sibling Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Ten Warning Signs You Are Working With a Dysfunctional Family

November 3, 2022

Ten Warning Signs you are Working with Dysfunctional Family represents critical information to share with long-distance caregivers before their holiday visit. Do you know them? They include contentiousness, anger, and cut off and all are listed below. These clinical issues give the visiting caregiver signs that they need to call a care manager and you the care manager the most challenging job of an aging professional. What you have to know is family system theory and be clinically skilled in entering this treacherous family system – to get care for an older person

1. Contentiousness – Old fights erupt; the siblings and parents get into arguments with one another about an old issue

2. Anger – Siblings and family members express physical anger, emotional abuse, financial abuse

3. Distancing & cut off – Some siblings or parents have nothing to do with family and may not speak to parents or siblings for long periods of time.

Ten Warning Signs You are Working with the Dysfunctional Family – Fusion, Denial, Triangulation, Entitlement

4. Fusion – Siblings and family members, such as the mother and eldest daughter, blend into one another, For example, the daughter sounds, acts, and has the same prejudices as the mother. . Think of the media’s portrayal of Lindsay Lohan and her mother.

5. Denial – Adult siblings do not see a decline in a parent, do not face reality, and do not take care of parent if he or she needs care.

6. Triangulation – Tension between two family members or siblings causes one to enlist a third family member or sibling to avoid change For example, two adult sibling object to the cost of care of an aging parent. They gang up on the third adult sibling who thinks the cost of care is reasonable and justified.

7. Sense of Entitlement – Siblings who are accustomed to purchasing services need not personally solve their own, children’s siblings or parents’ problems. This lack of engagement leaves them, unprepared and unwilling in getting involved in solving family tribulations.

Ten Warning Signs You Are Working with a Dysfunctional Family – Narcissism, Needy Adult Siblings, Substance Abuse, and Cut Off

8. Narcissism – One or more siblings has an “it’s all about me” attitude and

other siblings resent this. The self-absorbed sibling either does not participate

9. Needy Adult Siblings – These adult siblings feel starved for affection and often seek affection from professionals and other people in their lives for compensation for the care they didn’t receive as children.

10 . Substance and Other Abuse – The family and siblings have a history of drug, alcohol, and/or child abuse.

If this fits you you and your aging parent needs care may need to contact a geriatric care manager.

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Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
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How to use tools to contain holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
How to move the family to New Year’s stability

Know The Ten Warning Signs you are working with a dysfunctional family and 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
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Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management

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With Dorian’s Carnage- Do You Need a Midlife Family Meeting for Aging Parent Disaster Plan ?

September 3, 2019

What is MidLife Sibling Hurricane Nightmare

The catastrophic disaster of Hurricane Dorian unleashed on the Bahama’s and heading to Florida should conjure up a midlife sibling nightmare. It brings back the goblins of Katrina -the most gruesome weather cataclysm where 39 elderly residents died, trapped or abandoned in retirement centers and 1400 elder overall died in Katrina’s watery wrath.We just plunged into possible horror again. On Dorian’s heels we may have more hurricanes with hurricane season upon us, and global warming making them , like catagory 5 Dorian, monsters storms. This should terrify adult children enough to take emergency action to protect their parents.

Midlife Sibling Need Emergency Disaster Plan for Aging Relatives

This recent confluence of hurricane deaths and hurricanes looming right now, should be a deafening roar in the ear of midlife siblings that they need to convene a midlife sibling disaster plan family meeting to protect any aging family members-, no matter where your elderly parents live or what level of care. You need that disaster plan because older people are more likely to die in catastrophes than any other population. As I pointed out in my last blog, just because they are often in a facility in a facility or alone and too frail to escape .Katrina and Irma tell us perhaps they are more in peril.

So before another hurricane, tornado, earthquake, flood, or any disaster hits, you need to have a midlife sibling family meeting to come up with a disaster plan for aging family members

What would be the agenda of that midlife sibling disaster family meeting?

If your loved ones are in a FACILITY- do not trust the facility to handle the situation. Look at what just happened in Irma.

1)Get a copy of the facilities disaster and evacuation plan.Compare it to state regulations. If it does not include calling the family before the disaster, consider moving your loved one or make sure that is changed.

2)Appoint a sibling to be in charge of reading the disaster evacuation plan and be the contact person.

3)Call your state facility licensing body and find out the state regulations to see if they match the facilities- CCRC, Assisted Living or Nursing Home

4) Have a telephonic family meeting before the disaster if possible

5) Make sure the state requires backup generators for heat and air conditioning- a flaw in Florida’s regulations in Irma

If the loved one is LIVING AT HOME alone or with an adult child.

