Apropos of Distracted Driving, Children, and Cell Phones
In light of my previous post about the apparent extra protective layer that grandparents have when they drive their grandchildren around, I decided to post this BMW distracted driving advertisement. I believe that telephones and texting play a big role in parents’ accidents these days.
I wrote a longer post about the this BMW video on my other blog, MediaTechParenting.
Aging Parents: Happy Mother’s Day!
My mom and me in late 1952.
Last January I wrote this post about my amazing mother. Not too many people read it then, so I am recycling it because I had so much fun writing it. It is also pasted in below. What an amazing woman!
Besides being one of the Obama super-volunteers in the Shenandoah Valley last year, she is active in politics, a book club, and church, and she is always ready to get in touch with a Congressperson or Senator about an important issue (right now that is health care reform). Currently she is helping to make hygiene kits for Church World Service to send to Haiti. My mom loves her computer, uses it judiciously, and was on Facebook long before I was because she wanted to keep in touch with the young people who worked with her on the Obama campaign.
Though she is 82 years old, last summer Mom took a stress test when her blood pressure was high, and the result is that she has the body/heart of a 64-year-old. Did I mention that she swims and exercises four or five times a week?
Aging Parents: Bodies Slower but Same World View
Aging parents, we should all understand, have frustratingly aging bodies, yet many are seeing and perceiving the world just as they always have. In fact, I’ve heard them say how curious it is to look in the mirror and see themselves staring back. Some wonder, “Who is that old person looking back at me?”
About 25 years ago, my mother was helping to care for her mother, and I was clueless about caring-for-aging-parents responsibility. Not anymore. I remember, in detail, an incident with my mother’s mother.
Late that summer my husband and I visited the assisted living community where my 91-year-old grandmother lived. Read more »
Aging Parents: Recognizing Social Wisdom
Assisting parents with their health and other issues often keeps us focused on difficulties, so it is easy to forget just how much experience older parents have with the game of life.
Now research from the University of Michigan’s Culture and Cognition Program published in the April 6, 2010 Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) (click here for the abstract) suggests that older family members offer significant perspectives and positive attitudes and may be uniquely suited to help solve problems in their communities. The authors found, “Social reasoning improves with age despite a decline in fluid intelligence.” In his Associated Press (AP) article, In Social Dealings, Being Older is Being Wiser, Randolphe E. Schmid describes the research in detail.
Is there something that has struck you about a parents’s social wisdom?
N.B. January 2. 2011: When this post was written, the article was not available as a PDF. The full text of Reasoning About Social Conflicts Improves into Old Age can be downloaded from the PNAS site
Medicare Donut (Doughnut) Hole-Health Insurance Coverage/Young Adult Kids
See links to other posts related to Medicare at the end of this posting.
Many of us caring for the health of aging parents are simultaneously worrying about our children—young adults trying to enter the job market who have no health insurance coverage. Even before the recession we worried because so many of our young adult children had minimal access to insurance coverage.
The legislation passed by the House of Representatives last night will allow us to breathe more easily at both ends of the caregiving age range. See the March 22, 2010 New York Times article, For Consumers, Clarity on Health Care Changes.
Go to What Goes into Effect Right Away — from House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee for the full list of changes that will take place immediately or within months after the bill is enacted. Of greatest significance to aging children with aging parents and young adult children are:
Moving Aging Parents, Mother’s Move, Part IV: Possessions
A March 12, 2010 New York Times article, Deciding on Care for Elderly Parents in Declining Health, made me think about the process my husband and I experienced with his mother following a stroke. This is the fourth of several postings describing our journey.
Read Part I of Moving Mother Part II Part III
Gently Dismantling 66 Years of Living — Suggestions
For six weeks we traveled back and forth between our home and Hilton Head. We had no idea, but soon realized, how many possessions — furniture, clothes, dishes, and other items — mother had in her condo and storage space. We knew that she and her husband had sold and given away many things when they first moved to the retirement community in Hilton Head, but there were still many possessions. Although a decision had to be made on every single item, we tried to keep Mother in the loop so she could make as many choices as possible. When possible our long lunches in the dining room and visits with friends, which we encouraged, helped to ease the stress.
Here are nine suggestions for simplifying the parent moving process:
Aging Parents, Caregiving, and Medicare Physicians
What happens if an aging parents needs or wants to go to a doctor that does not participate in Medicare? This situation has came up for us, and it may also be an issue for others.
While most Medicare health claims are submitted by a person’s doctor or health provider, navigating the Medicare highway can be a challenge because physicians and providers participate in Medicare in different ways. A patient or family needs to confirm whether or not a health provider participates in Medicare and to what degree. Some providers do not fully participate in Medicare and others do not participate at all. Here are the three ways the doctors do or do not participate. Read more »
Becoming A Grown-up Child
One day in April 2007 my husband and I were the adult kids in our families — we are the only adult children
— and the next day we became what we laughingly call “real grown-ups,” helping first one, then two, and for a while all three of our parents. It’s time to give back, and we do so willingly and happily. However the process is not easy, and it is not free from anxiety and tension. Check out the As Our Parents Age About page to learn more about the mission of this blog.
Copyright and Attribution Info
As Our Parents Age by Marti Weston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on work at AsOurParentsAge.wordpress.com and AsOurParentsAge.net
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by emailing As Our Parents Age. To learn more about this blog go to the AsYourParentsAge About page.Connect with Marti on LinkedIn
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