Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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How Storytelling at Thanksgiving Can Give Elders A Happier Family Holiday

November 22, 2022

Want to increase aging parents’ and everyone’s enjoyment at Thanksgiving? Try storytelling at Thanksgiving using elders’ memories.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person  through reminiscence, storytelling, and oral history for elders

This Thanksgiving, if you really do travel to a family home or grandma’s house, travel safely  If not make the safest choice, stay home and  use Zoom and include your elderly

 

parent. You can do oral history for elders if they can use a computer or have a family member or friend who visits often and who lives nearby and is in their bubble serve and share Thanksgiving dinner at their home and use zoom with them to see other family members on the holiday.

Share Your Thanksgiving Story

If you are at a family member’s holiday dinner and use reminiscence for elders by asking everyone to tell their favorite story about a Thanksgiving dinner. Start with midlife members to get the idea and then ask

 

again parents to share their stories.

Oral history for elders will bring extra thanks to Thanksgiving by learning about an elder’s past and giving them the opportunity to share, which sometimes they do not do in the hubbub of family talking.

  The “telling ” also means someone documents. That magically gives the elder and a child social interaction and connectedness. Elders vividly recall their past by telling stories from vignettes in their life – especially life in their 20’s, which sparks the richest recall called the “20’s bump”, according to researchers.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

So try storytelling at  Thanksgiving and it becomes intergenerational. The older person is given a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may not have heard all the details of their grandparent’s or parent’s life before. My 10 grandchildren have grown up with their now 80-year-old grandfather. telling them exciting stories of when he was a California Highway patrolman. So a dual dose of a higher quality of life for both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence.

Capture Your Families Past Before It Is Gone

 

 Many midlife adults now do ancestry and regret that they did not ask questions of older family members when they were alive. Capture that past now on this family holiday. An aging professional or a geriatric care manager can suggest family or friends record the Thanksgiving story as oral history using technology like an i Phone or i Pad.

Story Telling at Thanksgiving  with Story Worth

Another great idea to capture reminiscence for elders is giving them StoryWorth. 

 

My daughter sent this gift to her Dad and both he and I love it. Each week  StoryWorth sends a question to my husband that prompts him to write about his past. He writes his reminiscence out longhand and I easily use the dictation on my phone and email his story to Story Worth.

At the end of the year, my daughter will order a bound book of all the stories- a whole collection of memories, an oral history of an elder father that she might never think to ask and will be saved for her and her children to pass on family history. I will order a copy for all her three siblings. Equally important, my husband, really enjoyed writing about his past and the prompts have brought many vivid memories back to him.

Sweet grandmother holding a beautifully cooked turkey dinner.

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Benefits of Reminiscence, Black Aging Family, black care manager, black concieirge nurse, black concierge care manager, black concierge RN, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RB, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black entrepreneurs, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black geriatric care managers, Black RN, black RN care manager, black social worker, black travel nurse, Black Travel Nurses, Black Travel RN, care management business, care manager, caregiver coaching, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, case manager, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional families, Concierge aging clients, Coronavirus safety elders, COVID -19 Safety, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid 19 Webinar, Dementia Activities, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family Inquiry, elder care manager, Elder Reminicence on Thanksgiving, Emotional Quality of Life, Families, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Safety Travel COVID, Long Distance travel Holidays, New Years, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Oral History, Quality of Life, quality of life -COVID-19, Quality of Life and Reminicance, Quality of Life and Thanksgiving, Quality of Life for elders, quality of life in senior centers, Quality of Life with Dementia, Reminicence on Thanksgiving, Reminicence with elders, Reminiscence Therapy, Remote Thanksgiving Family Visit, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Thanksgiving with COVID, Thanksgving visits during COVID, Therapist Specializing in Aging, Webinar Tagged With: aging family, aging family Thanksgiving, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent Thanksgiving, aging technology, ancrestory.com, assessing for quality of life, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black caregivers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Heirlooms, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care manager, care plan, care plan interventions, case manager, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, COVID VIRTUAL THANKSGIVING VISIT, family caregivers, Family Caregivers using technology, genealogy, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geritaric care manager, grandfather, grandmothers, grandparents, increasing quality of life, LCSW, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, oral history, oral history and quality of life, oral history and You Tube, parent care, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, reminisicsence technology, story telling elders, storytelling and elders, technology for caregivers, Thanksgiving Webinar, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving with midlife siblings, You Tube, You Tube and storytelling

How to Help Avoid a Cat and Dog fight Among the Dysfunctional Family On Holidays

November 1, 2022

cat-dog-fight.jpg

Sparring Cats and Dogs AKA Siblings

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

 Why Their Stocking is Full of Coal

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.

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves

Dysfunctional Familiy on the holidays

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.

 Why Cut-OFF Ruins the Celebration 4The Dysfunctional family on holidays

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.

 

Now that the holidays are soon arriving – they have the same attitude about attending the family Thanksgiving dinner.

