aging family dial 411

2012-02-09T09:45:00.001-08:00

Are you a Generation X http://ping.fm/vK9yY Mom or Dad trying to raise kids without sibling rivalry? Here is a tip get real help from the modern extended family.

Share the load. If one sibling could go to a grandparent’s after school and the other to another extended family member, this will go the distance for making all kids feel special. Sharing the burden lifts a bit of the heavy load of parenting in a two-income economy, where Mom’s and Dad’s have two sometimes three jobs to keep a family together.

Ask for help. Having more than just a parent pay attention to each individual child reduces sibling clashes. It also builds bonds with your baby boomer http://ping.fm/hj3Py parents if you are Gen X. Even if your baby boomer parents are divorced, reach out to both of them plus your stepparents.

Asking for support is critical. Tap into extended family living nearby, like aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, or any blood or non-blood relative or friend who will help you bear this intense weight of parenting. The extra individual attention to each child can reduce present and future sibling rivalry, strife, and future midlife sibling “I Hate You” stories. How –it makes each child feel special and gives it critical individual attention.

Winning the support of older family members, like baby boomer grandparents, who today can be pretty vital sixty-year-olds, can be a giant hand up with this heavy lift. If relatives or friends could each spend individual time with each of your kids after school or on weekends, this extended family care http://ping.fm/zYck8 will allow you to share the overwhelm of childrearing. It reduces sibling rivalry by helping each child feel like someone’s favorite.
Like many of Gen X, if you yourself are divorced and remarried- you may have half or step siblings http://ping.fm/Pc79X . You then have double the reason to reach out for help and double the extended family to help you.

Having more than just a Mom and Dad pay attention to each child reduces sibling clashes. It also builds bonds with your Baby Boomer parents if you are Gen X. Even if your Baby boomer parents are divorced, reach out to both of them and your stepparents.
In this economy, Gen X parents need all help they can get.

2012-02-07T09:41:00.001-08:00

How can technology take the weight off long distance care providers? ASA Aging Today on Line http://ping.fm/CS4Yx

2012-02-03T07:43:00.001-08:00

NY Times- Alzheimer's disease spreads like an infection. http://ping.fm/pglez

2012-01-26T08:32:00.001-08:00

In a fast flash - What type of sibling are you? http://ping.fm/F6McZ

2012-01-25T11:56:00.001-08:00

If adult sibling rivalry is a problem in your family, listen my live interview lwww.ksvy.orghttp://ping.fm/wSKEB on Frank Sampson’s radio show Aging Matters http://ping.fm/oh0GV

2012-01-24T07:56:00.001-08:00

Very wealthy clients in hospitals serve the clients that for profit eldercare agencies should be serving http://ping.fm/s1FB7

2012-01-21T14:40:00.001-08:00

Journal of Geriatric Care Management's Fall issue features five excellent articles on Rehospitalization- How Care Manager's Help Decrease Hospital Visits
http://ping.fm/2D4St

2012-01-20T07:58:00.001-08:00

Smart Money Article by Missy Sullivan about Geriatric Care Manager's and the trustworthiness of the industry.
http://ping.fm/ru34y

2012-01-18T12:50:00.001-08:00

Cathy Cress MSW, author of Mom Loves You Best Forgiving and Forging Sibling Relationships http://ping.fm/tyZyg will be talking about Adult Sibling Rivalry on Frank Sampson’s radio show Aging Matters http://ping.fm/spsY6 from 2-3 PM PST on January 26, 2011. Listen to your interview live by going to www.ksvy.org

