Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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How Storytelling at Thanksgiving Can Give Elders A Happier Family Holiday

November 22, 2022

Want to increase aging parents’ and everyone’s enjoyment at Thanksgiving? Try storytelling at Thanksgiving using elders’ memories.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person  through reminiscence, storytelling, and oral history for elders

This Thanksgiving, if you really do travel to a family home or grandma’s house, travel safely  If not make the safest choice, stay home and  use Zoom and include your elderly

 

parent. You can do oral history for elders if they can use a computer or have a family member or friend who visits often and who lives nearby and is in their bubble serve and share Thanksgiving dinner at their home and use zoom with them to see other family members on the holiday.

Share Your Thanksgiving Story

If you are at a family member’s holiday dinner and use reminiscence for elders by asking everyone to tell their favorite story about a Thanksgiving dinner. Start with midlife members to get the idea and then ask

 

again parents to share their stories.

Oral history for elders will bring extra thanks to Thanksgiving by learning about an elder’s past and giving them the opportunity to share, which sometimes they do not do in the hubbub of family talking.

  The “telling ” also means someone documents. That magically gives the elder and a child social interaction and connectedness. Elders vividly recall their past by telling stories from vignettes in their life – especially life in their 20’s, which sparks the richest recall called the “20’s bump”, according to researchers.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

So try storytelling at  Thanksgiving and it becomes intergenerational. The older person is given a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may not have heard all the details of their grandparent’s or parent’s life before. My 10 grandchildren have grown up with their now 80-year-old grandfather. telling them exciting stories of when he was a California Highway patrolman. So a dual dose of a higher quality of life for both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence.

Capture Your Families Past Before It Is Gone

 

 Many midlife adults now do ancestry and regret that they did not ask questions of older family members when they were alive. Capture that past now on this family holiday. An aging professional or a geriatric care manager can suggest family or friends record the Thanksgiving story as oral history using technology like an i Phone or i Pad.

Story Telling at Thanksgiving  with Story Worth

Another great idea to capture reminiscence for elders is giving them StoryWorth. 

 

My daughter sent this gift to her Dad and both he and I love it. Each week  StoryWorth sends a question to my husband that prompts him to write about his past. He writes his reminiscence out longhand and I easily use the dictation on my phone and email his story to Story Worth.

At the end of the year, my daughter will order a bound book of all the stories- a whole collection of memories, an oral history of an elder father that she might never think to ask and will be saved for her and her children to pass on family history. I will order a copy for all her three siblings. Equally important, my husband, really enjoyed writing about his past and the prompts have brought many vivid memories back to him.

Sweet grandmother holding a beautifully cooked turkey dinner.

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, Benefits of Reminiscence, Black Aging Family, black care manager, black concieirge nurse, black concierge care manager, black concierge RN, Black Entrepreneur, Black Entrepreneur RB, Black Entrepreneur RN, Black entrepreneurs, Black Geriatric Care Manager, Black geriatric care managers, Black RN, black RN care manager, black social worker, black travel nurse, Black Travel Nurses, Black Travel RN, care management business, care manager, caregiver coaching, CAREGIVER RESOUCES, case manager, Clinical Tools Dysfunctional families, Concierge aging clients, Coronavirus safety elders, COVID -19 Safety, COVID & HOLIDAY SEASON, Covid 19 Webinar, Dementia Activities, Dysfunctional Family & Holidays, Dysfunctional Family Inquiry, elder care manager, Elder Reminicence on Thanksgiving, Emotional Quality of Life, Families, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, Long Distance Safety Travel COVID, Long Distance travel Holidays, New Years, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Oral History, Quality of Life, quality of life -COVID-19, Quality of Life and Reminicance, Quality of Life and Thanksgiving, Quality of Life for elders, quality of life in senior centers, Quality of Life with Dementia, Reminicence on Thanksgiving, Reminicence with elders, Reminiscence Therapy, Remote Thanksgiving Family Visit, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Parent crisis, Thanksgiving Safe Visits to Grandma, Thanksgiving with COVID, Thanksgving visits during COVID, Therapist Specializing in Aging, Webinar Tagged With: aging family, aging family Thanksgiving, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent care, aging parent Thanksgiving, aging technology, ancrestory.com, assessing for quality of life, black aging family, black american geriatric care managers, black american social workers, Black caregivers, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Heirlooms, Black Nurse Entrepreneurs, Black RN's, Black start-up geriatric care management, Black travel nurses, care manager, care plan, care plan interventions, case manager, COVID THANKSGIVING VISIT, COVID VIRTUAL THANKSGIVING VISIT, family caregivers, Family Caregivers using technology, genealogy, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geritaric care manager, grandfather, grandmothers, grandparents, increasing quality of life, LCSW, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, oral history, oral history and quality of life, oral history and You Tube, parent care, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, reminisicsence technology, story telling elders, storytelling and elders, technology for caregivers, Thanksgiving Webinar, Thanksgiving with dysfunctional family, Thanksgiving with midlife siblings, You Tube, You Tube and storytelling

