Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Best Tool for Dysfunctional Family on Holidays- Hope

December 22, 2020

images_20141216-184443_1.jpg

 

Hope is the Best Tool on the Holidays

During Christmas and Hannaka family caregivers, especially in the dysfunctional family can be drinking or numbing themselves from the pain of caregiving. They will ruin the holiday celebration one way or another. Maybe they are drugging themselves with the telly or abusing prescription drugs. Depression and anxiety ( rife among caregivers) are predictors of increased alcohol use. Social isolation, which is experienced by some caregivers, is also predictive of increased alcohol use.

 

How do you as a geriatric care manager change the script for these aging dysfunctional families – family caregivers and older members who are supposed to care for but can’t. How does a professional GCM make the characters transform? 

 

It’s actually simple –but loaded with skill- give them hope. You need to and use yourself to give them hope that things will change. It’s the best tool in a geriatric care manager toolbox- especially on and after the dreaded holidays.

 Use of Self

The use of Self is perhaps the most powerful tool for geriatric care managers. The use of Self provides families with guarded optimism. GCM’s have to offer a vision of the future that is based not only on a desire for hopeful outcomes. This has come from our own clinical knowledge and belief that change to their nasty crippled, family

system is indeed possible.

By being direct, empathetic, and

nonjudgmental, we become a holding bay for

stressed caregivers, creating a place of safety, c

onfidentiality, consistency, and support.

Finally, GCM’s offer our clients a model of

perseverance. By giving up on the possibility of

positive change and by exploring all options,

the GCM enables families to feel that, regardless of the outcome, they have done all that they can to support the older adult.

Be like Judy Garland  on the holiday offering hope


Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Let your heart be light


From now on
our troubles will be out of sight

Give the” Merry Christmas – next year

 

Sign Up for My Free January Webinar  

5 Vital Clinical Tools to Help Aging Dysfunctional Families-Post Horrid Holidays- 

             Thursday, January 21, 2021

  Give frantic adult children hope when they desperately call after the holiday  

 Join me and learn how to come to the rescue of concierge dysfunctional families who found coal in their stocking.      

Learn how to!

  • Understand the Dysfunctional Aging Family System you must enter to get care for elders
  • Understand 11 Warning Signs You Are Working with Dysfunctional Family
  • Master Vital Clinical Tools, you need to solve client problems
  • Take Six Steps Professional Must Take to Work with These Difficult Families
  • Get care for aging family members when the dysfunctional family members resist

 SIGN UP NOW

 

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Filed Under: Aging Alcohol Abuse, caregiver, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver burnout, caregiver mental health, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday season, Loneliness, Long distance caregiver, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: aging life and geraitric care manager, aging life care manager, aging parent crisis, alcohol on the holidays, Alcolhol abuse in the elderly, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays with aging parents, My Dysfunctional Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Use of Self

Can’t See Aging Mom Holidays COVID -Make Her Feel U Are There 5 Ways

December 8, 2020

Absent Long Distance Care Provider Holidays Answers

If you are a long-distance care provider, or a care manager that works with one, what’s the best way to keep in touch with the long-distance elder if you can’t visit on coming  Christmas or Hanukkah especially now that COVID is rampant and very contagious throughout the country

Easy Low-Touch Non-Tech Ideas

Use low touch—the old-fashioned communication elders grew up – the Post Office and telephone. If you can’t see Mom or Christmas or Hanukkah, send a card. Older people came from a generation

where cards and mail were really meaningful. It is easy and really touches elders who love opening the little personal mail they get, especially from family. These heritage links are a great way to support a far away elder. Non-tech, they cause no stress on their part. Even we boomers who walk haltingly through the tech world of 40 characters forget that connecting with a stamp or a call is so familiar to an older person. Plus you give that feeling of warmth they always got when they  “ opened” “ or “ answered” something real (not virtual); Try having the whole family sending a card even kids. A flooded mailbox on Christmas or Hanukkah fills their hearts.

If and you can’t see Mom on Christmas or Hanukkah safely due to COVID s, mail holiday care packages —bake or buy cookies . Bake it with your children and send samples along with actual photos of everyone baking in the kitchen or buying treats.  Even if they crumble a bit, elders will smell the affection.

Easy Option -Holiday in a Box 

If you can’t see Mom on Hanukkah or Christmas, send a “ holiday in a box for Christmas and Hanukkah coming up. Send a basket of kids drawings, candy, nuts, home-baked or purchased holiday bread that reflects the holiday celebration plus a gift certificate for a Christmas dinner or dinner with a friend.  Give Mom joy in a simple package. For an extra special surprise, arrange an invitation to a Hanukkah  dinner with a friend or through your parents’ synagogue or church

A Little Help From Aging Parents Becca-Bulter-Scott-taci-Kirsten-.jpgFriends

Skip that holiday in a box, if you can’t see Mom on Hanukkah or Christmas you can create a circle of care. Get the app  Lots of Helping Hands through neighbors, friends, people in your elder’s place of worship, or a group they belong to. Then you can ask if they can arrange to include your older relative or friend in a Christmas dinner or Midnight Mass or Hanukkah meal, with Latkes or Shabbat service. You will then have an entire support team your elder with a whole circle of support in the future and not feel so alone.

