Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Dread Memorial Day with Midlife Sibings?

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Are you dreading the Memorial Day family barbeque?  . Will your estranged brother be manning the barbeque while you drink too much beer?

Are you a midlife sibling at war with sister or brother? Worse than that, do you feel like you and all your siblings are in not only a dysfunctional family but also an aging dysfunctional family?

What’s an aging dysfunctional family? Well they are very much like a war zone. Clans remain at war with each other, like the 1980’s Serbian conflict or the Iraq war pitting the Sunni’s against the Shia.These tribal battles have gone on for centuries and have the same bloody roots of the dysfunctional family -repeated from one generation to the next.

The hallmarks of the dysfunctional aging family, are after decades as a motley clan there is still not enough love in the family. The now midlife children have to fight for what little nurturance their older parents can bring to the ancient rickety nest they built.

Nurturing is often missing in the dysfunctional aging family because the aging parents themselves probably got little nurturing themselves as kids and on and on back down the family line. Parental neglect and abuse are frequent in the history of the aging dysfunctional family.

The now older parents can suffer from serious mental health problems such as schizophrenia or are bi-polar. Health and addiction problems like alcoholism are frequent.  Family interaction and communication, -parental treatment of siblings, brother and sister treatment of each other stepparent interaction and interface of everyone in the family has wrought deep tissue damage that never healed.

These aging dysfunctional families generally negotiated all of life’s developmental phases with great difficulty. The role in the family, especially the parental one, was murky with a poor, abusive or mentally unfit leader of the family. The rules in the family were unfair ambiguous or full of double binds. There is deep-seated ambivalence. Finally the last life transition in the aging family, the care of the declining parent, implodes the family, which had little balance to begin with. They are asked to care for parents who did not care for them, thus reeking havoc on an already disorganized aging family.

So good luck at the Memorial Day family gathering and perhaps consider hiring a geriatric care manager if you sibling war is affecting not only rituals like family gatherings but also the care of your aging parents. The GCM can help you end the constant hangovers and /or acid reflux.

 

Home Modification- The Key is Home Safety Assessment

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A critical part of a geriatric assessment is home safety. Why?

Falls number 1 cause of death for older people 65 or over. On fifth of all households are maintained by person 65 or older. Why do older people wish to live at home – to maintain independence? With retirement nest eggs shrunken because of the recession, and 90 percent of older adults indicating they want to age in place at home.

Yet older people can become more vulnerable if they live alone

By 2020, the number of persons over age 85 who live alone is expected to double to 2.3 million. The majority of older women over 75 live alone. But older women in many cases have not been trained to do home repairs. Most lived traditional marriages. Older people develop chronic diseases that prevent them from doing simple or especially complex home repairs.

People over 65 tend to live in houses that need more repairs. Over 60% of older people live in homes 20 years or older so in need of renovation. Alarmingly,

Older Adults who suffer dementia are even more vulnerable

Simple alteration can prevent 1/3 to 1/2 of all accidents with seniors. Modification of home can promote independence by preventing mishap that lead to the ER and maybe a nursing home. An example is if the problem -difficulty getting out of the shower then the intervention that a geriatric care manager or aging professional would suggest is install grab bars. This week we will look at home safety assessments and how they can help your older clients.

Sibling Rivalry-Is it deadly, Necessary or Repairable?

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Sibling rivalry is the same in every nation, culture and species. With animals it is about territory and humans love. See what the English take on sibling rivalry is from the Guardian this week.

 

Watch my You Tube segment on how love, territory, and food  all play a role in creating sometimes deadly sibling rivalry

Do You Compare Siblings in Your Young Family?

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Don’t make comparisons between two siblings. It can set up sibling rivalry in the future and cause parents unnecessarily worry in the present. My daughter Kali has twin boys and they are developing at different rates. They both crawled and walked around the same age but one twin talks a mile a minute and the other does not talk. This has caused parental anxiety that is not necessary, as a speech therapist told Kali. The talking twin is talking for the non-talking twin. He just needs more one to one time and some exercises that the therapist showed Kali and her husband.

 

But in the future, as siblings age, these comparisons of this can leaded to sibling wars 40 years in the future. Parent’s recall and say out loud, who got the first tooth, who walked first, who rode a bike first or who did better in school -subconsciously pitting siblings against each other.

 

As siblings grow up and reach midlife, after they have raised their own families, baby boomer siblings’ come back together. Midlife siblings celebrate family rituals, socialize together and critically care for aging parents. Deep-rooted sibling rivalry from early comparisons between siblings can cause estrangement begun in early childhood. Deep down in the sibling psyche, these feelings of sibling rivalry have sprung from comparisons the parents made decades ago.

For anyone who has read East of Eden, or seen the iconic James Dean film you say see the brutal battles that play out later in life from early sibling comparisons. This unintended consequence of early parenting creates alienated siblings who can’t form that sibling team to socialize together or work as a team to manage aging parental care.

So calm your parental present and give your young siblings a future without sibling’s rivalry- don’t make comparisons.

 

 

Are Midlife Step or Half Siblings Coming To Labor Day Barbecue- Here’s a Plan

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Are your midlife  stepsiblings or half siblings going to be at the coming Labor Day barbecue? Maybe you expect acid reflux from the hot sauce that parental  divorce dribbles on family celebrations.

 

Rituals like Labor Day events are the glue that bond family life. They patch up family and sibling disputes and give us the architecture of a year full of celebrations marking family history. Rituals are the touchstones for rites and family passages and keep us gathering over and over again to celebrate and observe those landmarks. Rituals also give form to every day we spend and are the counterpoints of the turning clock when the family can gather and talk, share and gossip.

 

But the tidal wave of divorce among baby boomers and Generation X brought step siblings with old grudges, half siblings who lost family love, ½ their rooms, and gained a shredded family nest. Now the family does not know who it’s members really are and rituals like labor day – can turn into a nightmare.

 

This is true especially for aging parents, who may be at the labor day event, don’t need the drama and will need all of you to be a family team when they need care as they decline.

Here are some tips to include everyone including step siblings and half siblings

 

Call everyone ahead of time . Invite them and ask everyone to bring a dish. That is the beginning of building a family team- sharing

Don’t make this a family meeting where old sibling grudges get hashed out. Celebrations are just that. If someone pushes you button, keep that angry response to yourself and maybe arrange a future family meeting.

Family meetings can be planned post labor day with a geriatric care manager or a mediator’s help.

Reinvent your labor day get-together through a new twist that really makes an effort to includes step and half siblings and glue that jagged bond. Create activities that everyone can join -– blood, step, or half siblings.

 

Check ahead and find out what everyone likes to do. If they are step kids or stepsiblings make sure you have fun things to do ahead of time that they enjoy. Make sure everyone is an included, especially new member of the family like young stepsiblings who may feel like third wheels in your clan. If they have a difficult time blending (most do) – reach out to make them part of the group. Understand their reluctance to join an existing blood family where they have bloody history or a nasty Cinderella nightmare tale. Bring them up to the top floor of the castle.

Gathering for ritual occasions like labor day or any holidays, allows you to spend time together as a family and gives kids their siblings the tools to solve problems, negotiate and compromise and learn the skills of working together as a group.

 

Ritual gatherings with step half and blood siblings can build those bonds, so future sibling, ” I Hate You stories”, are not created in the here and now whether siblings are is half, blood, or step.

 

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