10 Reminiscence Therapy Tools, Technology, and Techniques for New Year

December 29, 2021

 

Use Reminiscence therapy to capture family tales of aging parents or clients in the New Year

Do you use reminiscence therapy? Do you know how to use a reminiscence tool? Have you lost an aging parent and wished you had asked them more questions to reminisce about their past, your family history, and your childhood? Have you dabbled in ancestry and realized -too late- that you should have just listened closely to the stories your parents told you then written them down before they died?

Start Now! Use reminiscence therapy to make this New Year the year you collect the stories in your own family plus assist your aging clients by using 10 reminiscence therapy tools, technology, and techniques.

1. Use empathetic listening. This means to make all the messages you are are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting-  all saying, “I want to listen to them.”

2. Use empathetic listening then ask questions that prompt the story but don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking.

3. Start somewhere with a question then use empathetic listening. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story and see if they will follow along.”What was a New Years Resolution that you made and kept” ” Do you remember your favorite doll ” What was your first day of school like”

4 . Music is just next to memory in the brain. So you want to use music as a reminiscence tool. This can be done through Alive Inside. So use Alexa, Spotify, to play  40’s 50’s  60’s music or especially when they were teens. Why? Sexual awakening when we are teens and the background music of that time deepens memory when they were teens  –when they were teens  NO Surprise. Simple ways to spark reminiscence when you visit older family members -bring their teenage music on your phone.

5. Use more reminiscence tools. Look at old photos together. Photos trigger memory even with dementia. Choose ones from a period of time the person currently remembers, which could be the person as a young adult, teenager, or even a young child.
6. Play music from their teenage years. That is a powerful reminiscence tool. It is the background to the most emotional period of anyone’s life and deeply lined into memory.
7. Another reminiscence tool is food. Serve food that is a family tradition or specialty, particularly ones that have an element of memory attached from family celebrations. like Mom’s Briscut, Dad’s Sunday Supper lasagna, or “Aunt Helen’s Lemon Cake”.

8. Story Worth was started by Nick Baum, a tecky who was, and in a way, a long-distance care provider for his parents in Sweden. He was curious about their past and invented the app based on his own need to gather his family history through reminiscence therapy in book form. My husband is a teller of past tales as a California Highway patrolman, then Hippiedom, then as top marketing director for Pacific Cookie Company, the best cookies here is the west.

Our daughter Kali gave him Story Worth as a holiday gift 2 years ago. In the first 12 months of the COVID, he recorded 40 stories or memories from his past. They were all published by Story Worth Book, saving in print the precious reminiscence that would have been lost but now saved in a  book that we gave to our adult children for them and generations to come.

This is a gold star reminiscence tool that gives you a brilliant way to capture reminiscence and I  recommend it to adult children who want to enshrine personal memories in print that otherwise would be lost when they reach back for them..

9. Life Bio-  a reminiscence tool,online template of biography and autobiography questions that have been carefully crafted

 

10. Quick Voice Recorder  a reminiscence tool to catch the memory on your phone

Reminiscence in aging is a part of a whole new domain in aging called quality of life or attending to the older person’s need for joy through activities that stimulate the mind. Reminiscence does that- so find out more about how you can increase the quality of life of older people after the holidays and all year long by building a quality of life reminiscence program like Lifespan’s Well Being program in Santa Cruz, Ca.

Filed Under: Aging, Alive Inside, 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, Blog, Geriatric Care Management Business, Geriatric Care Manager, Legacy Tools, Reminiscence Therapy, Senior Legacy, Story Worth Tagged With: aging life care manager, Alive Inside, ancestry, assessing for quality of life, care manager, case manager, empathetic listening, Family stories, geriatric care manager, isolation and quality of life, Music and Memory, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, oral history and quality of life, quality of life Alive Inside, reminicence and elder, Reminicence and geriatric care manager, Reminicence Therapy, reminicsence technology, Reminiscence tool, story telling elders, StoryWorth

How Storytelling Can Give Elders A Happier Family Thanksgiving

November 1, 2019

Want to increase aging parents and everyone’s enjoyment at Thanksgiving? Try storytelling using Thanksgiving memories.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person  through reminiscence, storytelling, and oral history even elders with dementia

This Thanksgiving ask everyone to tell their favorite story about a Thanksgiving dinner. Start with midlife members to get the idea and then ask again parents to share their story. It will bring extra thanks to Thanksgiving by learning about an elder’s past and giving them the opportunity to share, which sometimes they do not do in the hubbub of family talking.

