Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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Adult Sibling Rivalry at Thanksgiving- Where To Get Help?

October 25, 2022

A sad woman crying as she prays.

Siblings are The Biggest Source Of Stress Between Human Beings

At family rituals, like Thanksgiving next month, adult siblings often are often brought back together. If you are one- will it be a happy feast or wrecked by holiday sibling rivalry??

 

Sibling Rivalry Can Give Acid Reflux to Grandma’s Thanksgiving Dinner

As Gail Sheehy said in her book, Passages in Caregiving, we think that siblings will automatically support each other when aging parents fall apart. Sheehy quotes sociologists, Karl Pillemer and J. Jill Suitor, on sibling rivalry, in a study they did conclude that siblings are inherent rivals and the biggest source of stress between human beings.

If you are a midlife sibling, perhaps you have a brother or sister to whom you hardly speak because of sibling rivalry. Maybe you are about to see your siblings at the coming Thanksgiving feast, even on zoom during COVID, and anticipate largely ignoring him or her or doing chitchat as you seethe the inside. If you fit this description of sibling rivalry, you are in the same lurching boat as uncounted baby boomer siblings all over the world.

 

Childhood Wound Ripped Open

That wound from childhood may still ache enough to keep you on the furrowed path your family followed when you were young. Now, however, you and your adult siblings, nearing or at retirement age, may need to come together again to be part of a niece or

adult siblings need to come together for aging parents

 

 

nephew’s wedding or christening, help plan a parent’s anniversary dinner, or, most important, oversee the increasing care of elderly family members.

Best Thanksgiving Sibling Rivalry Film

I suggest you watch Pieces of April, a fabulous Thanksgiving film ( lead 21-year-old Katy Holmes debuts in a standout performance) where the film’s dysfunctional family revolves around adult sibling rivalry. The film is also about interracial couples, and in the end, around a catastrophic illness of the aging parent, where the siblings need to resolve their differences. It also makes it a trifecta with dementia. The grandmother, who has dementia is taken out of her nursing home to join the dysfunctional Thanksgiving feast and offers surprising sanity to the sibling-rivalry drama.

If you recognize this problem in your own family, seek counseling before coming the holidays engulf you. Contact the Aging Life Care Association to find help before a parental crisis.

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

holiday sibling rivalry

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

WEDNESDAY, November 16th, 2022, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

 Learn how to create!

  • Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
  • Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
  • Pre-Holiday Marketing to help you sign up families who might face a serious decline in aging parents
  • How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional & long-distance family
  • How to use tools to contain holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
  • How to move the family to New Year’s stability
  • Position Your Agency ahead of Care Managers who do not have great pre-holiday marketing campaigns and lack the clinical skills how to work with Adult Children and families during the chaotic aging family holiday visit when adult kids find their aging parents need care
  • Featuring

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management        

 

  • Featuring Speaker

 Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THIS FREE WEBINAR IS Tuesday, November 16th, 2021, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Sign Up Now

Free Webinar

 

 

 

Find out more about dysfunctional families and sibling rivalry from My YouTube, Channel  

 

 

Filed Under: ADULT SIBling, Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Aging therapist, ALCA Dysfuntional Family Help, Black Aging Family, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RB, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black entrepreneurs, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black geriatric care managers, Black RN, Black Travel Nurses, Black Travel RN, Blog, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional family, Cut Off, Dysfunctional aging family, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family Inquiry, Dysfunctional Family System, Families, Filial Crisis, FREE WEBINAR, Geriatric Care Management Business, geriatric social worker, Holiday Meltdown in Aging Family, Holiday Sibling Rivalry, nurse care manager, SIBLING, sibling rivalry, sibling sharing care, Sibling Strife Christmas, Sibling Strife Holidays, Sibling Strife Thanksgiving, Social Media, Social Media for Care managers, Social Media Holidays, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving & dysfunctional family, THANKSGIVING BLOG, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgving visits during COVID, Therapist Specializing in Aging Tagged With: adult sibling, adult sibling conflict, adult sibling estrangement, aging life care on holidays, aging parent crisis on holiday, Aging siblings, Black, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, care manager marketing, celebrations with siblings, cut-off sibling, Dydsfunctual Family Holiday, dysfunctual family, Dysfunctual siblings, Holiday Crisis For Aging Family, Holiday Marketing, Holiday marketing Plan, Holiday Rush, Holiday sibling rivalry, Holidays with midlife siblings, Home care marketing, irate siblings, Prepare for holiday rush, sibling conflict, sibling rivalry, siblings, Thansgiving sibling rivalry

