Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Why Do Adult Children Hate and Love Parents in Aging Dysfunctional Family?

January 11, 2021

ed6855aa32d877d7fc1ef9ee757e0f17-98.jpg

The aging dysfunctional family takes an expert to tackle because violence can break out at any time. In the film version of Tracy Letts  August in Osage County. Julia Roberts (the eldest daughter) attacks Meryl Streep (the pill-popping aging mother) at a ritual family gathering- the elder Dad’s funeral after he commits suicide.

 In the dysfunctional family, there have been symptoms of problems such as alcohol abuse, drug abuse, child abuse, or emotional abuse, like the demeaning mother the character Meryl Streep plays in August in Osage County. These dysfunctions usually create barriers to nurturing and this affects everyone in the family system.

The family system is also marked by ambivalence and all adults and children live in a love-hate relationship with other family members. (Julia Roberts character and all the daughter both love and revile their mother ).

 As systems resist change, it is even more difficult for members of the dysfunctional family to move to make changes when their parent needs care, like Meryl Streep does in August in Osage County. Julia Roberts and none of the daughters will care for their despised mother.

 The nearly normal system is shaken to its core by the parent being dependent. However, a care manager can guide the family members into reorganizing their family roles when the parent can no longer act as head of the family, while acknowledging the shift and changes they need to make both emotionally and practically. 

The members of the dysfunctional family who may have experienced a lack of nurturing by their parent and have no role model of caring. They are angry and resentful at caring for the parent, and thus will find it difficult to provide the practical and emotional care that their aging parent needs. The challenge to the adult child of the dysfunctional family is how to meet the dependency needs of the here and now old-old parent when the parent did not meet them dependency needs as a child.  That is why they need a highly experienced Geriatric Care Manager who can work with dysfunctional aging families.

 The challenge to the care manager is to bring the adult child of the dysfunctional family into the here and now and see their parents for who they are- an aging dependent person, flawed and imperfect, but a human being who needs their love, support and nurturing.

 

 

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

             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 stocking.      

Learn how to!

  • 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 Vital Clinical Tools you to solve client problems
  • Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
  • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

 SIGN UP NOW

 

 

Find out more on my YouTube Channel:  Geriatric Care 1 

 

 

 

Filed Under: adult child physical abuse, adult emotional abuse, Aging, aging family crisis, aging family system, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging Mother, Aging therapist, Blog, Dysfunctional Aging Familu, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family Inquiry, Dysfunctional Family System, estranged siblings, Families, fiscal abuse, Fiscal Elder Abuse, GCM Webinar, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, POST HOLIDAY CALLS, Siblings, Sign Up Dysfunctional Aging Family, Webinar, Webinar ALCA GCM Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging life and geriatric care management, aging life care management, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent crisis, care manager, caregiver assessment, case manager, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional Holiday, dysfunctional aging family, geriatric care manager, Holidays with midlife siblings, nurse care manager, Tools with Dysfunctional families, Violence Dysfunctional Family, Working With Dysfunctional family

4 Dysfunctional Family Markers Clinicians Can Face In New Years

January 5, 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

They have 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

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 family-fight-300x223.jpg

The chief role of the parent 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 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”  portrays 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 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.ed6855aa32d877d7fc1ef9ee757e0f17-98.jpg

Rituals Bring Out the Worst in this 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.

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays– 

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

              2:00-3:30 PM Pacific Standard Time

  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 stocking.      

Learn how to!

  • 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 Vital Clinical Tools, you to solve client problems
  • Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
  • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

 SIGN UP NOW

 

 

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

Learn more about how to work with the dysfunctional family in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, case manager, Cut Off, Dysfunctional Aging Familu, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, Holidays, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Long Days Journey Into Night, nurse care manager

Does The Dysfunctional Aging Family Need Mediation Post The Holidays ?

January 4, 2021

If your clients  ‘holiday visit from their family was miserable and you are care manager to the aging parents, a family meeting between the adult sisters and brothers and a mediatory might be needed this January. This will help you decide if you need a mediator or you can be a facilitator at the family meeting. Care Managers can do facilitation but you need very advanced training to be a mediator.

a. Compatible. Does their family generally present as a unit and lock arms together in a crisis? Do you usually work as a team?

b. Fragmented: Is their family unable to work together as a unit? Do their family members and siblings contact friends and outside professionals with their problems, while failing to confide in each other? Do family members ask other family and other

siblings, friends, and outside professionals to keep conversations secret from certain relatives? Is there a cache of family secrets that some family members do not tell others or share? Do kin pit one another against each other when trouble arises? Instead of locking arms in a crisis, does their family point fingers and blame each other?

c. Is their family productive or non-productive?

        1.Productive: Are the family members able to respond to the suggestions of friends or professionals and take necessary action to create change in the family?

         2.Nonproductive: Are any family members unable to mobilize when help is really needed? Do any siblings or other kin feel powerless to act? Is “victim” a term you would use for some family members and or siblings? Do family members ignore the ideas friends or professionals who are trying to transform the sibling/ family dynamics

d. Is their family stable or fragile?