  The “telling ” also means someone documents. That magically gives the elder and a child social interaction and connectedness. Elders vividly recall their past by telling from vignettes in their life – especially life in their 20’s, which sparks the richest recall called the “20’s bump”, according to researchers.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

So try this at Thanksgiving and it becomes intergenerational. The older person is given a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may not have heard all the details of their grandparent’s or parents’ life before. So a dual dose of quality of the older person of both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence

Capture Your Families Past Before It Is Gone

 Many midlife adults now do ancestry and regret that they did not ask questions of older family members when they were alive. Capture that past now on this family holiday. An aging professional or a geriatric care manager can suggest family or friends record the Thanksgiving story as oral history using technology like an i Phone or i Pad.

SIGN UP FOR MY NEWEST FREE WEBINAR. 

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THIS FREE  WEBINAR IS NOVEMBER 21, 2019 FROM 2 PM – 3 PM PST

 

Learn how!

  • How to give hope to frantic children who call, after seeing their aging parent struggling with the rituals
  • How to sell services to desperate adult child callers   
  • How to use GCM tools to contain Holiday chaos
  • 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
  • Sidestep the Many Care Managers Who Do not know how to work with Dysfunctional Aging Families so the  client choose you

 

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Find out more in the YouTube for My YouTube, Channel  Geriatric Care 1

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, Dementia Activities, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, Holiday Rituals in Aging Family, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Oral History, Quality of Life, Quality of Life for elders, Reminiscence Therapy, Thanksgiving, Webinar Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent care, aging technology, ancrestory.com, assessing for quality of life, care manager, care plan, care plan interventions, case manager, family caregivers, Family Caregivers using technology, genealogy, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geritaric care manager, grandfather, grandmothers, grandparents, increasing quality of life, LCSW, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, oral history, oral history and quality of life, oral history and You Tube, parent care, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, reminisicsence technology, story telling elders, storytelling and elders, technology for caregivers, You Tube, You Tube and storytelling

How Story Telling Can Give Elders with Dementia a Better Quality of Life

July 6, 2018

Kali--Bill-Connies-book-.JPG

Want to increase and elder’s quality of life. Try storytelling.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person  through reminiscence, story telling and oral history even elders with dementia

 Just as storytelling helps children look forward to life- what is fun, what is scary, what never to do, it helps elders look back on their life. It gives both older and kids people a chance to socialize as they tell their story. The “telling ” also means someone usually listens or documents. That magically gives the elder and a child social interaction and connectedness. Elders vividly recall their past by telling from vignettes in their life – especially life in their 20’s, which sparks the richest recall called the “20’s bump”, according to researchers.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history, so it becomes intergenerational. The older person is given a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may not have heard all the details of their grandparents or parents life before. So a dual dose of quality of the older person of both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence

An  aging professional, like a geriatric care manager, can suggest family or friends just sitting down and prompting a story or oral history using  technology like an i Phone or i Pad 

Even elders with Alzheimer’s can find new joy with Reminiscence

When an elderly person develops Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, the short-term memory is frequently affected but long-term memories can remain as intact and as vivid as they have always been during the course of the patient’s life. As a result  healthcare professionals can use a practice called reminiscence therapy to help combat the frustration, confusion, and depression that can often accompany dementia and even bring joy to the older person

What is reminiscence therapy?

 Reminiscence therapy is like a therapy session where the elderly person will spend time recalling memories of his or her life, perhaps telling stories about things that happened and events the person can recall.

Care managers and senior professionals can use photos, familiar objects, or other such items to help jog the memory of the elder. Some therapists can a scrapbook of a person’s life, including photos, letters, and other such personal memorabilia. This becomes a  visual biography of the patient’s life and helps him or her remember who he or she is.

How does this quality of life therapy help? Almost all elderly men and women can feel deeply discouraged and frustrated with their memory issues. Reminiscence can give peace and acceptance of the current situation by helping the person remember that he or she has had a good and full life. It also prompts the communication skills of elderly people who otherwise may not feel very compelled to open up and share anything with anyone else.

