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

November 1, 2022

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

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.

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

Dysfunctional Family Holiday Mayhem – Mom Can’t 4 Manage the Ritual any Longer

December 4, 2020

What is the Normal Family vs Dysfunctional?

The normal family is the hand grenade compared to the nuclear bomb of the dysfunctional family. When both are faced with a filial crisis with an aging parent being dependent and the adult child needs to take over they cower or explode.

Dysfunctional families have many characteristics.

They lack the ability to resolve conflicts and have frequent psycho-social blockages that prevent the family from growing emotionally. They fail miserably at moving through all family stages and orchestrating family rituals.

Most life transitions in the family, like birth, adolescence, and marriage have been very difficult to make, marked by a lack of support from the parents. Every holiday might have been drunkenly ruined. The parental figures are usually not in charge, nurturing, or able to establish establishes clear rules. They have never created an excel spreadsheet on tasks to do to orchestrate a holiday. Like a disease spreading down generations, they never knew how themselves, as their parents wrecked the holidays too.

Bad or just NO Family Leader

There are murky roles for everyone in the dysfunctional family with the chief role of the parent characterized by a lack of leadership of the family and the ability to nurture the children. Mom rarely became the high priestess on Hanukkah or Christmas, the family members generally do not believe the parent is there for them and can be depended upon. The dysfunctional family is colored by bloody strained relationships and unresolved conflicts and drunken ruined Christmas memories

Dysfunction Families Inspiration For Great Literature

is the inspiration for great literature. O’Neil’s wrenching plays A Long Day’s Journey into Night” portrays the most miserable of dysfunctional families. Alcohol, secrets that have been kept by all for generations splatter the pages of this great play like it does in all the ruined holiday’s children of dysfunctional families recall with horror. Prince of Tides a tale of a southern dysfunctional family gives us timelier glimpses of a family whose center can never hold together and whose blood oozes all over everyone from one generation to the next. Award-winning plays and films, like Tracey Letts August in Osage County about a ruined ritual funeral from hell when Julia Roberts tries to beat up drug-addled, drunk presiding mother Meryl Streep.

Burnt Latkes or the Christmas cookies-inflame the family

When Mom does not make the very small things she was able to pull off like the latkes or the Christmas cookies- she always made every Hanukkah and Christmas, or burns them to a crisp- someone else has got to be the cook, and resentments skyrocket – tempers flare – and the torch just might never get passed.

Someone must take over the holiday rituals

The family is again thrown into crisis. That means someone must take over and the dysfunctional family has no model or spreadsheet to pull off the holidays while caring for a parent who did not care for them.

8 Steps to Take to Avoid Midlife Sibling Mayhem on Thanksgiving

November 12, 2020

Ritual Celebrations + COVID Turn Into Kick- Boxing

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.

Tips to Save the Holidays

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.

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 strugglingwith 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

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

What are 8 Steps to a Successful VIP Client Inquiry Call with CoronaVirus ?

March 4, 2020

How Not to Lose a New Client at an Inquiry

An inquiry is the most critical point in opening or losing a case. A successful inquiry means taking successful steps to increase your aging life or geriatric care management business.

The Desperate Calls You will Get

You will get many desperate long -distance calls from adult children calling about care management to visit their family members with the coronavirus pandemics’main target being seniors with compromised health They may have just have learned about Mom or Dad’s illness or high risk which they may have understood faster if they did not live long-distance or saw Mom frequently. Now that the coronavirus is especially hitting older people with health issues here are steps to successful inquiry for any call about your services

Take These Steps to Convert Inquiry to New Client

1. You must assure the caller that your geriatric care management services can be counted on to thoroughly assess the elderly person’s and family caregiver’s health care, risk and situation at the intake, determine the level of care, services they need to arrange community care for any problem including coronavirus and level of GCM monitoring to sell your services.

2. You assure inquiries that Medicare now covers the coronavirus and you know how to access and work with all entitlements
3. You sell these services by convincing the caller that you offer a highly personalized and compassionate approach to the family and older clients. besides high clinical skills. This breaks down to gaining client and family trust that your GCM services are the very best path leading them the care they desperately need, led by a professional guide they can count on.

4. You persuade them that they will get unbeatable customer appreciation, you will exceed their customer expectations, ensure the quality of life for the older client and offer a concierge driven service.
5. You explain how your hands on professional staff can make families relieved and happy because they understand they save precious time and overwhelming stress by using professional GCM’s.
6. You show them you can access all community services and resource options for senior health especially health care services for flu, and epidemics, like coronavirus they could not find alone at a distance but are now available to them rapidly through your services.

7. In this one sometimes short call, you show potential new clients how your concierge care management service will solve their problems through -you the GCM being there for them every step of the way.
8. You persuade them that by scheduling the next step, a free complimentary consultation call, you will help them make sound decisions based on reality and assessment.

The GCM sells all of this through a free complimentary consultation done by a compassionate and highly skilled professional the director of the agency

Since geriatric care management and home care are expensive these callers are probably in the top 10% so learn to work with them from intake to the delivery of care

New free Webinar-Sales and Marketing to Find the VIP Concierge Client

March 31, 2020 -2PM -3:30 PM PST

Concierge Clients are the only way a GCM or ALCA care manager can make a profit and have their business thrive. Find out who are they, how you find them, design GCM Products they will purchase, and create a marketing plan and gold standard services to have them sign your contract and use your services long term

Learn

Who They Are- 4 Types

How to Locate them in your service area

How to create a strategic marketing plan to sell to them

How to Develop Gold Standard GCM Products and Services

Find Out More

March 31, 2020 -2PM -3:30 PM PST

Learn

Who They Are- 4 Types

How to Locate them in your service area

How to create a strategic marketing plan to sell to them

How to Develop Gold Standard GCM Products and Services

SIGN UP NOW

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8 Steps to Take to Avoid Midlife Sibling Mayhem on Thanksgiving

November 20, 2019

When Ritual Celebrations Turn Into Kick- Boxing

Celebrations, (like Thanksgiving coming up) Mother’s Day, Hanukah, Christmas, and 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.

Tips to Save the Holidays

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) Call ahead as a team effort to arrange the sharing of the food for the meal, if it is at someone’s home. Call every family member. Do not exclude. Again to build a team effort.

5) Call ahead and arrange to split the bill if at a restaurant – 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.

8) Hire an aging life care manager to facilitate a family meeting.

Webinar announcement for website

Ten Clinical Steps to Tame the Turbulence of the Holiday Season in The Entitled Concierge Family

Join me for my free webinar and learn how to come to the rescue of Long-Distance, dysfunctional and entitled families who find coal in their stockings. Give frantic entitled adult children hope when they call desperately call this holiday. Learn the 10 Steps to tame holiday turmoil from Cathy Cress MSW, the author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management. Thursday, November 21, 2019, 2 PM- 3-PM PST

Learn

How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays

How to give hope to frantic children who call, after seeing their aging parent struggling with the rituals
How to sell services to desperate adult child callers
How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
How to use financial forecasting to prepare for growth during the holidays
Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Dysfunctional Aging Families so the client chooses you

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS NOVEMBER 21, 2019 FROM 2 PM – 3 PM PST

Contact

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”