2012-01-17T16:59:00.001-08:00

Why doesn't Medicare cover hearing loss? http://ping.fm/IlzbQ

2012-01-17T09:21:00.001-08:00

The New York Times article Two People One Identity, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/fashion/kirk-and-nate-mueller-capitalize-on-being-twins.html featured identical twins Nate and Kirk Muller who have made themselves lucrative media novas, by capitalizing on their sameness, twiness, parallel plaidness and being, as Gawker called them, the "twinliest twins alive".
Twins Kristina and Karissa Shannon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristina_and_Karissa_Shannon were the playboy identical favorites aging fetish of Hugh Hefner. But the Olsen, twins, of Full House fame- and most twins do not want to merge their personas and make slip -strike shift under their other twins’ identity. They want their own individual personalities. This is warbled in Olsen twins “ Identical Twin “lyrics- " http://www.notjustlyrics.com/lyrics/song/395682/identical-twins-lyrics-olsen-twins-lyrics.html I am not a zerox or a clone.
Every parent is tasked with guiding their children as they grown into individuals. Where parents of twins face an extra challenge is in helping their children become individuals in spite of -- and in support of -- their status as a multiple. Despite parents' best efforts to treat their twins as individuals, to avoid comparisons and labeling, it's a constant fight to fend off society's views. Twins face a barrage of stereotypes and are constantly confronted with comparisons because of their twinship. Their friends, neighbors, teachers and even well-meaning family members will attempt to label and categorize them. (She's the good twin, the smart twin, the pretty twin... If one likes baseball, the other one must also... He's outgoing, so his twin must be shy.)
Where singleton siblings often feel the sting of sibling rivalry, the effects are offset by birth order and by the passing of time. They have years (or in some cases many months) to achieve the milestones set by older siblings. For twins, the milestones are expected to be simultaneous.
Therefore, it's very important for parents of twins to overcome the stereotypes, labeling and comparisons by offering continual guidance and encouragement to their children, supporting them as they develop as individuals within the context of their relationship as twins.
My daughter Kali, my co-author of Mom Loves You Best, had twins Liam and Dylan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kvuzjlbNxo last April and is trying to raise them as individuals. Since the birth of twins has increased 76 % since 1980 this is something 1 out of every parents today needs to consider. Do they want their twins to be a zerox or individuals?

2012-01-17T08:25:00.001-08:00

New York Times Today -New standards from the Obama administration, under the new health care law, state that any drug company with a product paid for by Medicare will have to disclose all payments to doctors. Pew Charitable Trust quoted, as consumer advocate, " Patients want to now they are getting treatment based on medical evidence not lunch for Dr's staff or a financial relationship."
http://ping.fm/YDdFI

2012-01-11T17:14:00.001-08:00

Did your blended family mix like oil and water over the holidays? In the first few weeks of 2012, do your blood children have a strained relationship with your stepchildren? Do your half siblings hate their whole siblings? Are your bloods, half’s and steps http://ping.fm/WgY25 ature=plcpin an endless war?

Why the sibling mess? If you are Generation X http://ping.fm/OxHNI and your parents were divorced- you might point your finger at your baby boomer parents - how they approached marriage and family relationships. These changes were a domino effect cascading down on Generation X and Generation Y, leaving them leery of commitment and endless angry with siblings

If you are Generation X or Y kid who grew up with divorce- did you yourself get divorced?

If (bloods, steps and half’s) are heading down the road to writing their own sibling “I Hate You” story, make a New Year’s Resolution

If you are Gen X write a paragraph or two about the generational changes that occurred in your own family (like divorce or remarriage) that might have contributed to the strife between your own children -leading to sibling “I Hate You” stories.

If you are a http://ping.fm/RUcFk baby boomer grandmother or grandfather watching your children grandchildren reel from divorce-, write a paragraph about how the generational values, both positive and negative, how they had an impact on your children and grandchildren and perhaps how you would like to change them.

Consider unraveling your sibling tale as a New Year resolution and make forgiveness part of the solution. .

