Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Ten Warning Signs You Are Working With a Dysfunctional Family

Working with Dysfunctional Family

Ten Warning Signs you are Working with Dysfunctional Family represents critical information to share with long-distance caregivers before their holiday visit. Do you know them? They include contentiousness, anger, and cut off and all are listed below. These clinical issues give the visiting caregiver signs that they need to call a care manager and you the care manager the most challenging job of an aging professional. What you have to know is family system theory and be clinically skilled in entering this treacherous family system – to get care for an older person

1. Contentiousness – Old fights erupt; the siblings and parents get into arguments with one another about an old issue

2. Anger – Siblings and family members express physical anger, emotional abuse, financial abuse

3. Distancing & cut off – Some siblings or parents have nothing to do with family and may not speak to parents or siblings for long periods of time.

Ten Warning Signs You are Working with the  Dysfunctional Family – Fusion, Denial, Triangulation, Entitlement

4. Fusion – Siblings and family members, such as the mother and eldest daughter, blend into one another, For example, the daughter sounds, acts, and has the same prejudices as the mother. . Think of the media’s portrayal of Lindsay Lohan and her mother.

5. Denial – Adult siblings do not see a decline in a parent, do not face reality, and do not take care of parent if he or she needs care.                           

6. Triangulation – Tension between two family members or siblings causes one to enlist a third family member or sibling to avoid change For example, two adult sibling object to the cost of care of an aging parent. They gang up on the third adult sibling who thinks the cost of care is reasonable and justified.

7. Sense of Entitlement – Siblings who are accustomed to purchasing services need not personally solve their own, children’s siblings or parents’ problems. This lack of engagement leaves them, unprepared and unwilling in getting involved in solving family tribulations.

Ten Warning Signs You Are Working with a Dysfunctional Family – Narcissism, Needy Adult Siblings, Substance Abuse, and Cut Off

8. Narcissism – One or more siblings has an “it’s all about me” attitude and

other siblings resent this. The self-absorbed sibling either does not participate

9. Needy Adult Siblings – These adult siblings feel starved for affection and often seek affection from professionals and other people in their lives for compensation for the care they didn’t receive as children.

10 . Substance and Other Abuse – The family and siblings have a history of drug, alcohol, and/or child abuse.

If this fits you you and your aging parent needs care may need to contact a geriatric care manager.

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

 

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

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

 Learn how to create!

  • Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
  • Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
  • Pre-Holiday Marketing to help you sign up families who might face a serious decline in aging parents
  • 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
  • Know The Ten Warning Signs you are working with a dysfunctional family and 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 Adult Children and families during the chaotic aging family holiday visit when adult kids find their aging parents need care
  • Featuring

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management     

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5 Steps to Avoid Midlife Step Sibling Fireworks on Fourth of July

 

Do You Expect Acid Reflux at 4th of July Barbecue From Step Sibling?

Are your midlife step siblings or half siblings coming July 4th barbecue? Maybe you expect acid reflux from the hot sauce that parental divorce dribbles on family celebrations.

Rituals like July 4th 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.

But the tidal wave of divorce among baby boomers and Generation X brings 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.

 Avoid the Drama of Step Siblings to Help Your Aging Parents

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.family-fight-300x223.jpg

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

 

1.Ask everyone to bring a dish. That is the beginning of building a family team- to share care of aging parent care

2.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.




3.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.

 

4. Find out what everyone likes to do. If they are step kids or step siblings make sure you have fun things to do ahead of time that they enjoy. Step siblings who may feel like third wheels in your clan. If they have a difficult time blend Reach out to make them part of the group. Understand their reluctance to join. Do Not make them feel like Cinderella. Bring them up to the top floor of the castle. 

5. If none of this work and you face or are deep into aging parent care Family meetings can be planned post labor day with a geriatric care manager or a mediator’s help.

6. Find a geriatric care manager near you at Aging Life Care Association web site. Just put in your zip code and come up with a great care manager. Find an elder mediator

 

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