Passover

Use low touch—the old-fashioned communication elders grew up – the Post Office and telephone. If you can’t see Mom or Easter or Passover, send a card with a photo of your kids dying easter eggs. Older people came from a generation where cards and mail were really meaningful. It is easy and really touches elders who love opening the little personal mail they get, especially from family. These heritage links are a great way to support a far away elder. Non-tech, they cause no stress on their part. Even we boomers who walk haltingly through the tech world of 40 characters forget that connecting with a stamp or a call is so familiar to an older person. Plus you give that feeling of warmth they always got when they “ opened” “ or “ answered” saw a real photo -something real (not virtual); Try having the whole family send a card even kids. A flooded mailbox on Easter or Passover fills their heart.

Let Mom or Dad Smell The Affection. Send Passover Easter in a box

Can’t see Mom or Dad on Passover or Easter but Dad or Mom, are not religious, mail holiday care packages —bake or buy cookies or small loaves of bread. Bake it with your children and send samples along with actual photos of everyone baking in the kitchen or buying treats. Even if they crumble a bit, elders will smell the affection.

Easy Option -Holiday in a Box

Can’t see Mom on Passover or Easter, send a “ holiday in a box. Easter and Passover are coming up. Send a basket of kids’ drawings, candy, nuts, home-baked or purchased Easter Bread or cookies or Matzah that reflects the holiday celebration plus a gift certificate for an Easter brunch or dinner with a friend. Give Mom joy in a simple package. For an extra special surprise, arrange an invitation to a Passover or Easter dinner with a friend or through your parents’ synagogue or church

Passover in a Box

For those adult children who are time-deprived, and can’t see Mom over the holidays, order Passover in a box on Amazon if you have little time and want to send something special. The same goes with Easter in a box with delicious Easter cookies.

A Little Help From Aging Parents Friends

Skip that holiday in a box, if you can’t see Mom on Passover or Easter you can create a circle of care . Get the app Lots of Helping Hands through neighbors, friends, people in your elder’s place of worship, or a group they belong to. Then you can ask if they can arrange to include your older relative or friend in the Easter brunch, egg hunt or Passover meal. You will then have an entire support team your elder with a whole circle of support in the future and not feel so alone.

Make Aging Tech for Holiday Gift

Send a high-tech gift, if you can’t see Mom or Dad over Easter or Passover. Send a high-tech device that your loved one can really use and figure out. I just ordered the Esky Wireless Locator because I keep misplacing my glasses.

How Care Managers Help Get to Long Distance CarProviders

Care Managers can do lots of things for a family member who is long-distance and can’t see Mom on Easter or Passover. Julie Menack in her chapter “Long Distance Care Providers” in my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family lists tasks long-distance care providers can do to make their own lives and their long-distance loved ones saner, sounder, and happier

Find a Care Manager Through Aging Life

If you want to investigate an Aging Life geriatric care manager in your parent’s own town find a professional who can help you do all this so you can remain a son or daughter and a less stressed caregiver.

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Passover Begins Friday-Care Managers Can Support Clients Spiritual Needs

April 11, 2022

Passover begins Friday and brings many Jews will celebrate with a seder

where their spiritual beliefs will be celebrated with food, family, and ritual.

As we age joining in spiritual rituals means more and more to us. Ritual

religious holidays like Passover fill all faiths, but especially elders faiths and both spiritual and emotional needs.

A Care Manager needs to learn how to offer elders support and inclusion during holidays like Passover or any religious holiday.

Care management is first and foremost a holistic interaction between

a caring professional and an older adult. Holistic care works

with the senior beyond just the necessary formal services. Care

managers should work with the seniors and their families to know their religious needs if any. Getting to know the person includes understanding the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual needs and how you can help them get included in the celebration.

Even though Passover begins Friday the average care manager does not see themselves as doing therapy with their clients or encouraging religion. But the work of Carl Jung or Viktor Frankl may be more than is useful. For most care managers , it is helpful to follow a few rules:

1. Listen to the client. Understand the client’s perception of the religious phenomenon as the person describes it and how you can help them celebrate Passover or any religious holiday if they wish.

2. Listen to his or her the perceptions of the client’s faith tradition and

spiritual beliefs and how much and how they want to be included in family celebrations or religious services so you can help them do this, through contacting the family, the spiritual place of worship, so they can attend and have transportation or arrange some form of celebration if homebound

3. Consult with the Rabbi from the Temple near them, who can help interpret any

beliefs or rituals or symbols that cannot be fully understood from the description of the client and if the temple has transportation for elders to services if the client wishes to attend.

Read Rev.James Ellor’s, Ph.D., LCSW, DCSW, Baylor University’s excellent chapter on Spirituality and the Geriatric Care Manager.

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4 Dysfunctional Family Markers Clinicians Can Face In New Years

December 27, 2021

The normal family is the hand grenade compared to the nuclear bomb of the dysfunctional family

When both are faced with a filial crisis of aging parents being dependent and the adult child needs to take over they cower or explode.

How Do You Know a Dysfunctional Family

1. They lack the ability to resolve conflicts

The dysfunctional family has frequent psycho-social blockages that prevent the family from growing emotionally. They fail miserably at moving through all family stages and orchestrating family rituals.

2. They Cannot make Life transitions

In each dysfunctional family most life transitions in the family, like birth, adolescence, and marriage have been very difficult to make, marked by a lack of support from the parents. Every holiday might be drunkenly be ruined. The parental figures are usually not in charge, nurturing, or able to establish establishes clear rules. They have never created an excel spreadsheet on tasks to do to orchestrate a holiday. Like a disease spreading down generations, they never knew how happily celebrate anything together, as their parents wrecked ritual occasions as well.

3. There are murky roles in the family

The chief role of the parent is characterized by a lack of leadership of the family and the ability to nurture the children. Mom rarely became the high priestess on Hanukkah or Christmas or any family ritual gathering, the family members generally do not believe the parent is there for them and can be depended upon. The concierge dysfunctional family is colored by bloody strained relationships and unresolved conflicts and ruined ritual memories.

4. They inspire great literature

The family is the inspiration for great literature. O’Neil’s wrenching plays A Long Day’s Journey into Night” portray the most miserable of dysfunctional families. Alcohol, drugs, and secrets that have been kept by all for generations splatter the pages of this great play mirroring all the ruined holidays children of dysfunctional families recall with horror. Prince of Tides a tale of a southern concierge dysfunctional family gives us a timelier glimpse of a family whose center can never hold together and whose blood oozes all over everyone from one generation to the next. Award-winning plays and films, like Tracey Letts August in Osage County about a ruined ritual funeral from hell when Julia Roberts tries to beat up drug-addled, drunk presiding mother Meryl Streep.

Rituals Bring Out the Worst in this family

In the dysfunctional family when an aging Mom does not make the very small things she was able to pull off like the Latkes or the Christmas cookies she always made every Hanukkah and Christmas, or cannot pull off big things like the daughter’s wedding someone has got to be the cook and family organizer, and resentments skyrocket – tempers flare – and the torch just might never get passed.

The family is again thrown into crisis. That means someone in the tribe has to take over -yet the dysfunctional family has no model or spreadsheet for any transition in power. They cannot pull off any ritual celebrations or even family Taco Tuesdays. Most critically when the rudderless head of the family needs care, these adult children cannot care for a parent who did not care for them.

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