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.

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.

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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

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Why Does the Nearly Normal Aging Family Melt Down Over the Holidays ?

November 17, 2019

Really, Mom Can’t Cook the Turkey- Now I Have To????

Many concierge aging families are healthy or a nearly normal family. But discovering they must care for a parent can force them into a tailspin. When the parent figure in the family begins to suffer the losses of aging, a filial crisis occurs.

What’s that-? That is accepting your parents in the here and now. When a Mom or Dad is no longer the north stars they were to the family, midlife adult children need to learn to balance parental love and duty with independence. These midlife kids must create a two-way relationship instead of the parent sending, love, money and nurture only one way. This can throw adult children in a nearly normal family into a parental panic.

Nurturing and care have always been a one-way street – ending with them. Were they selfish – no? That’s what good parents do- nurture their children through all the stages of life. However, this new stage takes a two-way street.

The Shock of Mom Not Caring For Them

The healthy nearly normal family is also thrown off balance by a shock to the system- someone has to replace the Queen or King bee. The person who took the lead role on the family stage has not shown up or forgets their lines. On the holidays, always at their parents, Mom doesn’t decorate the Christmas tree, the envelopes for big gifts for them are missing, forgets the words to the blessing on Chanukah, the recipe for Latkes or her famous Christmas sugar cookies.

Yikes-I Have to Take Over This Ritual ???

Now the adult kids must make the Christmas cookies, Latkes, lead the Chanukah prayers or host Christmas. Many are reluctant to step up to the plate, take over the work of a ritual- be the head of the family

At this giant pause in family play, the family system, even in the normal family must face the loss of control in the system because the parents or parent figures usually have that control. When they can no longer manage on their own, or function as the main gear or guide that moves the family system forward, even the normal spins out of control.

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5 Ways to Tame the Turbulence of Holiday Meltdown in Aging Families

During the busiest season for care management referrals-

Learn how!

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

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Even If you have a Conflict You will Still get a copy of the webinar sent if you sign up

Thanksgiving Going HayWire? Call a Care Manager

October 19, 2018

The holiday season in the aging dysfunctional family triggers amped up turmoil. Mom can’t cook the turkey, she forgets to wrap presents, Dad’s not just drunk but he’s wandering. Prepare to handle these fractured families when the adult children call a care manager for help. Revisit the Thanksgivings many of these now baby boomers lived in the 1970’s
Kids who grew up in the 70’s will soon have Thanksgiving with their 70 or 80-year-old aging parents.Will they recall the ” Ice Storm”?
In the film, it is Thanksgiving weekend in the early 70″s and a boyish Tobey Mc Guire returns home from prep school to a Thanksgiving feast that his sister starts with this prayer.
” Dear Lord, thank you for this Thanksgiving holiday. And for all the material possessions we have and enjoy. And for letting us white people kill all the Indians and steal their tribal lands. And stuff us like pigs, even though children in Asia are being napalmed.”
So we begin the descent down the cusp of the 1970’s as the nearly normal family shapeshifts into dysfunctional in Ang Lee’s brilliant film The Ice Storm.
Lee’s Thanksgiving classic is the perfect reflection of some family’s plunge into the early 70’s season of hell.
If you’re in your 40’s and grew up with parents have gone haywire through 70’s social change, you will remember the ice storm.
Divorce imploded the family, as we knew it. If you were a parent then you may recall, Nixon resigning, key parties, (swinging couples affairs), Watergate, Deep Throat and self-help books or hear David Bowie who did the soundtrack to the film.

With Lou Reed you can loop back to his fabulous song of that spins the period Walk on the Wild Side and maybe recall the template for it the entire era the -book, Open Marriage.

Children of this social tumult may now share another Thanksgiving with the aging parents who put them through hell. What will they do when they find they have to care for those same parents who did not care for them? When they return to Thanksgiving they may call an aging life or geriatric care manager. Are you ready?
Learn more about what you can do for dysfunctional families and give them hope when they call desperately call this holiday.

Join me in my new Webinar November 14 2PM PST

10 Steps Tame the Turbulence of Holiday Meltdown in Aging Families

During the busiest season for care management referrals-

You Will Learn:

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
How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
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Watch my YouTube Channel Geriatric Care 1 and learn how to work with the dysfunctional family who will desperately call around the holidays

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