Dysfunctional Aging Families Can Wreak Havoc at End of Life

February 18, 2021

What do Feuding families do at the end of life?

When a family member is facing death and dying dysfunctional families have flawed conversations. Often they do not communicate at all or engage in destructive banter. They see one another as enemies. They demonize one another.

Feuding families are what I call dysfunctional families. They blame each other instead of locking arms in a crisis.

They sabotage resolution.

They actively compound already difficult decisions with intractable, interpersonal conflict. They create problems independent of the underlying issues.

Facing Fractured Communication

What are some of the struggles that these aging dysfunctional families with fractured communication can face?

Aging parents who lack the capacity to make decisions have no advance directives, DPOA and a

health-care proxy, and adult siblings, who must make end of life decisions, can’t agree

Withdrawal of life support with no designated health care agent and adult children and/or spouse disagree

Pain management adult children and/or and spouse disagree.

Answer to Fractured Family at End of Life – Mediation.

Mediation is a tool that can be a good resource for dysfunctional families at the end of life. It can help with these difficult families face the death of a parent without fracturing the entire family. It can allow an older person to die without pain inflicted by their own family.

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

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In this 1 ½ -hour webinar you will learn how to

1.Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death

2.Help clients be active participants in their care

3.Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care

4. Provide family center care to caregiver and family

5. Choose the right support services through all stages of death

6.Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team

7. Use ALCA End of Life Benefits During COVID

8.Use COVID -19 Family Coaching for GCM

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Does The Dysfunctional Aging Family Need Mediation Post The Holidays ?

January 4, 2021

If your clients ‘holiday visit from their family was miserable and you are care manager to the aging parents, a family meeting between the adult sisters and brothers and a mediatory might be needed this January. This will help you decide if you need a mediator or you can be a facilitator at the family meeting. Care Managers can do facilitation but you need very advanced training to be a mediator.

a. Compatible. Does their family generally present as a unit and lock arms together in a crisis? Do you usually work as a team?

b. Fragmented: Is their family unable to work together as a unit? Do their family members and siblings contact friends and outside professionals with their problems, while failing to confide in each other? Do family members ask other family and other

siblings, friends, and outside professionals to keep conversations secret from certain relatives? Is there a cache of family secrets that some family members do not tell others or share? Do kin pit one another against each other when trouble arises? Instead of locking arms in a crisis, does their family point fingers and blame each other?

c. Is their family productive or non-productive?

1.Productive: Are the family members able to respond to the suggestions of friends or professionals and take necessary action to create change in the family?

2.Nonproductive: Are any family members unable to mobilize when help is really needed? Do any siblings or other kin feel powerless to act? Is “victim” a term you would use for some family members and or siblings? Do family members ignore the ideas friends or professionals who are trying to transform the sibling/ family dynamics

d. Is their family stable or fragile?

1.. Stable – When family members have disagreements, do they find a way to solve their problems? Does the family have long-standing relationships and respect the differences in each other?

2. Fragile: Is there a history of emotional cut-offs or distancing on the part of one or more family members? Is there a pattern of generational divorce, remarriage?

Each family is different but if this family scores 2 out of three you should investigate bringing in a mediator

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

Thursday, January 21, 2021

2:00-3:30 Pacific Standard Time

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.

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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 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

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Read Dana Curtis Esquire’s Mediation and Geriatric Care Management in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th Edition

Does The Dysfunctional Aging Family Need Mediation Post The Holidays ?

January 4, 2020

If your clients ‘holiday visit from their family was miserable and you are care manager to the aging parents, a family meeting between the adult sisters and brothers might be needed this January. This will help you decide if you need a mediator or you can be a facilitator at the family meeting.

9 Warning Signs That Mediation May be Needed

a.Compatible. Does their family generally present as a unit and lock arms together in a crisis? Do you usually work as a team?

b.Fragmented: Is their family unable to work together as a unit? Do their family members and siblings contact friends and outside professionals with their problems, while failing to confide in each other? Do family members ask other family and other siblings, friends and outside professionals to keep conversations secret from certain relatives? Is there a cache of family secrets that some family members do not tell others or share? Do kin pit one another against each other when trouble arises? Instead of locking arms in a crisis, does their family point fingers and blame each other?

c.Is their family productive or non-productive?

1,.Productive: Are the family members able to respond to the suggestions of friends or professionals and take necessary action to create change in the family?

2,.Nonproductive: Are any family members unable to mobilize when help is really needed? Do any siblings or other kin feel powerless to act? Is “victim” a term you would use for some family members and or siblings? Do family members ignore the ideas of friends or professionals who are trying to transform the sibling/ family dynamics

d.Is their family stable or fragile?

1.. Stable – When family members have disagreements, do they find a way to solve their problems? Does the family have long-standing relationships and respect the differences in each other?

2.Fragile: Is there a history of emotional cut-offs or distancing on the part of one or more family members? Is there a pattern of generational divorce, remarriage?

Each family is different but if this family scores 2 out of three you should investigate bringing in a mediator

Read Dana Curtis Esquire’s Mediation and Geriatric Care Management in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th Edition

Do Midlife Siblings in a Dysfunctional Family Need a Mediator?

February 8, 2017

Are you and your midlife siblings from a dysfunctional family? When a midlife sibling group faces a parent care crisis, if they are a dysfunctional family- they face almost insurmountable issues. To overcome this Hindu Kush, they need a family meeting managed by a mediator
Dysfunctional families are conflictive. They are incompatible and fragmented. Family members and midlife siblings historically argue constantly, even over relatively unimportant issues and often cannot even come to an agreement over uncomplicated matters. The family nest, from which these siblings sprang may have been a troubled one, in which dissension, rivalry and resentment were rife. Such rickety parental architecture can last a lifetime. Old conflicts between siblings or among adult children and the aging parent often resurface during a crisis period with aging parents
The family has a very difficult time making changes as a group. Any change in this fragile family, like the decline of an aging parent, is as overwhelming as a rogue wave. As a sibling group, adapting to change has always been nearly impossible.What’s more, they are often easily shattered both as individuals and as a family unit, and usually have a history of emotional cut-offs, with siblings or family members not speaking to each other for years at a time.
Consider a family meeting when your aging parents face a crisis that calls for a sibling team meeting. Before you do contact An aging life or geriatric care manager , who may also be a mediator or can refer you to a mediator as part of their services.

Find out more about how to run a family meeting and intervention with dysfunctional families in my book Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4^th edition

Midlife Sibling Wars- Call in a Care Manager or Mediator?

April 24, 2016

Midlife siblings can often get into big dust- ups over inheritance or who Mom Loved Best. Elder mediation is a growing field that many geriatric care managers have embraced. Featured in the New York Times yesterday, this profession is covered by Dana Curtis JD , in the new edition of the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management .

Curtis however warns that Aging Life or geriatric care managers are ” accidental mediators” who encounter warring sisters, exploding families in their work all involving money, inheritance, caregiver burnout who” mom loved best “ to do a professional skills check. . If a geriatric does not have the mediation training, like GCM Bunni Dybnis , the aging life or GCM should find skilled elder mediator in their own continuum of care (community) and partner with them.

Do Midlife Siblings in a Dysfunctional Family Need a Mediator?

Midlife Sibling Wars- Call in a Care Manager or Mediator?

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