2012-01-10T13:41:00.001-08:00

http://ping.fm/PGD5q
Great NY Times Health column that speaks so well to seniors and reminiscence- great lessons and excellent way to pass on your legacy

2012-01-10T12:39:00.001-08:00

flash glossary of siblings in 2minutes http://ping.fm/iY2so

2012-01-07T14:08:00.001-08:00

Excellent NY Times article about aging, retirement and no jobs- http://ping.fm/smxGz

2012-01-06T13:14:00.001-08:00

Are you a Gen X parent with young children or teens who fought like cats and dogs over the holidays http://ping.fm/lGyka? Do you recall battling with your own siblings when you were young? Maybe you still do -or just did again- over the holidays.

You may be worried that someday your kids will lob their own grenades at each other with the battle cry “Mom loved you best.” If you do not want to be that toxic mom or dad yourself, and avoid those scars on your kids, post the New Year, you might look into raising your kids to avoid life long wounds.

Parents are like turtles. They carry the carapace of their childhood sibling clashes with them into their own parenting. Moms and dads re-create their own brother and sister issues- once again- with their own children. How?? - With old family rules. http://ping.fm/d2HQD Your kids may well re-create your own historical parental conflicts and rules.
Learn to nurture your family in a way to help your children avoid future wounding attacks on each other

Help your children work together as a better team for the rest of their lives. Find your old family rules- from when you were a kid -to help you better parent your own kids and guide them to a better sibling relationship with better rules.
Look into your family rules- your original family and present families rules - and see how you can break those rules.

Find out how you can be a parent who reaches out for support by involving Dad’s and extended family http://ping.fm/6GAf3 more to support you

Make each child special http://ping.fm/XZ0J9 by reaching out to extended family to help you spend special time with them and even create that baby book that never got made because you were so busy raising multiple children or even blood and step siblings.
More tips to come on raising your family without sibling rivalry- as a united team.

2012-01-06T08:48:00.001-08:00

CBS News Hour yesterday http://ping.fm/cLxJb featured New Book by Karl Pillemer, Professor of Gerontology, and Illustrating Life Lessons From an Older Generation

2012-01-04T09:06:00.001-08:00

New York Times Yesterday , excellent book for GCM's , adult children of aging parents titled- The Patient's Checklist written by a woman who had to become a patient advocate for her elderly father

http://ping.fm/szzTh

2011-12-29T20:29:00.001-08:00

Did you spend the holiday with family then wake with a very snarky emotional hangover? If your headache’s so bad that no alka seltzer soothes the psychic pain , it may be time to look into the roots of your family script.
If the main villain in the family tragedy is a sibling or step sibling – here’s a post holiday quiz to see if you need help.
Did your brother or sister do something long ago that’s still a weeping wound in your mind? Does it keep you apart- or on other sides of the room- especially awkward- during the holiday season when families were flocking together under mounds of discarded wrapping paper.
Find out if have a sibling ” I Hate You “ story http://ping.fm/AJtsb Maybe you did not think you needed this test a few weeks ago . Post holiday – if you know you need it now- here it is again.
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 make forgiveness as a gift to yourself.
Try to make a New Year’s resolution to take the – ten steps to forgiveness http://ping.fm/84UY0 to heal yourself and hopefully make the next holiday PTSD free.

2011-12-29T14:44:00.001-08:00

laws the would increase home care aides salaries- in great segment on NPR's Talk of the Nation today go to site and listen to show- DOL head speak http://ping.fm/6n4HQ

2011-12-28T20:08:00.001-08:00

Did your brother or sister do something long ago that’s still a weeping wound in your mind? Does it keep you apart- or on other sides of the room- especially awkward- during the holiday season when families were flocking together under mounds of discarded wrapping paper.
Find out if have a sibling “I hate you “story http://ping.fm/f0UXg you did not think you needed this test a few weeks ago . Post holiday – if you know you need it now- here it is again.
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 family feud and make peace make forgiveness as a gift to yourself.
Try to make a New Year’s resolution to take the – ten steps to forgiveness http://ping.fm/dHT1c to heal yourself and hopefully make the next holiday PTSD free.