 

 

Dysfunctional family on holidays

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

 

WEDNESDAY, November 16th, 2022, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

 Learn how to create marketing to alert adult children you are there

  • Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
  • Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
  • Pre-Holiday e-newsletters, podcasts, speakers bureau, blogs-to market

Learn clinical skills to covert and tools to serve frantic adult children and their declining, resistant parents and the dysfunctional family on the holiday

  • How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional & long-distance family
  • How to use tools to contain sibling holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
  • How to move the family to New Year’s stability
  • Position Your Agency ahead of Care Managers who do not have great pre-holiday marketing campaigns and lack the clinical skills how to work with the dysfunctional family or nearly normal family during the holidays
  • Featuring

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management        

 

 

  • Dysfunctional family on holidays

 

 

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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When “Cut Off” in The Family is a ” Phantom Limb” at Thanksgiving

November 7, 2021

The Dysfunctional Family’s Worst Time of The Year

Thanksgiving, coming up soon, is the gateway to the dysfunctional family’s worst time of year- the holidays. Families face each other across the table they despise or just both love and hate. Or there is that empty seat- the uninvited guest- the brother-sister, aunt, son, daughter who is never invited- the cut off-family member. 

Families Phantom Limb

But since this leaves the family with that “phantom limb”- like the awful sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached and where it was is pulsating in pain- families reach out for someone to fix it.

The ordinary aging processes are made far tougher when a family has a history of dysfunction. Aging professionals, like care managers, have their greatest challenges in working with these “difficult” families around the holidays.

 Dysfunctional Families Fail Eldercare

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves effectively in the face of eldercare challenges and crises. These families are under more stress as they move from long-established roles into uncharted territory.

Family” Cut” off  faces Phantom Limb at Thanksgivingimages_20141216-184443_1.jpg

What if they “ cut off” their Dad years ago and now he had a severe stroke-what do they do?? Someone has to take over Mom or Dad’s care and these dysfunctional midlife adult kids are heavy ambivalent or just don’t want to do it. Now that the holidays are arriving – they have the same attitude about attending the family Thanksgiving dinner.

My favorite aging dysfunctional family  ” cut off ” Thanksgiving film is  Pieces of April  Made as a comedy in 2003, it touches death and dying, sibling rivalry, mother-daughter estrangement, interracial love- and Alzheimer’s all fueled by deep family fault lines and how to cook a turkey on a broken stove. The film manages to make the old theme of fraught family Thanksgiving, crisp, funny, and ultra worth watching.I ordered it from Netflix but you  can watch on YOUTUBE 

 Shot in 3 weeks for a measly $350 K, it received a Sundance Film award and accolades for its pedigree cast including 21-year-old Katie Holmes as the grunge Goth daughter who her family has ” Cut Off”, Patricia Clarkson as the dying  Mom who distains then forgives her rebellious eldest child and Alice Drummond as the demented grandmother who comes along and plays the most rational person in the film in her obliviousness to the family holiday freak-out.

 

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR – 

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

Tuesday, November 16th, 2021, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

 Learn how!

  • How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional &long-distance family
  • How to use tools to contain Holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
  • How to move the family to New Year’s stability
  • Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
  • Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
  • Pre-Holiday Technology to help you move people from discovery to signing on the dotted line
  • Position Your Agency ahead of Care Managers who do not have great preholiday marketing campaigns and lack the clinical skills how to work with Adult Children and families during the chaotic aging family holiday visit when adult kids find their aging parents need care

Featuring Speakers

 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

Sign Up Now

 

 

Find out more about Holiday Adult Child Freak out-in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel  Geriatric Care 1

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel Geriatric Care 1

 

Filed Under: Adult children, Aging, Aging Alcohol Abuse, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, Black, Black Aging Family, Black entrepreneurs, Black geriatric care managers, Black Travel Nurses, Blog, care manager, case manager, Cut Off, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family Inquiry, Dysfunctional Family Mediation, Dysfunctional Family System, elder care manager, Families, GCM Operation Manual Class, GCM Operations Manual, GCM Operations Manual Class, GCM Webinar, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday Rush for care managers, Holiday season, Holiday Webinar, Holidays, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Siblings, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving & dysfunctional family, THANKSGIVING BLOG, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving with Dysfuntional Family, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging family, aging family Thanksgiving, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, aging parent Thanksgiving, care manager, case manager, cut -off, dysfunctional family holidays, geriatric care manager, Katie Holmes, Marriage and Family Therapist, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving with aging parents, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Therapist in Aging

When “Cut Off” in The Family is a ” Phantom Limb” at Thanksgiving

November 26, 2020

The Dysfunctional Family’s Worst Time of The Year

Thanksgiving can be the gateway to the dysfunctional family’s worst time of year- the holidays. You face family across the table you despise or just both love and hate. Or there is that empty seat- the uninvited guest- the brother-sister, aunt, son, daughter who you never invite- the cut off-family member. 

Families Phantom Limb

But since this leaves the family with that “phantom limb”- like the awful sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached and where it was is pulsating in pain- families reach out for someone to fix it.

The ordinary aging processes are made far tougher when a family has a history of dysfunction. Aging professionals, like geriatric care managers, have their greatest challenges in working with these “difficult” families around this time of year.

