
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
At family rituals, like Thanksgiving next week, adult siblings often are often brought back together. If you are one- will it be a happy feast?
As Gail Sheehy says 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, 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. 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, 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 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 Katy Holmes debuts in a standout performance) where the film’s dysfunctional family revolves around adult sibling rivalry. The film is also, in the end. around a catastrophic illness of the aging parent, where the siblings need to resolve their differences.
If you recognize this problem in your own family, seek counseling before coming the holidays engulfs you. Contact the Aging Life Care Association to find help before a parental crisis.
8 Ways to Tame the Turmoil of the Holidays & Twindemic in the Aging Family
Learn how!
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
Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel Geriatric Care 1
Celebrations, (like Thanksgiving coming up) Hanukah, Christmas
Father’s – any holiday— can be a nightmare with adult siblings and the dysfunctional family. You have to show up, yet you prepare for the daggers or uppercuts – either wielded by you as a sibling.
1) It is a holiday event, not a family meeting. If you want to talk about personal issues, make a date to get together with your angry sister/brother.
2) Remember that it is Thanksgiving and not all about you. Keep a positive attitude for the sake of your aging parent if they are there, your own kids your nieces and nephews, and your adult siblings.
4)Have a family meeting to discuss COVID restrictions and the best way to stay safe,
which might mean a zoom meal Do not exclude in the decision. Again to build a team effort.
5) Call ahead and arrange to split the bill if you order individual meals from a restaurant due to COVID – ahead of time- again team effort and no embarrassing credit card bargaining at the table that only brings on more fights.
6) Keep your alcohol in check. You can’t control anyone else but you can control and even change yourself. We all say things we may regret with lots of nervous drinking.
7) Check out in-person family meeting tools and some free online meeting tools so if you have an aging parent you can arrange care between siblings with online after the holiday get meeting- not in midst of holiday visit.
8) Hire an aging life care manager to facilitate a family meeting.
Learn how!
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
Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel Geriatric Care 1
Use the form on the
Contact page to email Cathy.