step sibling family meeting Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

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 4^th 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.

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

End of Life-When Do You Need Mediation?

April 17, 2013

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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?

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

I will speaking this Friday April 19, 2013, at National Association of Professional Geriatric Care Managers on “The GCM as the Accidental Mediator: Fretting and Fighting or Feuding: Intergenerational Conflict in the Adult Family at End of Life”, in Philadelphia, Penna.

If you are attending the conference, I will look forward to meeting you.

Step-Grand Parenting on the Holiday

December 22, 2012

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Blending families means multiple parents, two houses, and myriad grandparent, multiple step-grandparents s Revamped families can has a total of four parents. (sometimes more if there are multiple marriages.) With only one remarriage each kid has a divorced Mom and Dad plus his or her newly remarried Mom and Dad. Each set of children will spend Christmas twice- once with their divorced father and once with their divorced mother but in different houses. It is worthy of an excel spreadsheet.

Merging families means blending rituals. If one family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve and the other Christmas day -it’s a clash of cultures. It can cause Christmas collisions. But in spite of the accident scene, all the kids still do just half with one parent and half the other never again having “our Christmas “

Blood grandkids kids can spend Christmas morning with their divorced Dad or Mom. If divorced parents honor different ritual time (opening gifts after midnight mass, Christmas afternoon, at the break of dawn) children won’t be on the same schedule and caught in the parental crossfire. More stress breaks out. If kids are teens, time with friends and boyfriends must be allowed. The complications are myriad.

The event takes a genogram to map.

Here are some tips

Make it a joint venture. Offer a supportive role to shore up our adult children and step and blood grandchildren. Be the anchors to this rebuilt ship

If you are a step grandparents look at yourself as a gift this Christmas.

Stay steady,

Stay married,

Stay the same grandmother or grandfather

Stay the same steady presence

Stay the counterpoint to incredible change.

Be the background, the supporting cast, the backstage crew that helps the play goes on. For the new cast members, is the green room, the welcoming place for the nervous and traumatized new stars.

You Tube- Fast Flash Step, Half, Cinderella Family Meeting

July 25, 2012