Does The Dysfunctional Aging Family Need Mediation Post The Holidays ?

December 9, 2021

Does an Aging Family Need Mediation Post Holidays?

Do you need mediation for the dysfunctional family after the holidays? 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? Does a dysfunctional family need mediation?

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? You need to assess -does the dysfunctional family need mediation?

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? Do you need mediation for the dysfunctional family after the holidays?

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

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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.

Geriatric Care Management Tools – Family Meetings

July 11, 2013

One of the Tools of the Whole Family approach is expertise in conflict. If you are working with a “nearly normal family” and there is potential conflict, a geriatric care manager can facilitate a family meeting

Gail Sheehy in her book Passages in Caregiving, strongly suggests having a family meeting over caregiving issues and offers some guidelines for midlife siblings seeking this tool.

Sheehy proposes not involving the older family member or care receiver at the first meeting, because midlife sibling issues need to be solved first.

Serrated family concerns such as present middle-aged sibling struggles over parent care or brother and sisters life long battles need to be addressed immediately before moving forward with the family meeting.

Solutions like a path to sibling forgiveness need to be road mapped before caregiving problems can be solved. Other strategies like a forgiveness system might be tapped into as a goal before care giving could be shared by adult -child siblings.

The aging professional should have a thorough background in midlife sibling issues before she or he tackles a family meeting. Sparks can fly at a family meeting, because adult siblings gather as a team for the first time since childhood, facing a red hot aging parent problem

The Geraitric care manager should organize this meeting and facilitate it. If you are a dysfunctional family, you should find a mediator . But the professional third party must know sibling dynamics, such as the parental care giving patterns in midlife siblings, sibling aide and direct services and sibling rivalry extended into midlife.

Do Midlife Siblings in a Dysfunctional Family Need a Mediator?

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

Geriatric Care Management Tools – Family Meetings

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