Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

5 Steps To Include Step Siblings and Half Siblings in Holiday Gatherings

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

 Rituals like Hanukkah or Christmas 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 Hanukkah or Christmas – can turn into a nightmare.

 This is true especially for aging parents, who may be at the Hanukkah or Christmas 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

 

  1. Call everyone ahead of time. Invite them and ask everyone to bring a dish. That is the beginning of building a family team- sharing
  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. Schedule a Family meetings can be planned post Hanukkah or Christmas with a Aging Life Care Manager or a mediator’s help.
  4. Reinvent your Hanukkah or Christmas 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.

 

  1. 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 Hanukkah or Christmas 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.

Check out my book Mom Loves You Best for more tips on sibling inclusion.

 

 

 

Care Plan Interventions- How to Make Doable

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Make Interventions Doable

Interventions in a care plan need to be doable. Let’s take for example with Mr. Jefferson the client we have used in my You Tube on Dual Assessment . In creating  care plan interventions for him, as an aging professional or geriatric care manager, you want Mr. Jefferson to accept your intervention of having a replacement for careprovider Sally, his live in 80 year old companion, to do ADL’s and IADL’s 4 days a week. After all he is mentally competent and very attached to Sally and could reject your intervention.

How do you make this doable? What you as an aging professional or geriatric care manager may use to convince him to ” do this” is what I said in the You Tube about him – he would rather die than burden Sally. If you can convince Mr. Jefferson that by relieving some of the care for him four days a week, this will relive Sally’s burden. This will also mean conferring with Sally and having her agree to this intervention and get her buy in.

Then this must mean having a small meeting with Sally and Mr. Jefferson where consensus can be reached that they both agree to this intervention and that Mr. Jefferson is willing to pay for this private duty care provider. A geriatric care manager or aging professional  would also reach out to the adult child who hired you, Alice, and explain your strategy and reasoning to her. As she is worried about Sally’s health, this would be a way to show you that you are working professionally to answer both her and her Dad’s needs along with Sally’s.

It may be that the family, Sally and Mr. Jefferson, may want you to interview the care providers and recommend which one they should hire. So, remember to create a solution based on facts derived from your assessments plus the art of convincing the client to accept your intervention. This makes the solution doable.

 

Part 2 How Do you Craft a Care Plan for a Dual Assessment

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Home Modification- Convincing the Family or Older Adult

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The Geriatric Care Manager’s or aging professionals job after a home safety assessment is next to see if changes can be made. How do you do this?

The first step would be to present findings of the home safety assessment to the older person and their family or legally responsible party and show them plans to make changes. If dementia is involved or an older adult is conserved or has a guardian, this also may be presenting only to the family or legally responsible third party like a trust officer or power of attorney for finances. The GCM or aging professional also may be suggesting the expenses for the home modification. If home modifications for safety are simple, then the geriatric care manager or aging professional can come up with a budget. If complicated like ramps, renovating bathrooms or bathroom safety alterations suggest a bonded and licensed contractor or home handyman. All this information should be in the GCM or aging professional ‘s continuum of care database.

If the older adult is resistant, then the GCM or senior professional will have to help older person through resistance. This may take time and a little repair at a time.

If there is resistance among the family or with the older person, consider holding a family meeting in person or in a conference call. The agenda can be to discuss the need for home improvements, mediate with family members and how the older client could both accept them and stay safe at the same time. In a family meeting you can form a family team to work on home modification together, convincing the older parent this is necessary, figuring out a schedule, getting bids from contractors, eliminating immediate safety risks that are easy like throw rugs, hoses on the sidewalk, clutter.

Having family meetings throughout the process can heal old wounds, share the tasks that need to be done, because it takes a village to jointly support your aging family. This also takes the on – going support and guidance of a geriatric care manager or aging professional.

Be sure to tell his or her social supports if older person refuses and there are dangerous home safety issues. Finally. Refer to APS http://www.napsa-now.org/ if safety is a real danger and safety improvements that put the older person at risk are not going to be made.

Grandmother’s , Single Mom’s and Becoming President- Watch for Julian Castro

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Mayor Julian Castro gave the keynote speech at the Democratic Convention on Tuesday. The fascinating fact about him is he has a twin sibling Joaquin. They were raised by a single Mom from the time they were eight. Although the siblings lived in a hardscrabble neighborhood, she was a tough love diligent Mom who saw the value of education. The twin siblings went through high school in three years, to Stanford and then Harvard. The year they graduated from Stanford the mom made $20,000 a year and they made it through school on student loans.Both twin siblings sat next to First Lady Michele Obama at the convention.

 

The twin siblings Mom Rosie were an organizer for Mexican Americans and as a single Mom raised the twin siblings with the help of her mother, their grandmother, Victoria. The twin sibling’s grandmother came from Mexico. As a child, she went to 4th grade and worked as a maid. This extended family, the mother and grandmother instilled drive, ambition and discipline into these twin siblings.

 

Their story is not far from President Barack Obama, who speaks tonight. A single Mom and his grandmother raised him. This extended family, the grandmother and grandfather had a life defining effecton Obama , again giving him drive , ambition and a high sense of family support ,that he has spoken about throughout his presidency.

 

Extraordinarily, a single Mom also parented President Bill Clinton who spoke at the Democratic Convention last night. His grandparents too raised him, in his early years while his Mom went to nursing school after the death of Clinton’s Dad

 

Extended family is critically important in raising any number of siblings in supporting frantically busy, overloaded mothers and dads but especially single Mom’s, who struggle so deeply. Extended family comes in to do what a Mom can’t do, as we can see in the Castro twins, Obama, and Clinton’s case. The result in Clinton and Obama case was with the help of their extended family and grandmother’s is they became President. Who knows what will happen with Juan Castro or his brother Julian

 

 

 

To find out the critical importance of extended family in raising siblings for Generation X today

 

 

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