5 Steps to Avoid Midlife Step Sibling Fireworks on Fourth of July

July 3, 2019

 

Do You Expect Acid Reflux at 4th of July Barbecue From Step Sibling?

Are your midlife step siblings or half siblings coming July 4th barbecue? Maybe you expect acid reflux from the hot sauce that parental divorce dribbles on family celebrations.

Rituals like July 4th events are the glue that bond family life. They patch up family and sibling disputes and give us the architecture of a year full of celebrations marking family history.

But the tidal wave of divorce among baby boomers and Generation X brings step siblings with old grudges, half siblings who lost family love, ½ their rooms, and gained a shredded family nest. Now the family does not know who it’s members really are and rituals like labor day – can turn into a nightmare.

 Avoid the Drama of Step Siblings to Help Your Aging Parents

Aging parents, who may be at the labor day event, don’t need the drama and will need all of you to be a family team when they need care as they decline.family-fight-300x223.jpg

Here are some tips to include everyone including step siblings and half siblings

 

1.Ask everyone to bring a dish. That is the beginning of building a family team- to share care of aging parent care

2.Don’t make this a family meeting where old sibling grudges get hashed out. Celebrations are just that. If someone pushes you button, keep that angry response to yourself and maybe arrange a future family meeting.




3.Makes an effort to includes step and half siblings and glue that jagged bond. Create activities that everyone can join -– blood, step, or half siblings.

 

4. Find out what everyone likes to do. If they are step kids or step siblings make sure you have fun things to do ahead of time that they enjoy. Step siblings who may feel like third wheels in your clan. If they have a difficult time blend Reach out to make them part of the group. Understand their reluctance to join. Do Not make them feel like Cinderella. Bring them up to the top floor of the castle. 

5. If none of this work and you face or are deep into aging parent care Family meetings can be planned post labor day with a geriatric care manager or a mediator’s help.

6. Find a geriatric care manager near you at Aging Life Care Association web site. Just put in your zip code and come up with a great care manager. Find an elder mediator

 

Filed Under: 4th of july, Adult children, Aging, aging family crisis, aging life business Tagged With: adult sibling conflict, celebrations with siblings, cut-off sibling, estranged midlife sibling, half-sibling, irate siblings, sibling rivalry, step sibling, step sibling family meeting

Dread Memorial Day with Midlife Sibings?

May 23, 2013

Dys-fam90264_CH22_FIG02.jpg

 

Are you dreading the Memorial Day family barbeque?  . Will your estranged brother be manning the barbeque while you drink too much beer?

Are you a midlife sibling at war with sister or brother? Worse than that, do you feel like you and all your siblings are in not only a dysfunctional family but also an aging dysfunctional family?

What’s an aging dysfunctional family? Well they are very much like a war zone. Clans remain at war with each other, like the 1980’s Serbian conflict or the Iraq war pitting the Sunni’s against the Shia.These tribal battles have gone on for centuries and have the same bloody roots of the dysfunctional family -repeated from one generation to the next.

The hallmarks of the dysfunctional aging family, are after decades as a motley clan there is still not enough love in the family. The now midlife children have to fight for what little nurturance their older parents can bring to the ancient rickety nest they built.

Nurturing is often missing in the dysfunctional aging family because the aging parents themselves probably got little nurturing themselves as kids and on and on back down the family line. Parental neglect and abuse are frequent in the history of the aging dysfunctional family.

The now older parents can suffer from serious mental health problems such as schizophrenia or are bi-polar. Health and addiction problems like alcoholism are frequent.  Family interaction and communication, -parental treatment of siblings, brother and sister treatment of each other stepparent interaction and interface of everyone in the family has wrought deep tissue damage that never healed.