1) Create a disaster plan for the older person. This would map out what each sibling and family member needs to do

2) Create a disaster team. This would include every adult siblings all over the country, family nearby, caregivers and neighbors.

4) Include someone on the team who can carry heavy objects like wheelchairs.

5) Name a substitute caregiver if the regular one can’t get there.

6) Make an evacuation plan for your aging family member’s house. Where is the nearest Red Cross shelter

7) What disaster supplies do you do you have on hand? Get list from your local Red Cross

8)Find out how many people do you need to make the move to safety or a shelter?

9) Put all of the above in writing.

10) Share a copy your disaster plan with everyone. E-mail copies to everyone on the family disaster team including all adult siblings, neighbors and friends.

11) Get everyone’s agreement especially midlife siblings and the older person. Be a unified disaster team.

12 ) Call a geriatric care manager to manage the plan or help you create it with your elderly parents, if you live long distance. They can do the heavy lifting, can help moderate a family meeting- can research state laws, be there in a disaster immediately, create and implement a disaster plan for your parent, that you approve and can be part of.

Professionals check out the chapter “ Preparing for Emergencies” in my Handbook of Geriatric Care Management fourth edition,

Professionals Check out my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family, Jones and Bartlett, with its chapter on Family Meetings and the Aging Family by Rita Ghatak, director of Stanford’s Aging Program.

7 Tips to Make Labor Day Midlife- Sibling Stress Free

August 28, 2019

Happy Labor Day.

If you are working with midlife siblings to solve elder care issues and they are attending a Labor Day barbecue-

Here are

Suggestions to make the ritual of Labor Day – a holiday to be enjoyed by midlife siblings and their families – not dreaded like the annual Thanksgiving dinner where Mom burns the turkey and your uncle gets drunk and sings.

Here are 7 tips to help them keep the Labor Day heartburn free without a midlife sibling to build a midlife sibling team over aging Mom and Dad issues.

1) Don’t discuss politics. In this era of the Trump presidency with so many families at odds over President The Democratic Presidential Race ,Trump, the Russian hacking investigation, DOMA, the building of the ” Mexican Wall ” –politics can be lethal to families. Spare siblings, and guests. This is bloodier than the civil war with so many kin at opposite poles. So keep it positive and light or just plain pass the time of day. And whatever you do, don’t drink too much and forget the ban on politics.

2) Remember that it is a family gathering and it is not “all about you”.Suggest keeping a positive attitude for the sake of aging parents, if they are there, and kids, who will model bad sibling behavior when they face parent- care in the future

3) Call email or Facebook, Evite everyone ahead of time. Ask everyone to bring a dish to share. That is the beginning of building a sibling family team- sharing food. Call every midlife sibling and family member. Do not exclude. Again to build a team effort.

4) Attempt to get all midlife siblings to plan activities ahead and jointly work to make them happen-with a sibling team spirit. Think of softball games, horseshoes, and a treasure hunt, anything that everyone can have joint ideas about beforehand. Use Facebook to do this- hopefully, all your siblings are your Facebook friends.

5) Arrange to split the bill for beverages like alcohol and soft drinks, again sibling team effort. Remember to go light on alcohol because, like the recent Houston explosion caused by hurricane flooding, alcohol can detonate sibling warfare.

6) Share jobs- setting up tables, bringing in equipment for sports or games, lawn chairs- especially ‘manning” the barbecue. (Sisters can cook too) Share it and don’t let anyone be top dog –be the chosen chef, unless everyone is fine with that.This is again modeling a sibling team about helping an aging Mom and Dad.

6) It is a party, not a sibling family meeting. If you want to talk about personal issues, make a date in the future to get together with your angry sister/brother.

7) Don’t make this a family meeting where old sibling grudges get hashed out.It is a holiday.

IF you are an ALCA member or GCMCheck out the chapter ” Working With Adult Aging Siblings” by Cathy Cress and Kali C Peterson in Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family – for a deeper dive into how to work with midlife siblings around aging parent care.

Also, you could apply this to any labor day gathering with siblings and just leave out the aging parent issue.

HAVE A HAPPY LABOR DAY

8 Ways to Help Organize Long Distance Care Provider Sibling Support Before Holidays

October 27, 2018

It takes 1 Mom to Handle 10 children and 10 children can’t manage one Mom

HOW YOU GET OTHER SIBLINGS INVOLVED

Before the coming Thanksgiving celebration, what are some suggestions you can make to the main care provider to get help FROM ADULT SIBLINGS, when all family members have gathered?