 

REMINISCENCE- a win-win on Holidays-as people age they love this and you get their memories

  • Give your parent Storyworth. Print the prompts and drop off to your loved one then pick up and enter using the dictation on your phone then send it into Storyworth. At the end of the year, they get a printed book of reminiscence.

  • Join ancestry yourself and bring your computer to your older loved one’s home and show them your family tree as you build it. They can give you family history and memories as you create the family tree that you would miss when they are gone.

  • Get out your old family albums, with older pictures of your parents with your kids, and have them identify people in photos by emailing some of the photos to your older family members. Then upload the photos later to Google photos so you have both names of relatives, stories of pictures, and photos digitally saved.

Make Aging Tech for Holiday Gift

Send a high tech gift, if you can’t see Mom or Dad over Christmas or Hanukkah. Send a high tech device that your loved one can really use and figure out. I just ordered the Esky Wireless Locator because I keep misplacing my glasses.

How Care Managers Help Get for Long Distance Care Providers

Care Manager can do lots of things for a family member who is long distance and can’t see Mom on Christmas or Hanukkah. Geriatric Care Manager Julie Menack in her chapter “Long Distance Care Providers” in my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family lists tasks long-distance care providers can do to make their own lives and their long-distance loved ones saner, sounder, and happier

Find a Care Manager Through Aging Life

If you want to investigate an Aging Life geriatric care manager in your parent’s own town find a professional who can help you do all this so you can remain a son or daughter and less stressed caregiver.

 

Filed Under: Adult children, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Blog, branding, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Grandchild gifts for grandma, Hanukkah, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Care, Long distance caregiver, marketing to long distance adult children, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Quality of Life Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging life or geriatric care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Hanukkah Rituals, Holiday in a Box, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays rituals, holidays with aging parents, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Reminiscence on the Holidays

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”  ed6855aa32d877d7fc1ef9ee757e0f17-98.jpgportrays 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.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, Blog, Dementia & Holidays, Dysfunctional Aging Familu, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, elder abuse, estranged siblings, Families, Filial Crisis, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, Nearly Normal Aging Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, parent care, Sibling Strife Holidays, Spoiled Holiday Rituals Tagged With: aging dysfunctional family, aging life and geriatric care management, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, alzheimers & holidays, care manager, case manager, dysfunctional family on the holiday, geriatric care manager, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays rituals, Long Days Journey Into Night, nurse care manager

Can’t See Aging Mom Christmas Hanukkah-7 Ways to Make Her Feel You Are There

December 15, 2019

Absent Long Distance Care Provider Holidays Answers

If you are a long-distance care provider, or a care manager that works with one, what’s the best way to keep in touch with the long-distance elder if you can’t visit on coming  Christmas or Hanukkah.

Easy Low-Touch Non-Tech Ideas

Use low touch—the old-fashioned communication elders grew up – the Post Office and telephone. If you can’t see Mom or Christmas or Hanukkah, send a card. Older people came from a generation where cards and mail were really meaningful. It is easy and really touches elders who love opening the little personal mail they get, especially from family. These heritage links are a great way to support a far away elder. Non-tech, they cause no stress on their part. Even we boomers who walk haltingly through the tech world of 40 characters forget that connecting with a stamp or a call is so familiar to an older person. Plus you give that feeling of warmth they always got when they  “ opened” “ or “ answered” something real (not virtual); Try having the whole family sending a card even kids. A flooded mailbox on Christmas or Hanukkah fills their hearts.

If and you can’t see Mom on Christmas or Hanukkah he or if Dad is not religious, mail holiday care packages —bake or buy cookies . Bake it with your children and send samples along with actual photos of everyone baking in the kitchen or buying treats.  Even if they crumble a bit, elders will smell the affection.