         1.. Stable – When family members have disagreements, do they find a way to solve their problems? Does the family have long-standing relationships and respect the differences in each other?

         2. Fragile: Is there a history of emotional cut-offs or distancing on the part of one or more family members? Is there a pattern of generational divorce, remarriage?

Each family is different but if this family scores 2 out of three you should investigate bringing in a mediator ed6855aa32d877d7fc1ef9ee757e0f17-98.jpg

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays- 

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

              2:00-3:30 Pacific Standard Time

  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 stocking.      

Learn how to!

  • 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 Vital Clinical Tools, you to solve client problems
  • Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
  • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

 SIGN UP NOW

Read Dana Curtis Esquire’s Mediation and Geriatric Care Management in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th Edition 

Filed Under: aging family crisis, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Blog, case manager, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, elder mediator, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, mediation, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family holidays, dysfunctional family roles, elder mediation, elder mediator, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, mediation, mediator, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Psychosocial assessment

10 Do’s and Don’ts of Doing the Dysfunctional Family Inquiry Post Holidays

December 28, 2020

More than half of the aging families who call you inquiring about services after the holidays will be dysfunctional families. The great majority of calls will come from adult children. If you want to make the sale during the inquiry you have to know how to handle these dysfunctional family members on the phone and give them enough trust in you to sign your contract and give you a deposit for your services.

  1. Do Be Objective
  2. Do Use Active Listening
  3. Do Give them Hope you can solve their family problem
  4. Do a two-part inquiry and have the problem defined in the first part done by a skilled administrative Assistant?
  5. Do study the problem before you do the second call and have exactly how you would solve the problem ready in a planned elevator speech
  6. Do a complimentary 30-minute consultation
  7. Do not give away the store but outline how you are an expert at solving the problems (moving, keeping at home, Alzheimer’s wandering and a bare outline of your solution
  8. Do not criticize
  9. Do not blame,
  10. Do not take sides if several family members points of view and expressed them

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays-

             Thursday, January 21, 2021.  

                            2 PM -3:30 PM Pacific Standard Time

 

  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 stocking.      

Learn how to!

  • 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 Vital Clinical Tools, you to solve client problems
  • Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
  • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

 SIGN UP NOW

Find out more in Emily Saltz and Lynn Hackstaff’s chapter Family Conflicts, Dependence and Mutuality: Care Management and the Dysfunctional Family. Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition.Jones and Bartlett 

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

Watch my Free YouTube Channel – Inquiry With Dysfunctional Aging Family After Holidays

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, Care Management Inquiry Call, Concierge aging clients, Concierge Senior, Contract signed, Dysfunctional Aging Familu, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family Inquiry, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, inquiry, inquiry call, Intake COVID-19, Make the Sale, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Sign Up Dysfunctional Aging Family, Sign Up GCM Client Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging life care manager, aging life inquiry, aging life or GCM inquiry, care manager, case manager, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional Holiday, dysfunctional aging family, dysfunctional family roles, geriatric care manager, Holiday Inquiry call, nurse care manager, Tools with Dysfunctional families

Please Elvis – We had a Blue Christmas

December 26, 2020

Dys-fam90264_CH22_FIG02.jpg

      

A Blue Christmas or Hannakka is what the dysfunctional family always has. Elvis gets them. He sings it for this joyless broken-hearted –yet furious- family. They have a blue holiday filled with memories of ruined, -maybe drunken- giftless pain while most holiday songs warble their celebration should be white.


And when those blue snowflakes start falling
That’s when those blue memories start calling
You’ll be doin’ all right with your Christmas of white
But I’ll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas

             You can’t be Elvis but here are some more steps a geriatric care manager can transform these families after they call on the holiday.

 

 

           

                        Identify intergenerational roles and conflicts: The GCM must ” get” existing power dynamics within the family, redefine responsibilities to move to generational maturity, and realign roles and tasks for each family member.

 

The GCM should encourage a new two-way nurturing relationship between the adult child and the aging parent that never existed. At the same time, the GCM must enable the adult child as a caregiver to set limits that are appropriate to a mature relationship  (a very hard redo) The GCM shapeshifts the adult child to identify and remove himself or herself from triangulated, fused, or other destructive family patterns that blue, blue Christmas

 

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays- 

             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 stocking.      

Learn how to!

  • 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 Vital Clinical Tools, you to solve client problems
  • Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
  • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

    SIGN UP NOW

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

 

 

Filed Under: abusive aging parents, Aging, Aging Families and Disaster, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging family system, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, Blog, borderline client, Borderline narcissistic family, Cut Off, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family System, entitled family, estranged elder parents and adult kids, estranged siblings, Families, fiscal abuse, Fiscal Elder Abuse, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, intergenerational conflict, nurse advocate, nurse care manager Tagged With: adult child, aging family dynamics, Blue Christmas, boundary in aging families, Clinical Tools for Aging Family, destructive family pattern, Dysfuctional Family system, dysfunctional family roles, fusion, geriatric care manager, older parents refusing care, triangulated aging family system, Triangulation

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