Here are some ideas for you as the care manager, can suggest to clients to organize siblings to help share care.

1. KEEP THEM UP ON THINGS?

ways to keep siblings informed

telephone calls or conference calls with siblings

monthly e-newsletters to siblings Constant Contact –

Skype with parents

Facebook Page Parents

Make an Amazon Wish list and share it for gifts for parents

Family Meetings to organize the feast or discuss parent issues

2.LISTEN TO WHAT THEY HAVE TO Say

be an active listener

3.MAKE SURE AGING PARENTS UNDERSTAND THAT YOU NEED YOUR SIBLINGS HELP

4. IF YOU WANT SIBLINGS TO HELP-TELL THEM SO

use open communication

5. BE SURE TO GIVE SIBLINGS POSITIVE FEEDBACK FOR THEIR EFFORTS

Write thank you notes, call, text, e-mail

6.SPEAK UP RIGHT AWAY IF THERE ARE PROBLEMS

diffuse problems early on

7. INSTEAD OF MAKING ACCUSATIONS- SHARE YOUR FEELINGS

8.DIVIDE UP THE DUTIES

example- one sibling handles parents’ finances, bills, for Thanksgiving, everyone brings a dish and out of town siblings bring wine, drinks bread etc.

one person does a newsletter about the client

use calendar LOTS of HELPING HANDS

This also may be an article for your website or newsletter for November.

Get more tips on working with Aging families during the busiest care management season- the coming holidays

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How to give hope to frantic children who call, after seeing their aging parent struggling with the rituals
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How to use financial forecasting to prepare for growth during the holidays
How to work with both dysfunctional and long-distance families who call during the holidays
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How Can You Improve Your Midlife Sibling Relationship Post Labor Day

September 5, 2017

Did you spend Labor Day with midlife and care of your aging parents came up. Did you wake with a horrible hangover- either from too much booze or just amplified emotional tension that turns you inside out next morning.

Perhaps it involved arguments over aging parent care? If dealing with your siblings gives you a royal headache, the tension may have been made worse by the conflagration of alcohol and /or age old rifts between you and your siblings that started in childhood.

It may be time to look into the roots of your family script before your parents do need care or if they need care now.

Did your step, half or blood sibling do something long ago that’s still a weeping wound in your mind? Does it keep you apart or in each other’s faces – – especially awkward- during a holiday gathering when families were flocking together consuming mounds of barbecue & pot luck food and sharing old stories or recent family news

If the main villain in the family tragedy is a sibling or step sibling or half sibling – here’s a post-Labor Day quiz to see if you need help from someone like a geriatric care manager

Find out if have a sibling “ I Hate You Story”. Maybe you did not think you needed this test few weeks ago. Post Labor Day – if you know you need the test now- here it is.

Take the test below.

1. Have you told your sibling story more than once to the same person?

2. Do you play the sibling events more than two times in a day in your mind?

3. Do you find yourself speaking to the sibling who hurt you even when the person is not there?

4. Have you made a commitment to yourself to tell the sibling story without being upset then found yourself agitated anyway?

5. Is the sibling who hurt you a central character in your story?

6. When you tell your sibling story does it remind you of other painful things that happened to you?

7. Does the sibling story focus primarily on your pain and what you lost?

8. In your sibling story is there a villain?

9. Have you made a commitment not to tell the sibling story again and then broken your vow?

10. Do you look for other people with similar sibling problems to tell your story to?

11. Has your sibling story stayed the same over time?

12. Have you checked the details of your sibling story for accuracy?

If you answer yes to five or more the questions, there is a good chance you have a sibling I Hate You “ story. To end brother or sister blood step or half sibling blood feud and make peace makes forgiveness as a gift to you.

Try a change of season resolution and welcome autumn by taking the – a step towards sibling forgiveness and parent care with the help of a geriatric care manager to hopefully make the next holiday, sometimes the dreaded Thanksgiving with siblings will be spent hangover free with the parent care issue resolved

Professionals Check out my book Care Manager’s Working With the Aging Family , with it’s chapter Working With Adult Aging Siblings Jones and Bartlett, to learn more about working with feuding midlife siblings.

7 Tips to Make Labor Day Midlife- Sibling Stress Free

Happy Labor Day.

If you are working with midlife siblings to solve elder care issues and they are attending a Labor Day barbecue-

Here are

Here are 7 tips to help them keep the Labor Day heartburn free without a midlife sibling to build a midlife sibling team over aging Mom and Dad issues.

HAVE A HAPPY LABOR DAY

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