Using Reminiscence therapy techniques can give the confused elder a richer quality of life by giving them with time with other people who will actually listen to them.  Through this, a  dementia patient is made to feel their thoughts and feelings actually matter. To someone who has an elderly loved one suffering from dementia, this benefit alone can make reminiscence therapy a form of joy.

There is even an app called Grey Matters, which caregivers and care managers can look into for reminiscence therapy for elders with dementia. If the senior is a BBC fan, like me, the BBC even has an app called RemArc  to help dementia sufferers with reminiscence using old clips from the BBC. You can see in the future an app that has clips from Star Wars for present baby boomers or generations after that.

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Oral History, Quality of Life, Quality of Life for elders, Reminiscence Therapy Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent care, aging technology, ancrestory.com, assessing for quality of life, care manager, care plan, care plan interventions, case manager, family caregivers, Family Caregivers using technology, genealogy, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geritaric care manager, grandfather, grandmothers, grandparents, increasing quality of life, LCSW, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, oral history, oral history and quality of life, oral history and You Tube, parent care, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, reminisicsence technology, story telling elders, storytelling and elders, technology for caregivers, You Tube, You Tube and storytelling

How Story Telling Can Give Elders with Dementia a Better Quality of Life

March 31, 2018

 

Want to increase and elder’s quality of life. Try story telling.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person  through reminiscence, story telling and oral history even elders with dementia

 Just like storytelling helps children look forward to life- what is fun, what is scary, what never to do, it helps elders look back on their life. It gives both older and kids people a chance to socialize as they tell their story. The “telling ” also means someone usually listens or documents. That magically gives the elder and a child social interaction and connectedness. Elders vividly recall their past by telling from vignettes in their life – especially life in their 20’s, which sparks the richest recall called the “20’s bump”, according to researchers.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history, so it becomes intergenerational. The older person is given a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may not have heard all the details of their grandparents or parents life before. So a dual dose of quality of the older person of both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence

An  aging professional, like a geriatric care manager, can suggest family or friends just sitting down and prompting a story or oral history using  technology like an i Phone or i Pad 

Even elders with Alzheimer’s can find new joy with Reminiscence

When an elderly person develops Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia, the short-term memory is frequently affected but long-term memories can remain as intact and as vivid as they have always been during the course of the patient’s life.. As a result  healthcare professionals can use a practice called reminiscence therapy to help combat the frustration, confusion, and depression that can often accompany dementia and even bring joy to the older person

What is reminiscence therapy?

 Reminiscence therapy is like a therapy session where the elderly person will spend time recalling memories of his or her life, perhaps telling stories about things that happened and events the person can recall.

Care managers and senior professionals can use photos, familiar objects, or other such items to help jog the memory of the elder. Some therapists can a scrapbook of a person’s life, including photos, letters, and other such personal memorabilia. This becomes a  visual biography of the patient’s life and helps him or her remember who he or she is.

How does this quality of life therapy help? Almost all elderly men and women can feel deeply discouraged and frustrated with their memory issues. Reminiscence can give peace and acceptance of the current situation by helping the person remember that he or she has had a good and full life.It also prompts communication skills of elderly people who otherwise may not feel very compelled to open up and share anything with anyone else.

Using Reminiscence therapy techniques can give the confused elder a richer quality of life by giving them with time with other people who will actually listen to them.  Through this, a  dementia patient is made to feel their thoughts and feelings actually matter. To someone who has an elderly loved one suffering from dementia, this benefit alone can make reminiscence therapy a form of joy.

There is even an app called Grey Matters, which caregivers and care managers can look into for reminiscence therapy for elders with dementia. If the senior is a BBC fan, like me, the BBC even has an app called RemArc  to help dementia sufferers with reminiscence using old clips from the BBC. You can see in the future an app that has clips from Star Wars for present baby boomers or generations after that.

 

Filed Under: Aging, Aging Family, Aging Life Care, aging life care manager, care manager, case manager, elder care manager, geriatric care manager, geriatric social worker, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, Oral History, Quality of Life, Quality of Life for elders, Reminiscence Therapy Tagged With: aging family, aging life care manager, aging parent, aging parent care, aging technology, ancrestory.com, assessing for quality of life, care manager, care plan, care plan interventions, case manager, family caregivers, Family Caregivers using technology, genealogy, geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, geritaric care manager, grandfather, grandmothers, grandparents, increasing quality of life, LCSW, nurse advocate, nurse care manager, oral history, oral history and quality of life, oral history and You Tube, parent care, Quality of Life, quality of life assessment, reminicence and elder, reminisicsence technology, story telling elders, storytelling and elders, technology for caregivers, You Tube, You Tube and storytelling

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