Thanksgiving with aging parents Archives ⋆ Cathy Cress

Thanksgiving Blog- Steal It for Your Social Media

November 24, 2019

Spread The Word About Your Services Before Thanksgiving

ADULT CHILDREN DESPERATE AFTER THANKSGIVING PAINTS PARENTAL DECLINE

If you use social media to spread the word about your services before the holidays, you should have a blog. One giant target is adult children who need help for their older family members.

So you can steal this blog below and share it on social media in the next few days.

Whether you use Constant Contact , Survey Monkey , Word Press or have a blog attached to your website, this is a good time to give potential adult child customers a short marketing touch about your services

Since the family – both nearly normal and the dysfunctional version gather on Thanksgiving and during the holiday season, this blog is a gateway step towards thinking about how their family might organize care for a loved one or if they need a care manager to guide them through the whole wrenching process.

Steal the blog below

“The Thanksgiving is around the corner what better time to talk about the family. Will you be celebrating the holiday with a nearly normal or dysfunctional family?

The normal aging family can have their own own problems. Leading up to Thanksgiving adult children can struggle when their aging Mom is not able to cook that turkey and be the high priestess of the family ritual and rituals to come. An aging Mom or Dad’s decline can be confusing, even for families that are close-knit, well-integrated, and highly functioning.

But for the dysfunctional aging family, a disabled Mom’s need for care can be overwhelming and even destructive. This kind of family the family is marked by strained relationships and unresolved conflict. They not only do not want to take over rituals or cook the Thanksgiving turkey, but they will also attend the annual family ritual and make a scene or, more likely, never show up at all.

Over Thanksgiving, you should watch the way your family interacts and try to assess what kind of family you have. This is a stepping stone to a way to work together as a team ( or not) as a parent decline. You can also call ( PUT YOUR COMPANY NAME WEBSITE) to help you both assess your family and make plans with the family about Mom’s aging and decline.”

Add A Newsletter

Make changes if you want but get started with social media and newsletter like Tasha Beauchamp’s great care management newsletter ASAP but take advantage of the highest volume of calls you will get all year if you direct family to your business.

When Cut Off in The Family is a ” Phantom Limb” at Thanksgiving

October 24, 2019

The Dysfunctional Family’s Worst Time of The Year

Thanksgiving can be the gateway to the dysfunctional family’s worst time of year- the holidays. You face family across the table you despise or just both love and hate. Or there is that empty seat- the uninvited guest- the brother-sister, aunt, son, daughter who you never invite- the cut off-family member.

Families Phantom Limb

But since this leaves the family with that “phantom limb”- like the awful sensation that an amputated or missing limb is still attached and where it was is pulsating in pain- families reach out for someone to fix it.

The ordinary aging processes are made far tougher when a family has a history of dysfunction. Aging professionals, like geriatric care managers, have their greatest challenges in working with these “difficult” families around this time of year.

Dysfunctional Families Fail Eldercare

Dysfunctional families are not able to organize themselves effectively in the face of eldercare challenges and crises. These families are under more stress as they move from long-established roles into uncharted territory.

Family” Cut” off faces Phantom Limb at Thanksgiving

What if they “ cut off” their Dad years ago and now he had a severe stroke-what do they do?? Someone has to take over Mom or Dad’s care and these dysfunctional midlife adult kids are heavy ambivalent or just don’t want to do it. Now that the holidays are arriving – they have the same attitude about attending the family Thanksgiving dinner.

My favorite aging dysfunctional family ” cut off ” Thanksgiving film is Pieces of April Made as a comedy in 2003, it touches death and dying, sibling rivalry, mother-daughter estrangement, interracial love- and Alzheimer’s all fueled by deep family fault lines and how to cook a turkey on a broken stove. The film manages to make the old theme of fraught family Thanksgiving, crisp, funny and ultra worth watching.

Shot in 3 weeks for a measly $350 K, it received a Sundance Film award and accolades for its pedigree cast including 21 year old Katie Holmes as the grunge Goth daughter who her family has ” Cut Off”,Patricia Clarkson as the dying Mom who distains then forgives her rebellious eldest child and Alice Drummond as the demented grandmother who comes along and plays the most rational person in the film in her obliviousness to the family holiday freak-out.

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Your Care Manager Phones Ring Off The Hook Holidays- Are You Ready

October 20, 2018

Aging Families gather for the holidays starting November 22. When they arrive at Mom and Dad’s home, they may find the older parents they dreaded.

