Filed under: Alternative placement, Moving parents | Tags: Abuse, Alternative placement, Care-giving
Recently I was contacted by Elizabeth, a woman who found herself homeless after her daughter sold all of her belongings and canceled her lease during Elizabeth’s short stay in a rehab hospital – all without Elizabeth’s knowledge. While the details are extreme, the underlying trauma is not so rare. She contacted me through my publisher after reading my book and realized her situation could have and should have been managed differently. After learning that relocations, when necessary, can be handled with grace, she shared her story with me in the hope that it would save other families from the irreparable damage hers experienced. (more…)
Filed under: Aging, Alternative placement | Tags: Alternative placement, Holidays
Holiday Discoveries
As families gathered over the holidays many of you may have noticed how the friends and relatives you haven’t seen in a while have changed. Teenagers had become young adults, little kids had developed an alarming degree of savvy and parents… well, parents have aged or maybe it’s the grandparents. (more…)
This past May marked the one year anniversary of my Mom’s death, although I prefer to think of it as her transition, because I’ve had enough experience with the “other side” to know we really do simply change the form we take. (more…)
Quit That Mumbling Sonny! I Can’t Understand You!
(The symptoms of age-related hearing loss and how we can help.)
Ever wonder why your elders seem to hear some things and not others—selective hearing it’s been called. And why do they cringe and cower at some of the slightest squeaks demanding that someone to turn down that infernal noise and in the next moment can’t hear the grandkids? (more…)
As a former Audiologist I’m frequently asked for ideas on making it easier to communicate with our hearing impaired loved ones. Here are five quick tips. For a more in depth explanation of symptoms and the reasons for inconsistent behaviors, see Speak Up Sonny on this site.
1. Face the person you’re talking to so they can pick up additional cues from your face and mouth (lip reading).
2. Seat the listener with their back to the glare, because lip reading is almost impossible when you’re blinded by the light.
3. If you are asked to repeat something, rephrase it instead for additional information and phonemic context.
4. Reduce environmental background noises like TV, running water, dishwasher, running water, the AC – all of which mask consonant sounds that give speech its intelligibility.
5. At a dinner table or gathering, seat hearing impaired listeners at the head of the table so they can se everyone talking to them. When possible, seat them next to adult male speakers (lower pitched voices easier to understand) and not next to the grandkids whose high pitched voices are harder to understand and actually sometimes create physical pain.
Filed under: Caregiving, Coping with Care-giving, Elder Issues | Tags: Care-giving, Holidays
Cold rain, a crackling fire, hot cocoa, jig-saw puzzles, warm flannel jammies, funny movies and good, soulful conversation. That was last year’s Christmas and a really sweet one by any standard, but certainly not the Christmas of times past nor one we could have constructed ahead of time. Nor was it the Christmas I had planned, but as it turned out, it was one of our best. (more…)
Filed under: Elder Issues
Welcome to the site that will give you real-life tools and answer your questions about moving Mom and Dad without tears. Impossible you say? Not really. I’m not going to sit here and tell you this process is a “walk in the park,” but I will tell you that it can be a positive, relationship-building, life enhancing experience for all concerned. I’ve been there -multiple times – and each move has been a gift in terms of what it did for my mother independently and the healing it brought about in our relationship.
Whether the move is their choice or precipitated by an event, there are always choices. The way we, their children, approach those choices and include our parents in the process; ask questions; manage our OWN emotions and create the vision for what’s ahead defines the quality of the experience.