Easy Option -Holiday in a Box 

If you can’t see Mom on Hanukkah or Christmas, send a “ holiday in a box for Christmas and Hanukkah coming up. Send a basket of kids drawings, candy, nuts, home-baked or purchased holiday bread that reflects the holiday celebration plus a gift certificate for a Christmas dinner or dinner with a friend.  Give Mom joy in a simple package. For an extra special surprise, arrange an invitation to a Hanukkah  dinner with a friend or through your parents’ synagogue or church

A Little Help From Aging Parents Becca-Bulter-Scott-taci-Kirsten-.jpgFriends

Skip that holiday in a box, if you can’t see Mom on Hanukkah or Christmas you can create a circle of care. Get the app  Lots of Helping Hands through neighbors, friends, people in your elder’s place of worship or a group they belong to. Then you can ask if they can arrange to include your older relative or friend in a Christmas dinner or Midnight Mass or Hanukkah meal, with Latkes or Shabbat service. You will then have an entire support team your elder with a whole circle of support in the future and not feel so alone.

Make Aging Tech for Holiday Gift

Send a high tech gift, if you can’t see Mom or Dad over Christmas or Hanukkah. Send a high tech device that your loved one can really use and figure out. I just ordered the Esky Wireless Locator because I keep misplacing my glasses.

How Care Managers Help Get for Long Distance Care Providers

Care Manager scan do lots of things for a family member who is long distance and can’t see Mom on Christmas or Hanukkah. Geriatric Care Manager Julie Menack in her chapter “Long Distance Care Providers” in my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family lists tasks long-distance care providers can do to make their own lives and their long-distance loved ones saner, sounder and happier

Find a Care Manager Through Aging Life

If you want to investigate an Aging Life geriatric care manager in your parent’s own town find a professional who can help you do all this so you can remain a son or daughter and less stressed caregiver.

 

Filed Under: Adult children, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, Aging Life Care Assocaition, aging life care manager, Blog, branding, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Grandchild gifts for grandma, Hanukkah, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Care, Long distance caregiver, marketing to long distance adult children, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Quality of Life Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging life or geriatric care manager, case manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Hanukkah Rituals, Holiday in a Box, Holidays Crisis in aging family, holidays rituals, holidays with aging parents, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Reminiscence on the Holidays

What is Best PR To Reach Adult Children of Aging Parents ?

November 12, 2019

 

Position Your Business Over Your Competition

Reaching adult children who will pile in over the holidays can position you over your competition. A Speaker’s Bureau mixed with great social media and a newsletter can be the tantalizing hook to get your phone to ring off the hook when adult kids discover the parent who is falling, forgetting and foundering over the holidays.

Speaker’s Bureau Topics For Adult Children After Holidays

My excellent expert marketing colleague Natasha Beauchamp https://elderpagesonline.com/about-us/ has superb ideas on speaker’s bureau topics to draw the interest of adult children.images_20141216-184443_1.jpg

Provide enough information to demonstrate your expertise, but, not enough detail that you are giving away the store.  One way to get an insight into what adult kids are interested in is to look at the top eldercare-related searches on Google. These were compiled by the Pew Internet Project:

  • Dementia and memory loss  stock-photo-16832488-tense-couple-in-therapy-session.jpg
  • Long-term care options
  • Paying for care
  • Handling the stress of caregiving

Think about the pain points of family caregivers to get your phone ringing. 

Over the holidays so many adult children find themselves in pain seeing their declining parents. They fear caring for them, the burden they can, cannot or reject taking on and how they navigate through this.

Answer that pain with a Speaker’s bureau

Presentations  could be according to Natasha:

  • 10 warning signs your parent may need helpimages_20130906-154817_1.jpg
  • Is it Alzheimer’s?
  • Should Dad still be driving
  • What To Do When Parent’s Reject Care

 

Tips on Speaking Success

  • You are not there to inform them. You are not in speech business or case management business-You are in the customer business
  • Talk about your  business
  • Ask to speak before lunch (clanging dishes, food-filled, dozing off audiences 
  • Pass out sign-in sheet for gather emails for marketing early to add to your marketing database
  • Pass handouts including business cards, print out of your newsletter before lunch-audience can learn before you start
  • Ask for the sale -offer free  complimentary 30-minute phone consultation if sign up on your website
  • You are not there to inform them. You are not in speech business or case management business-You are in the
  • customer business
  • talk about your  business
  • After Speech

  • Send thank you letter to club president                                   

  • Enter sign-in sheet in your marketing database
  • Keep agency newsletters , social media and marketing touches flowing through marketing automation like Constant Contact, Mail Chimp

 

 

SIGN UP FOR MY NEWEST WEBINAR. 

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

 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 
  • Families so the  client chooses you

     

  •  

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

SIGN-UP NOW

Filed Under: Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, Blog, Caregiver Burn Out, caregiver mental health, GCM Speaker's Bureau, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Natasha Beauchamp, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Speaking to Adult Children Tagged With: aging life marketing copy, aging life or geriatric care marketing plan, ALCA marketing, content marketing, dysfunctional family holidays, geriatric care marketing, Holidays Crisis in aging family, marketing aging life or geriatric carre management, marketing geriatric care management, marketing to adult children, new business, Speakers Bureau

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