As Elvis Predicted
Many families have a Blue Blue Christmas-or Hanukkah. Why does an aging crisis occur so often during the holidays? How can so many desperate adult children get care managers on the phone and howl about Mom or Dad in December? There are a million bad reasons, – too much alcohol, too many folks who do not get along and drink that alcohol. But the physical basis for all of this misery in an elder is often a loss of executive function and IADL’s and ADL’s
Why ADL’s and IADL’s.
It takes IADLs- (Instrumental Activities of Daily Living) shopping for gifts, cooking ritual meals and ADL’s walking to shopping
, decorate serve a ritual meal, climbing ( getting all those decorations out of the attic), grooming ( Mom can be found – in a “messy ensemble” at the feast) by the older person in charge of the holiday to pull it off. Then add depression to the aging stew – widowhood, loneliness and you have the challenges to an elder, usually the woman in the family, in managing this entire titanic ritual.
Crash of Executive Skills
The holidays in aging families can be a disaster for another neurological reason. Mom or Dad’s Executive Skills have crashed just like a computer.
Executive functioning involves the ability to organize, plan, and carry out a set of tasks in an efficient manner. It also includes the ability to self-monitor and control our behaviors and multiple other cognitive functions and to perform the goal-directed behavior. It can be described as high-level thinking skills that control and direct lower levels of cognitive functioning.
Planning for the holidays takes those high-level thinking skills -to execute and carry out 25 different major tasks according to a study in the UK- Just think, planning a
specific holiday ritual menu,( brisket and latkes or popovers and beef prime rib )- then shopping for it cooking it, planning the ritual items in the celebration – a menorah and
Hanukkah bush, Christmas tree, and creche buying them or getting them out of storage on and on.
Why we may end up with burned brisket or turkey.
This is a massive task event/ planning job taken on by one woman usually and as executive functioning power down in her brain- the computer-, which is our aging brain starts to crash- the result- the family freaks out because Mom forgot the ritual steps.
That’s why we need aging life or geriatric care managers to help divide the tasks when Mom cannot do this any longer
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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 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
Last week the Wall St Journal covered the most revolutionary version of Reminiscence therapy- Town Square. Reminiscence therapy is a treatment that uses all the senses — sight, touch, taste, smell, and sound — to help people with dementia remember events, people and places from their past lives, just as Town Square does.
early 50’s, a barbershop with Elvis hanging on the wall , a Malt shop called Rosie’s Dinner with jukebox, just like the ones my boyfriend Steve Paul and I played while we ate greasy french fries and mooned over each other in the early 60’s. Rosie’s has now collectible formica tables, with chrome chairs but that is a sturdy replica that seniors are safe in with added chrome arms.