 Dysfunctional Families Fail Eldercare

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves effectively in the face of eldercare challenges and crises. These families are under more stress as they move from long-established roles into uncharted territory.

Family” Cut” off  faces Phantom Limb at Thanksgivingimages_20141216-184443_1.jpg

What if they “ cut off” their Dad years ago and now he had a severe stroke-what do they do?? Someone has to take over Mom or Dad’s care and these dysfunctional midlife adult kids are heavy ambivalent or just don’t want to do it. Now that the holidays are arriving – they have the same attitude about attending the family Thanksgiving dinner.

My favorite aging dysfunctional family  ” cut off ” Thanksgiving film is  Pieces of April  Made as a comedy in 2003, it touches death and dying, sibling rivalry, mother-daughter estrangement, interracial love- and Alzheimer’s all fueled by deep family fault lines and how to cook a turkey on a broken stove. The film manages to make the old theme of fraught family Thanksgiving, crisp, funny, and ultra worth watching.I ordered it from Netflix but you  can watch on YOUTUBE 

 Shot in 3 weeks for a measly $350 K, it received a Sundance Film award and accolades for its pedigree cast including 21-year-old Katie Holmes as the grunge Goth daughter who her family has ” Cut Off”, Patricia Clarkson as the dying  Mom who distains then forgives her rebellious eldest child and Alice Drummond as the demented grandmother who comes along and plays the most rational person in the film in her obliviousness to the family holiday freak-out.

SIGN UP FOR MY WEBINAR

 

8 Ways to Tame the Turmoil of the Holidays & Twindemic in the Aging Family

 Learn how!

  • How to sell services to the desperate Aging Family during the holiday surge
  • How to give hope to frantic children who call when their aging parent struggling with Loneliness and isolation on the holidays
  • How to help the Aging Family make holiday visits remotely or safely in person
  • How to counsel the Aging Family to track aging decline &Twindemic risk in loved ones
  • How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
  • How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
  • How to use financial forecasting to prepare for business growth during the holidaysed6855aa32d877d7fc1ef9ee757e0f17-98.jpg

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

Sign Up Now

 

 

Find out more about Holiday Adult Child Freak out- in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel  Geriatric Care 1

 

 

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel Geriatric Care 1

 

Filed Under: Adult children, Aging, Aging Alcohol Abuse, Aging Family, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, Blog, care manager, case manager, Cut Off, Dysfunctional aging family, elder care manager, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric care manager, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Siblings, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging family, aging family Thanksgiving, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, aging parent Thanksgiving, care manager, case manager, cut -off, dysfunctional family holidays, geriatric care manager, Katie Holmes, Marriage and Family Therapist, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving with aging parents, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Therapist in Aging

The Ice Storm Cometh Again This Thanksgiving For Aging Parents

November 22, 2020

The Ice Storm is Coming

 Kids who grew up in the ’70s will soon have Thanksgiving with their 70 or 80-year-old aging parents. Will they recall the ” Ice Storm”?

In the film, it is Thanksgiving weekend in the early 70″s and a boyish Tobey Mc Guire returns home from prep school to a Thanksgiving feast that his angry sister starts with this prayer.

” Dear Lord, thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for all the material possessions we have and enjoy. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff us like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.”

 The Dysfunctional Family’s 70″s Season of Hell

So we begin the descent down the cusp of the 1970s as the nearly normal family shapeshifts into dysfunctional in Ang Lee’s brilliant film The Ice Storm 

Lee’s Thanksgiving classic is the perfect reflection of some family’s plunge into the early 70’s season of hell.

If you’re in your 50’s or 60″s and grew up with parents who went haywire through 70’s social change, you will remember the ice storm.

 Divorce imploded the family, as we knew it. If you were a parent then you may recall,  Key Parties, or Nixon Resigning,   Deep Throat, or hear David Bowie who did the soundtrack to the film.

Some Parents of the ’70s Walked on the Wild Side With Open Marriage

With Lou Reed, you can loop back to his fabulous song that spins the period Walk on the Wild Side and maybe recall the template for it the entire era the -book, Open Marriage.  

 

Children of this 70’s social tumult may now share another Thanksgiving with aging parents who put them through hell. What will they do when they find they have to care for those same parents who did not care for them?

SIGN UP FOR MY WEBINAR

 Learn how!

  • How to sell services to the desperate Aging Family during the holiday surge
  • How to give hope to frantic children who call when their aging parent struggling with Loneliness and isolation on the holidays
  • How to help the Aging Family make holiday visits remotely or safely in person
  • How to counsel the Aging Family to track aging decline &Twindemic risk in loved ones
  • How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
  • How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
  • How to use financial forecasting to prepare for business growth during the holidays

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

Sign Up Now

Free Webinar Button, Badge, icon, logo. Vector stock illustration.

 

 

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

 

 

Filed Under: Adult children, Aging, aging family crisis, aging life business, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Dysfunctional aging family, elder care manager, Geriatric Care Management Business, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, inquiry call, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Parent crisis Tagged With: 1970"s, aging family, aging life geriatric care manager, aging parent crisis, aging parent Thanksgiving, care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Open Marriage, swingers, The Ice Storm

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