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 Friends

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.

8 Ways to Make Reminiscence a Valentine’s Gift for Aging Clients Tomorrow

February 13, 2020

Want a perfect Valentines’s gift for aging clients?

You already have it. A great Valentine’s for your older client is you the care manager, caregiver or family member- using reminiscence to gather an elders’ memories.

Reminiscence isn’t new. Before the printing press, storytellers and bards were how history was recorded-

Oral storytellers gave us the Odyssey and other oral tales. History exists in a family, and Ulysses or Penelope might be sitting in their home on Valentines’ Day- in the form of your aging clients.

But storytelling or reminiscence only works if the teller remembers the lines. Family history has to be captured when the older person still remembers. So holiday events are a perfect time to tap into that font before it flickers or dries up.

Capture Reminiscence

Here are some tips to use if you want to capture these family tales during Valentine’s visit with older clients—a perfect time to do this before age or dementia wipe their history.

Give Valentine’s gift each week of the year. Use StoryWorth. My daughter Kali Peterson Murphy, who is also in aging as a Program Officer, with the SCAN Foundation, purchased this as a Holiday gift for my husband and her Dad Pete. I love this as a user and a Geriatric care manager. Each week it prompts Pete to answer a question that my daughter chooses when she purchases StoryWorth. Pete can actually change the questions to be ones he wants to answer. Pete writes the answers and I record them on my iPhone and send them into Story Worth with photos that I have gathered of Pete’s life and stored on Google Photos.( this is an option) At the end of the year, her about to be 79-year-old Dad gets a book with all his stories.

It is a slam dunk for reminiscence. The adult child and or family receive the family history to be passed down, the older family members get to both tell her or his story and know that their family is interested in what they have to share from their past and in the end get a book about their lifeform it a fabulous gift.

Order it from Valentine’s Day tomorrow and you will have a year full of family history, an aging adult who knows you care about listening to them and an incredible gift of a reminiscence book for next Valentines’ Day and the rest of your life that you can pass down.

If you visit Reminiscence Tips

2. First, arrive with a real Valentine card and a small sensory gift like a little chocolate or some fresh red and white flowers. Just the card and the gift evoke memories

3. Use empathetic listening Make all the messages you give the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting- say, “I want to listen to you.” This in itself is a gift to an older person as few people really listen to them as they age.

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

5. You might ask the client or the family for some family photos of the older person growing up, getting married, and use those as memory prompts.

6. 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.” Did you go to Valentine’s parties when you were a kid or celebrate the day in school by exchanging valentines .” Did you have a special valentine as a teenager or young adult?”

7. If the client has dementia you can still do this with reminiscence prompts like a valentine, chocolate, some flowers or a simple valentine decoration you bring.

8. Use technology tools to help you with this legacy-building for your older client like Life Bio- or

Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone.

Follow Cathy Jo Cress’s posts in geriatric care management

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

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

A Little Help From Aging Parents Friends

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

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

How Can Reminiscence Therapy Make Give an Elder With Dementia a Happier Labor Day

August 31, 2019

Even elders with Alzheimer’s can find new joy with Reminiscence

Holidays are perfect for bringing back memories for someone who has dementia. Labor Day was celebrated by them as a child.They may be able recall walking back to the first day of school , buying school supplies, or the taste of late summer tomatoes on hamburgers at Labor Day barbecues with family.When an elderly person develops Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, the short-term memory is frequently affected .But long-term memories , like long ago Labor Day memories can remain as intact and as vivid as they have always been during the course of the client’s life. As a result healthcare professionals and family can use a practice called reminiscence therapy to help combat the frustration, confusion, and depression that can often accompany dementia and even bring joy to the older person.

What is reminiscence therapy?

Reminiscence therapy is like a therapy session where the elderly person spends time recalling memories of his or her life, perhaps telling stories about things that happened on Labor Day and long ago events the person can recall.

Care managers and senior professionals can teach family to use photos, familiar objects, or other such items to help jog the memory of the elder. Some therapists can a scrapbook of a person’s life, including photos, letters, and other such personal memorabilia. This becomes a visual biography of the patient’s life and helps him or her remember who he or she is.

How does this quality of life therapy help?

Almost all elderly men and women can feel deeply discouraged and frustrated with their memory issues. Reminiscence can give peace and acceptance of the current situation by helping the person remember that he or she has had a good and full life. It also prompts the communication skills of elderly people who otherwise may not feel very compelled to open up and share anything with anyone else.