2011-12-26T06:04:00.001-08:00

Did you just spend the holidays with your dysfunctional family and wonder- how did we get this way? Want to make a New Year’s resolution to change the rules that put you through such annual misery?
Family rules about how siblings and family behave are passed down from generation to generation. Look at your grandparents and parent’s era and family laws to find the key to those miserable holidays.
If you watch http://ping.fm/cld8v AMC’s Mad Men, you might find your parent’s or grandparents set of rules in Don and Betty’s Draper’s era- The Silent Generation http://ping.fm/mnSUG
Don Draper is modern depiction of a typical Silent Generation Dad. The wildly popular main character in Mad Men fought during the Korean Conflict and came out of that war determined to ruthlessly scale the 50’s corporate ladder. Both his bizarre TV plotline experiences during the Korean War and his tortured Depression era childhood created the iconic mid -century television plot of Mad Men.

Don Draper’s icy wife, Betty, http://ping.fm/gg0Ih though a graduate of prestigious Bryn Mawr College does what 1940’s and 50’s wives did with degree’s, plot to get married. She ended up a fur model that then raised a brood of children, while smoking and drinking through pregnancy and keeping in runway shape for Don.

For young women like Betty Draper, a career position was seen as un -attainable. Creating your own nuclear family remained a primary focus. Loyalty to the American way was expected. Most people who came from this generation were affluent quiet, conventional, happy members of the post-World War II corporate culture.

Children were seen not heard- like poor Sally Draper. Mom Betty has a nasty strained relationship with her three kids, particularly with her poor daughter Sally. Silent Generation kids mutely accepted what their parents said, yet Sally becomes a circa James Dean/ Natalie Wood rebel. With Sally’s buddy preteen rebellion, Don’s cheating and Don & Betty’s ripping sheet of a divorce in the series you can see the beginning dissolution of the family and the beginning of the Baby Boomers http://ping.fm/SDk8c Sally Draper and the 1960’s then shattered all family rules.

Find out more about Don Draper’s or maybe your family’s Silent Generation rules in my You Tube segment on Mad Men- The Silent Generation

2011-12-19T06:36:00.001-08:00

The holidays are upon us .Although joyful for most- they herald a miserable month for dysfunctional families. Any ritual gathering punches these clans in the gut
If you’re in a dysfunctional family or suspect you might be - cheer yourself up by watching other people’s pain. Go to the movies .

Literature, stage and film get their lifeblood and scripts from the dysfunctional families. One insane crisis after another keeps us reading, watching and musing, “ my families a mess but look at this one .” Holiday films with sinister sides can be number one on your December netflicks list.

A Christmas Carol
If you must attend a Hanukah or Christmas event this month and dread the drama - the sibling snipes, drunken digs, mom theatrics and ultimately ruined meal- feast on films.

Forbes best Christmas movie this year http://ping.fm/BQQDl is 1970’s A Christmas Carol. I personally like the version http://ping.fm/wVTfA starring George C. Scott. Scrooge, and all of the other characters are terrific including David Bowie- the blue haired ghost of Christmas past.

Dickens classic is the best tale of the chains that will clank through all generations without forgiveness. http://ping.fm/zBJbh

The Christmas Carol has old Scrooge, parsimonious and downright mean, sleeping in his gloomy bedchamber. He has spent the day browbeating his employee Bob Cratchit, complaining that he will have to pay him for the holiday, ignoring the penurious plight of Bob’s family and little son, poor crippled Tiny Tim.
In the middle of the night the cellar door creaks, an ominous bell starts to toll, and the ghost of his old counting house partner, Marley, lurks into his crypt-like bedchamber.

Marley, clanking his loud chains made of cash boxes, ledgers and very bad deeds, drags toward Scrooge, now awakened and terrified. Warning Scrooge about the consequences of his miserable behavior, rattling the padlocks and metal chains that bind him, Marley says he has been lugging these painful shackles since he died, wandering the earth as punishment for his ungenerous life.