Mom forgot to buy the turkey or she burned it to a crisp.

Her neat as a pin ensemble is greasy and rumpled. Then she reports Dad has wandered down the street.

This is the start of the holiday from hell many adult children face. After the son buys a new turkey, finally finds Dad, he may take a break and call 911 Aging Life- or the daughter grabs her computer and googles a geriatric care manager.

Do you know how to answer the challenges the adult children face and the client’s needs at the same time you know how to hold an impromptu family meeting with adult children, over the hectic holiday to plan care for aging parents?
Do you understand the executive function loss that older woman experience when trying to plan a holiday ritual dinner that fails or worse burns, upsetting their adult children?
Do you have the toolbox to calm the frantic families over the holidays & get them to New years stability
Can you do an intake over the phone and start a case in chaotic holidays
Is your company and staff ready for the influx of new clients in crisis over the holidays

Join me in my new Webinar

5 Ways to Tame the Turbulence of Holiday Meltdown in Aging Families

During the busiest season for care management referrals-

You Will Learn:

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
Sign Up

When you pick up ” red phone” call from a desperate adult child – are you ready??

Aging Tech Saves Holiday for Aging Families

November 26, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving .The holidays are officially here, and many families will be celebrating with elderly parents. Sometime during the festivities,they may come across piles of junk mail, consistently dirty clothes or a house and/or aging parent that looks like lumpy turkey gravy. At that point they may call an aging life or geriatric care manager

If you get that call, there is great new technology for a family at a distance. When they visit you might suggest one of these high tech items a part of an older family member’s life. These gero-technologies can help an older parent or relative age in place and improve communicating with loved ones.

Videoconferencing is a great way to keep elderly parents connected. It can also be a good tool for adult siblings who live apart to have chats or meeting about Mom or Dad. Free programs like Skype and the built-in webcams on many computers, make this easy on elders. Others include:

Family Virtual Visits

Google Video Chat

In addition to online chats, Ceiva, Flickr and Kodak allow adult children, friends and family to continually send new images, helping older or less mobile family members stay updated.

One item I love is Presto. You can load pictures of you and your family or write notes and letters and send them to your parents. They don’t have to do anything. The service just prints your message and photos out in their home. It’s a great gift for someone with memory loss, or just for Mom and Dad to have in general—with the wonders of technology they don’t have to have any computer savvy.

If your elderly Mom or Dad would like to use e-mail but need a simple technological tool, PawPawMail takes the complexity out of the process. For $5 a month, users transmit and receive mail through PawPawMail’s Web site, which features simple graphics, large type and real names rather than potentially confusing e-mail addresses. The account manager, typically a younger family member, sets up the account, creating a list of approved e-mail senders; spammers and phishers cannot get through.

Also, if they need to have a virtual meeting with sisters and brothers about anxiety producing signs while visiting parents, there are virtual web meeting sites where family and friends can post messages to each other.

In these virtual meeting places family can keep track of all interactions in one place. Examples of this technology are Caring Bridge and Care Pages. If you want to choose an affordable teleconference link for you family to discuss Mom and Dad’s problems try Free Teleconference.

Technology moves in nano-seconds and changes almost as fast. Give clients and their families the updated information. For a totally overhauled technology chapter,” Technologies That Support Aging in Place “, by GCM Julie Menack and Berkeley’s head of the Center for Aging and Technology, David Lindeman PhD. Get the new Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition now–

Have a Happy Thanksgiving

Watch Pieces of April Thanksgiving Dysfunctional Family Classic

November 25, 2015

Pieces if April is my favorite aging dysfunctional family Thanksgiving film. Made as a comedy in 2003, it touches death and dying, sibling rivalry, mother daughter estrangement, interracial love- and Alzheimer’s all fueled by deep family fault lines and how to cook a turkey on a broken stove.The film manages to make the old theme of fraught family Thanksgiving, crisp, funny and ultra worth watching.

Shot in 3 weeks for a measly $350 K, it received a Sundance Film award and accolades for its pedigree cast including 21 year old Katie Holmes as the grunge Goth daughter, Patricia Clarkson as the dying Mom who distains then forgives her rebellious eldest child and Alice Drummond as the demented grandmother who comes along and plays the most rational person in the film in her obliviousness to the family holiday freak-out.

Watch this classic before the holiday

Aging Tech Saves Holiday for Aging Families

Watch Pieces of April Thanksgiving Dysfunctional Family Classic

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