
Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management
Learn how to calm the chaos of the dysfunctional family on the holiday. During the coming holiday season, especially after some liquid cheer, sour step-parents, angry step-siblings, and mid-life adult kids who grew -up in a dysfunctional family can spin into sparring cats and dogs with teeth bared at Thanksgiving Hannaka, Christmas dinner. Sign -up for my holiday webinar
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. The holidays are red meat for a dysfunctional family. Aging professionals, like geriatric care managers, have their greatest challenges in working with these “difficult” families.
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. the dysfunctional family on holidays like Thanksgiving can face an emotional detonation then an explosion with siblings laying into each other not the turkey.
The dysfunctional family on the holidays faces shunning or cutoff. What if adult kids “ cut off” their Dad years ago and now he had a severe stroke- what do they do when caught between I hate you and now I love you. One sibling has taken over Mom or Dad’s care and her/his dysfunctional midlife adult siblings just don’t want her to do this. It only takes a few drinks at dinner and snarky remarks start a fracas that leads to cut-off, which leads to them not sharing in Mom’s care, overloading the sibling caregiver, and endangering Mom’s care, through this shunning.
Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care
Management
Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel Geriatric Care 1
At family rituals, like Thanksgiving next month, adult siblings often are often brought back together. If you are one- will it be a happy feast or wrecked by holiday sibling rivalry??
As Gail Sheehy said in her book, Passages in Caregiving, we think that siblings will automatically support each other when aging parents fall apart. Sheehy quotes sociologists, Karl Pillemer and J. Jill Suitor, on sibling rivalry, in a study they did conclude that siblings are inherent rivals and the biggest source of stress between human beings.
If you are a midlife sibling, perhaps you have a brother or sister to whom you hardly speak because of sibling rivalry. Maybe you are about to see your siblings at the coming Thanksgiving feast, even on zoom during COVID, and anticipate largely ignoring him or her or doing chitchat as you seethe the inside. If you fit this description of sibling rivalry, you are in the same lurching boat as uncounted baby boomer siblings all over the world.
That wound from childhood may still ache enough to keep you on the furrowed path your family followed when you were young. Now, however, you and your adult siblings, nearing or at retirement age, may need to come together again to be part of a niece or
nephew’s wedding or christening, help plan a parent’s anniversary dinner, or, most important, oversee the increasing care of elderly family members.
I suggest you watch Pieces of April, a fabulous Thanksgiving film ( lead 21-year-old Katy Holmes debuts in a standout performance) where the film’s dysfunctional family revolves around adult sibling rivalry. The film is also about interracial couples, and in the end, around a catastrophic illness of the aging parent, where the siblings need to resolve their differences. It also makes it a trifecta with dementia. The grandmother, who has dementia is taken out of her nursing home to join the dysfunctional Thanksgiving feast and offers surprising sanity to the sibling-rivalry drama.
If you recognize this problem in your own family, seek counseling before coming the holidays engulf you. Contact the Aging Life Care Association to find help before a parental crisis.
SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –
holiday sibling rivalry
Get Ready for the Holiday Rush
WEDNESDAY, November 16th, 2022, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST
Learn how to create!
Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care
Management
Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care
Management
THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Tuesday, November 16th, 2021, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST
Find out more about dysfunctional families and sibling rivalry from My YouTube, Channel
Learn!
Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care
Management
Natasha Beauchamp- MSc, Webmaster and Research Scientist at Elder Pages Online, LLC
THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Tuesday, November 16th, 2021, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST
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 only coal in their stocking.
Learn how to!
Use the form on the
Contact page to email Cathy.