HOW DOES REMINISCENCE THERAPY HELP DEMENTIA

Using reminiscence therapy techniques can give the confused elder a richer quality of life by giving them with time with other people who will actually listen to them. Through this, a dementia patient is made to feel their thoughts and feelings actually matter. To someone who has an elderly loved one suffering from dementia, this benefit alone can make reminiscence therapy a form of joy.

There is even an app called Grey Matters, which caregivers and care managers can look into for reminiscence therapy for elders with dementia. If the senior is a BBC fan, like me, the BBC even has an app called RemArc to help dementia sufferers with reminiscence using old clips from the BBC. You can see in the future an app that has clips from Star Wars for present baby boomers or generations after that.

Books to Help You Open Your Own Program

Geriatric Care Manager Nina Herndon is the pioneer of adding reminiscence therapy to geriatric care management. She authored the chapter Quality of Life in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management .

Nina also created a book on quality of life activities you can use in your work and program called Joyful Moments

Order both and start using reminiscence therapy with your clients.

How Can Someone with Dementia Have a Better Quality of Life ?

July 2, 2019

Reminiscence and Story Telling

The role of story telling and reminiscence is very important for elders, as they look back on their life. It gives them a chance to socialize as they tell their story. It also means someone usually listens or documents. That magically gives the elder social interaction and connectiveness.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history, which gives the older person a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may have not heard all the details of their grandparents or parents life before. So the quality of the older person of both the older person and the aging family are increased through oral history and reminiscence

The aging professional can suggest family or friends just sitting down and prompting a story or oral history using technology like your phone

Even elders with Alzheimers can find new joy with Reminiscence

When an elderly person develops Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, the short-term memory is frequently affected but long-term memories can remain as intact and vivid as they have always been during the course of the patient’s life.. As a result healthcare professionals can use practice called reminiscence therapy to help combat the frustration, confusion, and depression that can often accompany dementia and even bring joy to the older person

What is reminiscence therapy?

Reminiscence therapy is like a therapy session where the elderly person will spend time recalling memories of his or her life, perhaps telling stories about things that happened and events the person can recall.

Sometimes senior experts can use photos, familiar objects, or other such things to help jog the memory of the patient. Some therapists can a scrapbook of a person’s life, including photos, letters, and other such personal memorabilia. This becomes a s visual biography of the patient’s life and helps him or her remember who he or she is.

How does this quality of life therapy help? Almost all elderly men and women can start feeling discouraged and frustrated with their memory issues. Reminiscence can give peace and acceptance of the current situation by helping the person remember that he or she has had a good and full life life.It also prompts communication skills of elderly people who otherwise may not feel very compelled to open up and share anything with anyone else.

Dementia and Reminiscence of 4th of July

People with dementia can get given a richer quality of life by giving the people who will actually listen to them, so that they feel as their thoughts and feelings actually matter. To someone who has an elderly loved one suffering from dementia, this benefit alone can make reminiscence therapy a form of joy for a very confused elder.so serve that Hamburger from the grill and ask the elder who you serve it to, what did they eat at the 4th of July when they were young and then —just listen.

How Can Someone with Dementia Have a Better Quality of Life ?

Reminiscence and Story Telling

Even elders with Alzheimers can find new joy with Reminiscence

What is reminiscence therapy?

Dementia and Reminiscence of 4th of July

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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

Absent Long Distance Care Provider Holidays Answers

Easy Low-Touch Non-Tech Ideas

Easy Option -Holiday in a Box

A Little Help From Aging Parents Friends

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.

Make Aging Tech for Holiday Gift

How Care Managers Help Get for Long Distance Care Providers

Find a Care Manager Through Aging Life

Want a perfect Valentines’s gift for aging clients?

Capture Reminiscence

If you visit Reminiscence Tips

Absent Long Distance Care Provider Holidays Answers

Easy Low-Touch Non-Tech Ideas

Easy Option -Holiday in a Box

A Little Help From Aging Parents Friends

How Care Managers Help Get for Long Distance Care Providers

Find a Care Manager Through Aging Life

Even elders with Alzheimer’s can find new joy with Reminiscence

What is reminiscence therapy?

How does this quality of life therapy help?

HOW DOES REMINISCENCE THERAPY HELP DEMENTIA

Books to Help You Open Your Own Program

Reminiscence and Story Telling

Even elders with Alzheimers can find new joy with Reminiscence

What is reminiscence therapy?

Dementia and Reminiscence of 4th of July

Contact

Connect with Cathy

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