Tough Conversations

Solutions Through Compassionate Communication.

Trading Places

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Changing roles is an inescapable byproduct of time. From your baby’s first step, to his first day at school — from the day she gets her driver’s license until her college dorm is in your rear view mirror — your role is changing. And your relationship evolves from all-knowing protector and teacher to “out to lunch” parent of a teen, to bankroller with a good idea once in a while, surprising your nearly grown college freshman.

Then, for several decades, the parent-child relationship becomes adult-adult. This period can be very pleasant. Like good friends, you help each other in a pinch, but live your own lives and make your own decisions.

Role reversal begins when the child assumes control of some aspect of a parent’s life. It may begin at the parent’s request and be relatively minor, such as taking care of Dad’s car maintenance, or driving Mom to medical appointments, doing income taxes or balancing checkbooks. This control shift is limited and non-intrusive. Inconvenience to the child is minimal and the parent is grateful. [Read more…]

The Portland Paradox

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In May 2017 my wife and I visited Portland, Oregon, for a week. We had a wonderful time. There’s plenty to do. The weather was awesome. Our hotel was top-notch. Everything clicked.

Our first evening there we saw a play. The theater is in a building that houses several art galleries. One is called “The Geezer Gallery.” After years of writing about ageism and the need for us older Americans to face life squarely and with self-respect, I was honestly appalled that an organization could call itself that. (My online dictionary defines geezer as an odd or eccentric man, usually an elderly person). [Read more…]

The Virtues of Small Talk

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Some people think small talk is a waste of time.

I disagree.

In fact, we need more of it.

Small talk can have a big payoff.Anybody can do it. At any time. It crosses boundaries of race and age and class. My late husband, Jerry, used to wait by the curb on Monday mornings just to talk Redskins with our trash collector.

You can do it anywhere. In a supermarket, restaurant or beauty shop. Across the fence with your neighbor.

And small talk offers big benefits for a very small investment.

  1. Small talk enhances the common pool of human kindness.

    When my friend, Jim, visits his cousin in a nursing home, he always stops to speak to the other residents as well. [Read more…]

Forget Bra Burning; Women’s Lib Gave Me My Calling

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I sometimes find it hard to explain to women under 40 why I am proud to call myself a feminist. Many think of us as angry, strident, and unnecessary. It makes me afraid that the history we forget, we may be in danger of repeating.

Forget Bra Burning: Women's Lib Gave Me a CallingAs a ninth grader in Miami, I had to take a series of vocational aptitude tests. Mine consistently showed I would be a good journalist, minister, or lawyer. Big problem: I was a girl. This was the 1950’s, and The Feminine Mystique was just beginning to germinate in Betty Friedan’s heart and mind. Nobody had ever heard of women’s liberation.

Help Wanted columns were divided by Male and Female, and there were no ads for journalists, ministers, or lawyers in the Female pages of the paper. All the “girl” jobs were in offices, hospitals, schools, or restaurants. Never courts. [Read more…]

My Least Favorite Words

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Everyone has words they dislike.  I have three:My Least Favorite Words

The first is “facility.”  Especially when grouped with ‘assisted living’ or ‘continuing care,’ or ‘memory care.’

I’d always thought a facility is a place where things are made, or shipped from, or warehoused. Facilities are places for getting things done. Why do we apply the term ‘facility’ to describe places where older people reside?

Residences or homes are where people live.  Like long-term care residences, or skilled-nursing homes.  Coupling the word facility with places where many seniors reside contributes to the objectification of older people, that is, treating them as an object or thing.

[Read more…]

Parents Before Kids: Getting Our Priorities Straight

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The deepest pain many elderly parents feel cannot be fixed by doctors or lawyers. It’s created by their own children.

Parents Before Kids: Getting Our Priorities Straight by Carolyn Parr
The most common causes are:

  • Parents’ fierce desire to cling to their independence and autonomy
  • Sibling rivalry that shows up as parents need more help and role reversal kicks in
  • Greed

[Read more…]

Reason for Being

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Today we’re re-posting our first blog, to remind our readers –and ourselves — why we exist.

“Tough Conversations” was born from the stories of our mediation clients and our own experiences caring for elderly parents. Even with years of training and experience, we had to learn through trial and error. We hope readers will profit from our experience.

Intergenerational discussions of family problems can be painful and hard. If unresolved differences end up in court, all hope for healthy future relationships may die. We aim to help clients find solutions that meet the needs of everyone, that everyone owns, and that strengthen family bonds. We think communication is the key.

This blog is dedicated to pastors, social workers, probate lawyers and others who serve families of older adults and their “sandwich generation” children, and to the families themselves.

