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  

 

 

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Have You Done Disaster Planning for Aging Clients?

November 8, 2019

Do You Have a Disaster Plan?

The devastating fires up and down California this month should tell you that you need a family meeting to prepare any aging family members in any place you live, ( especially long-distance ). We are facing global warming and normal catastrophic weather events- tornados, hurricanes, polar vortex and floods like the last year’s floods in the midwest. You need a disaster plan because older people are more vulnerable than any age group.

What would be the agenda of that disaster family meeting?

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

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

Share your disaster plan with everyone.

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

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

3) Make an evacuation plan . Where is the nearest shelter, what supplies

Do you have on hand? Get list from your local Red Cross 

How many people do you need to make the move to safety? Look closely at picture on right. These SNF residents are in water up to their waists.

4) Put all of the above in writing. E-mail copies to everyone on the family disaster team including all adult siblings or create a closed facebook group hand share there.

5) Get everyone’s agreement especially midlife siblings and the older person.

For more information, the University of Florida,  Home of Disaster filled hurricanes has a great set of directions.

6) Call a geriatric care manager     to manage the plan if you live long distance

Professionals check out the  Preparing for Emergencies-chapter in  Handbook of Geriatric Care Management  fourth edition , by Liz Barlowe on Disaster planning

A GCM member Jim Boyd lost everything- his practice, home, last year in the Paradise Fire.

Professionals Check out my book Care Managers Working With the Aging Family, with it’s chapter on Family Meetings and the Aging Family by Dr. Rita Ghatak of Stanford

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Blog, care manager, Care Plan, caregiver, case manager, elder care manager, Elderly Disaster Plan, Emergency Plan, Families, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Long Distance Care, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Siblings Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent care, aging parent crisis, care manager, case manager, checklist for aging parent problems, geriatric care manager, Hurricane Harvey, long distance care provider, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, siblings

If Estranged— Midlife Siblings Face Draining Hourglass

July 17, 2019

Time is running out for estranged Midlife Siblings

Like  a draining hourglass, time is running out on the aging family stage. If severed ,the midlife sibling connection ,to help aging parents, has finite time left.

The midlife families play will run only so long before the curtain closes. Death stalks the cast and will pick off the characters one by one then someday shut down the performance. Vulnerable to that drawn curtain, it is important for midlife siblings to resolve brother and sister breaches before a chronic illness or sudden death takes a parent then the  sibling and leaves the survivor with nothing but regret.

Midlife brothers and sisters come through for us in a million ways.

If we move, they are the family members who most frequently help us pack, drive the U-Haul, and give a hand in the upheaval. When we retire with sheet cakes and cheap champagne, the biggest toasters can be siblings.

If  elderly parents are moving, downsizing or relocating to warmer climates, siblings are there to help us parcel out family treasures, sort out the collected furniture and decades of junk, working with us as a team to help get our parents to the new location.

Siblings are stellar partners in this sometimes-overwhelming adult child task. If we become disabled or are ill, that sibling air mattress can reflate on a dime, and brothers and sisters are among the first people we can call in a health care crisis, to do everything from going on the web to find resources to coming to our home and nursing us back to health.

Forgiving Siblings Crucial as We Age

Potential victims of that emptying hourglass, sibling  forgiveness is crucial as we age. If the sand runs out before ruptures are repaired, the warped family pattern just appears in the next generation. Passing on impoverished sibling models deals a bad hand of family desolation to the next generation, passing on hurt, rage, resentment, and unsutured gashes.

Aging Life Care Managers Can Help Stitch Midlife Siblings Together

As care coordinators, Aging Life or Geriatric care managers can help stitch these brother and sister wounds back together, by referring to counselors and MFT who specialize in aging.They can get sibling in parent care support groups. They can take the load of arranging care of siblings backs so they  can care for work through the kinks in their relationship,  support their parents as they age and be friends in midlife.

Find out more about midlife sibling in my Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition in the Nearly Normal and Dysfunctional Family Chapters.

Filed Under: Aging, Blog, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, News Tagged With: adult sibling conflict, aging life care manager, aging life or geriatric care manager, care manager, case manager, midlife siblings, nurse care manager, siblings

Who Should Hold a Family Meeting With Siblings in Dysfunctional Aging Family?

January 6, 2017

In order to help adult siblings in dysfunctional families, change, and work towards filial maturity  the geriatric care manager must move on all fronts.

A family meeting is one of the best tools a care manager can use.

Research shows that that siblings constructing care decisions as a group, make decisions that better respect their parent’s autonomy than a single sibling making decisions alone. Group decisions offers checks and balances together to insure the parents view is respected. Besides adult siblings it is probably true for all family members. By including the family, whoever that may be (partners, siblings, friends, spouses or ex-spouses), as a group, the care manager will be able better able to advocate for the older client because those group checks and balances are present.

So, when a decision that is critical needs to be made about an old person, a family meeting is a choice that a geriatric care manager should consider. This decision might be moving a client

to a higher level of care, or replacing a caregiving system, especially one family member replacing another.

Family meeting are generally beneficial to plan interventions and set goals. Achieving either of these is supremely difficult with the dysfunctional family.

An aging life or geriatric care manager must have at least 5 years of experience, a background in family dynamics and be certified. by a certification body like NACCM   If not turn this over to a  elder mediator. 

 

Find out more about how to run a family meeting  and intervention with dysfunctional families in my book Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition 

 

Filed Under: Aging, Blog, Dysfunctional Aging Familu, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business Tagged With: adult child family meetings, adult siblings, aging dysfunctional family, aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, estranged adult siblings, geriatric care manager, nurse care manager, siblings

Do You have A Twisted Sister Story After the Holidays?

January 5, 2017

MomLovesYouBest.3.15_20120810-233751_1.jpg

Did you spend Christmas or Hanukkah 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-Christmas or Hanukkah quiz to see if you need help from someone like an Aging Life 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-Christmas or Hanukkah – 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 The New Year by taking the – ten steps to sibling forgiveness to heal yourself and hopefully make the next holiday, sometimes the dreaded holidays with siblings will be spent hangover free. For Help

Check out my book Mom Loves You Best  

Filed Under: Aging, Families, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Siblings Tagged With: aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, estranged midlife sibling, geriatric care manager, holidays, siblings

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