Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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End of Life-When Do You Need Mediation?

February 23, 2021

Why do some families need mediation at the end of life? Mediation is a voluntary process in which the parties, with the help of an impartial third party mediator, work together to resolve their differences or solve a problem they were unable to address satisfactorily without help. These family differences especially happen to dysfunctional families but can beset any family at the end of life. They are faced with overwhelming emotions and decisions that demand that the family work together as a team. What happens to dysfunctional and even nearly normal families during this trying time? They don’t gather as a team. They fight. They fret and they feud. What are the results of this fighting, fretting, and feuding in families at the end of life?                                        family-charis1-226x300.jpg

Unresolved family conflicts emerge

            Dysfunctional families become more dysfunctional

Family members’ grief, pain, and anxiety are often masked as anger and presents as conflict (past and present)                                                 

Older person dies without resolving important family issues

Older person dies in conflict, not in peace

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

 

Serve Your Client Until Death Do You Part

 

Join me Thursday, March 11, and learn why End of Life Services Are a perfect new service for care managers 

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

  • Transition the patient/family through the five stages of death     
  • Help clients be active participants in their care
  • Give the family/caregiver tools to manage care
  • Provide family center care to caregiver and family
  • Choose the right support services through all stages of death
  • Introduce Hospice and Palliative care and work with their team
  • Use ALCA End of Life Benefits During COVID
  • Use  COVID -19  Family Coaching for GCM
  • Sign Up    

If you really want to add End of Life to your care management business sign up for this webinar now

 

Filed Under: Aging, aging life care manager, Death & Dying, Death and Dying Care Management, death and dying care manager, DNR, End of Life, End of Life Care manager, GCM role Death and Dying, geriatric social worker, Good Death, Hospice, Hospice Care, mediation, Mediation End of Life, Mediator, nurse care manager Tagged With: Advanced Directives, aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, ALCA care Manager, ALCA in End Of Life, disputes at end of life, dysfunctional aging family, dysfuntional family, elder mediation, end of life, end of life family meeting, facilitator, families fretting at end of life, family meeting, Fighting and Feuding at end of life, GCM mediator, geraitric care manager, Geriatric Assessment, geriatric care manager, geriatric care managers, Handbook of Geriatric Care Management third edition, mediation, mediation end of life, mediiator, My Geraitric Care Management Operations Manual, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, power of attorney for health care, siblings feuding, siblings fighting, step sibling family meeting

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.

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, Care Plan, Dysfunctional aging family, elder care manager, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Siblings Tagged With: aging family, aging parent crisis, blood sibling, Cain and Abel, celebrations with siblings, elder care crisis, favorite sibling, geriatric care manager, geriatric care managers, half-sibling, Labor Day, manning the barbecue, midlife sibling crisis, midlife sibling team, Mom Loves You Bes Forgiving and Forging Sibling Relationships, sibling, siblings fighting, step sibling, victim, villian

Declare a Cease Fire With A Midlife Sibling

May 19, 2016

Aging siblings, baby boomers and the old/ old absolutely need and relish the support of their siblings. Their children are grown, they have grandchildren they adore yet do not have to care for them 24/7. They use their time to travel, often with family ,relax and celebrate at their relatives weddings, bar mitzvah’s, family reunions. But there is often a giant gap in the celebrant list- estranged sisters and brother

I was interviewed about how to mend those sibling bonds on podcast by KHSU in their show Chronologically Gifted Conversations on Life After 50 . 

This is based on my book  Mom Loves You Best  – with co author Kali Peterson Murphy, on healing post 50 sibling relationships- to reunite adult siblings to care for aging parents but get back the support and love that only a sibling, who knows you longer and deeper than anyone else, can give as you age.

Do you serve aging families with an miles deep sibling war? Listen in .

 

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: Aging siblings, care manager, geriatric care manager, sibling, siblings fighting

Feuding Over Dad’s Golf Clubs? Call an Aging Life Geriatric Care Manager.

April 18, 2016

Can adult siblings be fair when they  share an aging parent’s non- titled property?The University of Minnesota researchers who developed “Grandma’s Yellow Pie Plate” have identified five factors that adult children should consider as they plan to transfer non-titled  property when a parent relocates, such as moving into an adult child’s home or to a higher level of care like assisted living.:

1.The adult children and aging parent, if alive, need to understand the sensitivity of the issue of transferring nontitled property. This means that, for example, a Menorah is not just an item but something that reminds all five children of the happy moments during Hanukah celebrations. If the mother dies, then the father remarries, and after his death the Menorah goes to the stepmother’s kids, the adult siblings may be terribly bitter—not about the physical Menorah, but about someone who was never at their Hanukah celebrations getting their memories.

2.The family should determine what they want to accomplish in the transfer. Does the older family member want to find family members who will lovingly care for their

beloved (though not valuable) Santa collection? Do the adult children want to carry out family traditions, such as only the firstborn daughter in the family gets Grandma’s engagement ring?

3.The family should decide what is fair in the context of the individual family and how that family wants to pass nontitled items along. Is it fair that the firstborn daughter gets the engagement ring, or should the firstborn daughter pick names from a hat to see who gets it, or should sons get a chance to get it also? Sometimes it is impossible for families to be fair. For example, three adult children may want the baby cereal bowl with Little Red Riding Hood on the bottom. Because there is no fair way to decide among themselves, except to break the bowl into three pieces, they may just have to work together to see who gets it or give it to the next born baby or grandchild.

4.The family and adult children should understand that belongings have different meanings for different individuals. When a mother moves, the oldest adult child may have a loving memory of a valuable silver tea set, not for its monetary value but for the tea parties the mother had with her when she was a toddler. The mother may have been too busy to have those tea parties with the other children, and they may value the set only because of its monetary value.

5.Consider distribution options and consequences. You can help the family agree to manage conflicts before they arise and avoid common obstacles before the items are divided.

Want to learn to start a geriatric care management agency ? Sign Up for a free webinar 

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Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging life or geriatric care, sibling conflict, sibling cut off, siblings feuding, siblings fighting

How to Improve Your Sibling Relationship Post Labor Day

September 5, 2012

MomLovesYouBest.3.15_20120810-233751_1.jpg

Did you spend Labor Day with midlife siblings and family then 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.

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 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 http://www.caremanager.org/

.

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 change of season resolution and welcome autumn by taking the – ten steps to sibling forgiveness to heal yourself and hopefully make the next holiday, sometimes the dreaded Thanksgiving with siblings will be spent hangover free.

Watch My You Tube Channel to find out more about a sibling “ I Hate You Story”

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging family, aging parent crisis, blood sibling, Cain and Abel, celebrations with siblings, elder care crisis, favorite sibling, geriatric care manager, geriatric care managers, half-sibling, Labor Day, manning the barbecue, midlife sibling team, Mom Loves You Bes Forgiving and Forging Sibling Relationships, sibling, siblings fighting, step sibling, victim, villian, You Tube, You Tube Mom Loves You Best Channel

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