He says he has come to save old Scrooge from that same fate. Scrooge will be in those irons in his next life if he doesn’t give up the past and live a more humane life in the present, and see his way to changing his foul behavior and learning to live a kinder much more openhanded life in the here and now.
Scrooge is made to look back at what started this life of anger and penury. He travels to his childhood with the ghost of Christmas past to see the once sweet little Scrooge who had a nasty father who left the child alone at Christmas in his dilapidated boarding school, reading by a flickering fire.

We forward through the three ghost stories to a kind of Dickensian life review, where Scrooge can see that there was also good in his life in old Fezziwig and Scrooge’s sister Fan. His life did have joy, but poor Scrooge kept retreating to his gloomy self, the lonely, neglected child who inhabited Victorian England’s broken-down boarding school system.
Scrooge has an epiphany. He calls all three ghosts—the past, present, and future—together and finds redemption. He discovers, as his nephew Fred says, a holiday season that wants to be a “forgiving, charitable time.”
The next morning he throws opens the window of his bleak London brownstone and yells for all to hear. He has transitioned into the here and now, lets the past go, and sees a happier family future. He rushes out to buy that mammoth turkey for the Cratchit family, and has a great holiday dinner with his nephew’s family.

Take that story as a warning tale. Family members , especially sibings , http://ping.fm/lmoJT who pass on their anger, hurt, resentment, and scars to the next generation are dooming those family members, like poor old Scrooge, to a future in Marley’s chains. Forgiving your midlife siblings can release you from being bound by childhood neglect, or cruel behavior, that gets passed on from one generation to the next.

2011-12-16T08:17:00.001-08:00

Visiting elderly family members over the holidays can sometimes trigger old hurts that never healed. Perhaps you’re an adult child who doesn’t see your parents on a regular basis because there is “bad blood” between you and your mom or dad. Maybe you just don’t get together with your family on holidays so you can avoid seeing sisters and brothers who inflicted childhood wounds. The scar has built up over decades and you cringe at the pockmarks every time you look in the mirror. Maybe there just was not enough love in your rickety family nest. Your mom may not have been Clare Huxtable, on the Cosby Show.
Perhaps your father was downright abusive, your Mom a nutcase who left you in a sinking boat as a kid. Perhaps your brother was pushy or slugged you behind Mom’s back. Maybe you had sisters who got much the new prom dress when you did Goodwill. Divorce may have shattered that family nest like a hurricane leaving you with a dual life of two houses, two beds, two sets of parents, stepsiblings, left you a and a rudderless childhood.
There are many reasons why it this is a great time to consider absolution for your parents or siblings.
If you have a sibling “ I Hate you “ story http://ping.fm/yRSCU - this holiday season is a time when you might want to think about forgiveness.
But first take a look at the red flags below. Check out if you really have a sibling ” I Hate You” story.

Red Flag Number One
The first red flag you can see pointing to a sibling “I Hate You” story is that you repeat this brother or sister story over and over again.
Red Flag Number Two
The second red flag you can see pointing to an “I Hate You” story is if something transpired in the story that you did not want to take place. In your story does something come to pass that you did not want to happen?

Red Flag Number Three
The third red flag pointing to an “I Hate You “ story is if you believe are the victim in the story and your sibling is the villain. You are the helpless person, and your sibling has all the power. Your “I Hate You” story not only makes you feel like the injured party but also allows other people who know you to see you as a victim.
Red Flag Number Four
The fourth red flag you can see pointing to an “I Hate You” story is if you think about this story repeatedly.
Red Flag Number Five
The fifth red flag you can see pointing to an “I Hate You “ story is based on different types of siblings http://ping.fm/xnFHS . If you are a listless, seething or irate sibling you may have an “I Hate You” story.
If any of these red flags point to you, there is a good chance you have a sibling” I Hate You “story. Before the holiday gathering of this coming two weeks, you might consider taking steps towards forgiveness http://ping.fm/lcHuB and letting this “ I Hate you” story go.