These aging dysfunctional families generally negotiated all of life’s developmental phases with great difficulty. The role in the family, especially the parental one, was murky with a poor, abusive or mentally unfit leader of the family. The rules in the family were unfair ambiguous or full of double binds. There is deep-seated ambivalence. Finally the last life transition in the aging family, the care of the declining parent, implodes the family, which had little balance to begin with. They are asked to care for parents who did not care for them, thus reeking havoc on an already disorganized aging family.

So good luck at the Memorial Day family gathering and perhaps consider hiring a geriatric care manager if you sibling war is affecting not only rituals like family gatherings but also the care of your aging parents. The GCM can help you end the constant hangovers and /or acid reflux.

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging parent, aging parent care, assessing the caregiver, blaming familiy members, blood brother, celebrations with siblings, dysfunctional aging family, dysfuntional family, estranged siblings, family meeting, geriatric care manager, geriatric care managers, half siblings, holidays with aging parents, irate siblings, Marriage and Family Therapist, MFT, midlife siblings, Mom Loves You Best Forgiving and Forging Sibling Relationships, My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual, NAELA, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, sibling emotional violence, sibling family meeting, sibling rivalry, sibling team, siblings feuding, visiting aging parets during holidays

Professionals Mediating Fighting and Feuding at the End of Life-

April 15, 2013

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

 

May is National Geriatric Care Manager’s Month I will be speaking at the 29th annual Conference of the National Association of Professional Care Manager’s in Philadelphia on Friday April 19th. I will cover the thorny topic, The GCM as the Accidental Mediator: Fretting and Fighting or Feuding: Intergenerational Conflict in the Adult Family at End of Life. If you are interested in attending and learning more you can still register and attend the conference. . If you are considering this growing profession, I wrote the textbook Handbook of Geriatric Care Management,that is now out in it’s 3rd edition. If you think of opening a GCM agency, I just published the first manual on how to operate a geriatric care management agency My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual. 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging family, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, case manager, Dana Curtis, disputes at end of life, dysfuntional family, elderly at end of life, end of life, facilitator, family caregivers, Fighting and Feuding at end of life, geraitric assessment, geraitric care manager, Handbook of Geriatric Care Management third edition, home modification, Hospice, informal caregiver, Marriage and Family Therapist, mediation, mediator, mediiator, MFT, My Geraitric Care Management Operations Manual, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers Conference, red flags for a family meeting, sibling family meeting, sibling rivalry, sibling team, sibling teamwork, siblings feuding

Add a Pick List to Your Care Plan

March 8, 2013

PDF-Cover-of-11-10-12My-Geriatric-Care-Management-Agency.jpg

 Frequently, many older clients have similar deficits as they age. Most care plans will include one or more of these problems, and it is good to incorporate this list into your psychosocial and functional assessment tools. These can become a pick list you can add to the beginning of your care plan because many of them will appear in your care plan.

  1. They include self care deficit
  2. impaired home management
  3. impaired mobility
  4. knowledge deficit
  5. alteration in bowel elimination
  6. alternation in urinary elimination
  7. impaired skin integrity
  8. loneliness
  9. depression,
  10. pain
  11. family dysfunction
  12. sibling rivalry
  13. elder abuse
  14. caregiver burnout
  15. We can now add technological needs to that list.

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: activities of daily living- mobility, ADL toileting, adult sibling, aging family, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, aging technology, care plan, care plan as saftey net, caregiver assessment, caregiver burnout, Cognitive Assessment, depression, Depression Assessment for Older person, dysfuntional family, elder abuse, elders and mobility, family caregivers, Functional Assessment, geraitric care manager, geriatric care management, Geriatric care management operations manual, Handbook of Geriatric Care Management third edition, merging care plans, My Geraitric Care Management Operations Manual, National Association of Geriatric Care Managers, parent care crisis, Psychosocial assessment, red flags when visiting an aging parent, sibling rivalry, technology for caregivers

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