If you assist or provide support for an older elder in your family, check to see whether you need to help out with that individual’s electronic medical records (EMRs). You may have routinely set up your own EMRs without much thought, but many elder adults have not established or have had difficulty establishing their accounts. … Continue reading
Filed under adult children …
You Can’t Parent Your Parent — No Matter What
I just read a touching 2013 column about supporting elderly parents, written by Washington Post columnist, Cortland Milloy. In his column Milloy addresses the notion, so prevalent these days, that many of us are “parenting our parents.” I’ll let you read the column for yourself, but I have some firm issues when it comes to … Continue reading
Fraud, Investments, and Our Elder Parents
Check out “Why Older People are Vulnerable to Fraud & How to Protect Them, a February 2017 New York Times article that describes the ways older adults are susceptible to fraudulent phone calls and offers, especially when it concerns investments. It also makes suggestions about what people who get entangled in these offers can do. The … Continue reading
Alzheimer’s Drug Studies Failing, but There’s Still Optimism
If you are the adult child of an elder, you often worry about that family member’s memory, and you are always on the lookout for potential problems. If you are like me, you comb the the scientific literature and health articles looking for information dreaming of a solution to a weakening memory. Some days the research … Continue reading
Giving vs. Receiving: Growing Older & Extreme Frustration
Change is constant when we age, and it’s important for adult children occasionally to consider the changes in our elder parents’ lives by looking through the prisms that our parents gaze through and thoughtfully examining their perspectives. In a conversation with my mom — who has found herself less energetic and more dependent on others — she shared her journal … Continue reading
The Anatomy of a Fall — Mine
In April 2016 the health writer Jane Brody wrote a powerful essay in the New York Times Personal Health column, Thriving at Age 70 and Beyond. She described the importance of focusing, as we age, on a healthy life style and maintaining social relationships as well as adjusting to age-related physical changes that occur. Brody specifically … Continue reading
Stop Saying These Three Things to Elder Adults!
When they speak to elderly seniors, middle-age children and and other adults tend to say things, often unintentionally, that demonstrate a lack of respect and empathy. Sometimes it happens when a person tries to solve a problem quickly; at others the goal is to move along getting to work or school on time. Not infrequently adult children … Continue reading
Advice-giving, Aging Parents & Adult Children
Advice-giving can trip up the elder parent – adult child relationship and even cause painful divisions between parent and child. My mother will ask me a question and the answer is fairly straightforward, but then I’ll keep on answering, advising, really. At other times, I offer unsolicited advice about one thing or another. Usually my mother … Continue reading
Music, the Brain, Aging, and Memory Diseases
We live with music throughout our lives — it surrounds people no matter what their age. Children, of course, love to sing at almost as soon as they are born, but music, even for those who are not musicians, is a part of the air people breathe. Interestingly, music appears to become even more important as people age and contributes … Continue reading
Jane Gross Lecture on Caregiving and Her Family
Last fall Jane Gross, journalist and author of A Bittersweet Season, spoke about her experiences supporting and caring for her elderly mother. The presentation at Brethren Village, a retirement community in Lancaster, PA, shares observations, experiences, things she wishes she had done, and much more.
5 Family Caregiving Facts from Pew Research Center
If you provide caregiving support to a family member, take a few minutes to read a short article about Five Facts About Family Caregivers at the Pew Research Center website. The short article offers details from a survey that collected information about participants’ views concerning caring for aging parents, part of a larger Pew project that focused on … Continue reading
Products for Elders — Ask Them First
I’ve written a number of times about 24-7 monitoring services and personal safety devices. My mother-in-law was supposed to wear one around her neck for — well, 24 hours a day. Except that she didn’t. At first she wore it. Then she took it off with the rest of her jewelry each evening. Then she only … Continue reading
Famed Clinicians: Prepared but Not Ready for Death
When we think about dying, about the end of our lives, we may look to the experts for guidance — to those people who have long experience with various aspects of aging and the medical issues that complicate the process of dying. We assume that these people have their own end of life details all worked … Continue reading
Elder Perspectives on Life and Love for Younger Generations
Those of us lucky enough to have aging parents who live long and remain nominally healthy are often struck by the wisdom we hear as they ruminate about relationships and love in the past. To really understand what they are getting at we must toss away any notions that our parents are merely clinging to the “good old … Continue reading
Watching Ourselves Age With the Brown Sisters
Those of us with elder parents spend a lot of time thinking about age and change. As adult children, we observe the aging of our parents, but not infrequently we wonder aloud how they got so old. At the same time we don’t always notice how we, too, are growing older. In October 2014 the … Continue reading
Elders Share Wisdom on Love: A Valentine’s Day Treat!
Adult children learn a lot from elder parents. Take a few minutes to read Love Lessons From the Wisest Americans, published over at the NextAvenue.org site and a great Valentine’s Day treat. The article, published on February 12, 2015, will help to clear up quite a few misconceptions about our aging parents. Written by Suzanne Gerber, this piece describes … Continue reading
Thanksgiving: A Time To See Older Relatives
Yes, Thanksgiving is a time for adult children to pack up and pay a visit to parents, where ever their homes may be. Today’s Washington Post, it’s the last Sunday before Thanksgiving 2014, features an interesting article, Thanksgiving: A Rare Holiday That’s Isn’t All About Kids. The short piece, appearing in the Post’s Outlook section, points … Continue reading
Cyber Seniors Documentary: Well Done!
This afternoon at the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) conference in Washington, DC, I saw clips from a documentary, Cyber-Seniors, about teenage volunteers in Toronto who work with elders — people in their mid to late 80s and older — and the rich clarity of their interactions. Many of these people retired before computers appeared … Continue reading
Fitness Age vs. Chronological Age
Adult children should check out the October 2013 New York Times Well Blog article, What’s Your Fitness Age? The piece by Gretchen Reynolds shares information about the concept of fitness age — it can differ significantly from an individual’s chronological age — and how researchers calculate the measurement for individuals. Reynolds points out in the article that, while we … Continue reading
More on Fraud: AARP’s Fraud Watch and Other Helpful Sites
Check out Michelle Singletary’s Washington Post column, Let’s Band Together to Stop Scammers, a terrific piece that appeared today (September 28, 2014) and a perfect follow-up to my most recent blog post, Windows Security Fraud Phone Calls. My piece shared a recent experience with a telephone caller who tried to get me to share personal information because of … Continue reading
As Our Parents Age So Do We 