Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

How to Capture Family Stories from Seniors on the Holidays

Thanksgiving--2003png.png

Capture Family Tales From Aging Parents 

Have you captured family tales from older family members? Or have you lost an aging parent and wished you had asked them more questions about their past, your family history, and your childhood? Have you dabbled in ancestry and realized that you could have just listened closely to the stories your deceased parents told you and written them down?

Do not look back! Make this New Year the year you collect the stories from your family. Learn to use 10 reminiscence tools, technology, and techniques to hear family history at holiday dinners and events during Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or New Years.

10 Tips to Capture Family Tales from Aging Parents

1. Use empathetic listening. This means to make all the messages you are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting-  all say, “I want to listen to you.”

2. Ask questions that prompt the story but don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking.

3. Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story and see if they will follow along.”What was a New Years’ Resolution that you made and kept” ” Do you remember your favorite doll ” What was your first day of school like”

4. Music is just next to memory in the brain shown by Alive Inside So use Alexa, or Spotify, to play  40’s

and 50’s music or especially the -Simple ways to spark reminiscence when you visit older family members :
5. Look at old photos together. Photos trigger memory even with dementia. Choose ones from a period of time the person currently remembers, which could be the person as a young adult, teenager, or even a young child.
6. Play music from their teenage years. It is the background to the most emotional period of anyone’s life and is deeply lined into memory.
7. Enjoy food they like or food that is a family tradition or specialty, particularly ones that have an element

Family With Grandparents Enjoying Christmas Meal At Table

of memory attached to family celebrations. like Mom’s Briscut, Dad’s Sunday Supper lasagna, or “Aunt Helen’s Lemon Cake”.

8. Story Worth was started by Nick Baum, a tecky who was, in a way, a long-distance care provider for his parents in Sweden. He was curious about their past and invented the app based on his own need to gather his family history. My husband is a teller of past tales as a California Highway patrolman, then Hippiedom, then as top marketing director for Pacific Cookie Company, the best cookies here in the west.

Our daughter Kali gave him Story Worth as a holiday gift. He wrote down 40 stories or memories from his past. They were being published by Story Worth in a book, saving in print the precious reminiscence that would have been lost but now is found in a  book that was given to our adult children and then generations to come.

This is a brilliant way to capture reminiscence and I  recommend it to adult children who want to enshrine personal memories in print that otherwise would be lost when they reach back for them.

9. Life Bio-  provides an online template of biography and autobiography questions that have been carefully crafted

10. Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone

Use reminiscence as a part of a whole new domain in aging called quality of life or attending to the older person’s need for joy through activities that stimulate the mind. Reminiscence does that- so find out more about how you can increase the quality of life of older people after the holidays and all year long by building a quality-of-life reminiscence program like Nina Herndon describes in her chapter on Quality of Life in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 

Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

photo.JPG

 Are You Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees?

Giving holiday thanks to your employees for their work during the holidays is key to being a good employer. Christmas and Hannakka are coming up when we offer thanks to our friends, loved ones, and family. But what about thanking your employees this holiday month? How will you thank your employees, the very people that power your business and profit and may be on call for you right now on New Year?

A holiday party  after hours catered  or  just  ordering pizza plus buying bottles of wine, and nonalcoholic beverages then having a white elephant exchange  hat can be fun and affordable

But if that is not in your plan here are Ideas for inexpensive but really appreciated gifts to thank your employees – this holiday season. Consider gift cards to grocery stores or department stores, or a gift certificate from Amazon all given with a nice personal handwritten note.

Thank Your Staff

How To Thank Staff  All Year

1. Thank your staff all year long for having the amount of productivity to keep the business thriving. Handwriting is not a lost art. It sends a message that you take the time, personally, to really celebrate what the employees do for your business.

2. Giving Holiday Thanks to Your Employees could be sending a handwritten thank-you note to thank your employees, to each staff member during the year applauding something they did. Be grateful by thanking your staff for something specific may be the ultimate reward. If you do it selectively yet authentically, a thank you note may be pinned above your employee’s desk for years. Create a formal letter recognizing your employee’s achievement. Sign it and use the company’s seal to give the letter something extra. If you really want to do it right, frame it.

3. Thank your staff by naming an employee of the month, each month in your newsletter with their picture. Give them a gift GCM-pix-3.jpgto tell them you are grateful for their hard work. Create a formal letter recognizing your employee’s achievement. Sign it and use the company’s seal to give the letter something extra. To thank your employees right, frame it too.

4. Giving holidays thanks to your employees,  if you do feel safe, could be hosting an in-person party,If you do not feel it is covid safe, try a virtual employee holiday party and mail gifts ahead of time to all employees for being such excellent care managers all year. If it is late now so try New Year.

5. When the COVID level in your area is safe enough to gather,  thank your employees, plan employee picnics, birthday parties, and anniversary parties to thank them publicly throughout the year.

6. B.J Curry- Spitler, one of the first and I might say the greatest care managers, founded Age Concerns in San Diego in 1982. and knew how to be grateful to her staff. She was a master at thanking her staff.  To thank her employees, she gave gifts of massages to her care managers. A brilliant gift, a massage recognizes the tough emotional work that care managers do and their need to take care of themselves- which you as their employer are doing

 

This winter 90% of those who die of Covid will be over 65 . January is the deadliest month in the U.S. according to an analysis of the CDC Wonder database.

Understand End of Life this winter

Sign -up for my Upcoming Free Webinar Deliver a Good End of Life 9 Steps to Death &Dying

Jan 24, 2023, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

SIGN-UP 

 

 Description

Deliver a Good End of Life- 9 Steps to Add Death and Dying to Your Care Management Agency

Deliver a Good End of Life

Serve Your Client until Death Do You Part
Join me on January 24 2023 and learn why End of Life Services re a perfect new service for care managers

Deliver a Good End of Life

Learn to guide the patient/family through the five stages of death. Understand how to help clients be active participants in their care. Give the family caregivers tools to manage care. Find out how to provide family-centered care to caregivers and families. Learn to choose the right support services for the client through all stages of death.
Introduce Hospice and Palliative care to the client earlier and work with their team.
Find out how to use COVID -19 family coaching for GCM. Discover the role of Death Doula at end of life.

Time

Jan 24, 2023, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

SIGN-UP 

 

Sign -Up Even if you cannot attend & receive the recording the next day 

 

     

 

     

Contact

Use the form on the
Contact page to email Cathy.

Email

Connect with Cathy

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