Our goals are to help families and others

– Solve problems through compassionate communication

– Preserve and improve relationships

– Foresee and prevent situations before they become conflicts

We welcome your own stories and other feedback!

Carolyn Parr and Sig Cohen

Prepare, prepare, prepare

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That’s become our mantra. Don’t wait until an issue becomes an emergency and an emergency becomes….a crisis. Don’t wait for Dad’s heart condition to be the cause of a minor motor vehicle accident (an emergency), or a heart attack to result in someone’s getting injured or worse (a crisis) if Dad loses control of his vehicle.

It’s often not that easy. Both Carolyn and I have had personal experience with the need to prepare being stymied by an obstinate parent or a ‘hard-headed’ sibling. I’m sure we’re no different than many of you, dear readers.
So, when we come upon some helpful resources, we want to share them with you.

In 2004 Prentice Hall published How to Say It to Seniors: Closing the Communications Gap with Our Elders. by David Solie. I realize this may be an ‘old’ book but halfway through it, I knew it would be an essential tool in our elder mediation work and Tough Conversations workshops. Solie argues that seniors experience developmental crises just like anyone of us entering a new stage in our lives. For seniors the crises revolve around control (losing it) and legacy, that is, those events and values by which we want to be remembered by family, friends, and future generations. Much of Solie’s book offers strategies for carrying out meaningful conversations with our elders.

A second resource is a Planning Guide for Families titled Prepare to Care, published by the AARP Foundation. Its 28-pages provide tips on how to approach sensitive issues like assessing the financial concerns and personal care and health needs of elderly family members. These are followed by easy-to-complete checklists dealing with, among other topics, home maintenance, medical issues, and transportation needs. A down-loadable version of the Guide can be accessed at:
http://www.aarp.org/aarp-foundation/info-2010/prepare-to-care.html

If you know of other resources that can help us engage more caringly and plan more productively, please share them with us and other readers.

One way or another, we are all in this together.

Sig Cohen

PUNT OR PASS? Thinking Through a Tough Conversation

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We recently spoke with a colleague who told me how he had been asked to mediate between several family members and their father (with incipient Alzheimers) who refused to cease driving. Try as they did, their father wouldn’t budge — even with my friend’s intervention. The children then decided to confer with their Dad’s physician.
Alarmed by what family members told her and with their consent, the doctor contacted their state’s Dept. of Motor Vehicles and recommended their father take a driving test. The Agency agreed. However, when their father received notice of the impending driving test, he decided to forego it and reluctantly stopped driving.
Their plan seemed to have worked: An increasingly bitter dispute between Dad and his family ended. And while foregoing the driver’s test may have been humbling, worse would have been failing it. Worst of all would have been an accident in which someone was injured.
But I kept thinking: What if, instead of going behind their Dad’s back, his family members had involved him in the process? Then he would have been part of the conversation and hopefully had a sense of ownership about any decision regarding his future driving. Yes, their Dad could have refused to leave his driving future in the hands of the DMV. Then, as a last resort, his family could have followed through on its original plan and have the doctor contact the DMV secretly. And there’s always the possibility that their Dad could have agreed to take the test, pass it, and continue driving.
Tough call. What would you have done? Is there yet another way they may have engaged their Dad in the decision process? Have you been in this situation? If so, what did you do? Please let us hear from you.

Sig

WHAT’S WRONG WITH ‘OLD’?

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The management at a dear friend’s assisted care facility just informed her that she would have to move from her ground floor apartment to one on another floor. Why? Because her floor was to become a ‘memory care community.’

“What on earth is a memory care community?” I asked. In short, a floor (or wing, or facility) dedicated to treating (or warehousing?) people suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. I suppose it’s no longer proper to refer to such places as an Alzheimer’s wing or the section for patients with dementia.

So it goes in the land of politically correct euphemisms. As Susan Jacoby points out in her new book ‘Never Say Die,’ we dare not say the word ‘old.’ Old is out. Senior is in. Erectile Dysfunction is in. Impotence is out.

At the risk of sounding tedious, try these: infant is OK. So is toddler. Pre-teen works. As do teen-ager, youthful, and twenty-somethings. But as age creeps upward, the language shifts: Don’t utter middle-aged. Proper usage calls for ‘mid-life.’

Even the marketing gurus at ‘Elder Hostel’ have re-branded their venerable organization ‘Road Scholar.’

When it comes to our ‘twilight years’ (sorry), be careful. Something in our psyche flashes yellow and says: “Warning! Watch your language.”

Think about it: Why do we feel compelled to tiptoe around words associated with aging? Sooner or later all of us are going to be old. So, what’s wrong with using the most direct word to describe that stage of life?

Let’s hear from you: Why do you think we shun words about being old when we have no compulsion to re-name other stages of life?
Sig