If you or your client’s holiday visit to aging relatives, might feature some scary scenes, here are some red flags to put in a check list and share with midlife siblings pre the annual family get together .
You can all assess when you visit parents or older family members during the holidays and compare notes on a post holiday conference call. If all midlife siblings have the same criteria, it makes easier to agree what to do and what to flag as family New Year’s resolutions.
If you work with aging or midlife families , you can share this with your clients.
Maybe older parents have piles of junk mail, stained dirty attire, unwrapped gifts when Mom used to shine through her color coordinated presents. All are cause for the 911 alarm then action.
Below is a list of red flags . These pulsing red signals on Hanukah or Christmas, say now is the time for family to do something about parental decline. Below is a checklist of some worrisome signs you may have seen.
Alarm Bells List for Visiting Long Distance Relatives During the Holidays
Unpaid bills
Missed appointments
Clutter in a home that was once always neat
Weight loss
Memory loss, change in short-term memory
Poor grooming by a person who was once meticulous
Getting lost
Wandering
Refusing to go with friends on outings or to religious services
refusing any suggestion or conversely agreeing to everything with-out consideration
Mood swings, getting angry qui
Refusing to go to medical providers
Cant take care of activities of daily living: cooking, bathing, dressing, housekeeping, etc.
Entering contests, credit card maxed out on shopping channels
When the midlife adult children return from the holidays , the family can have a family meeting alone or with an the aging professional and look at the problems on everyone’s the list, agree on the top red flags and start helping the long distance family.
As nearly 7 million Americans and innumerable midlife siblings are responsible for the care of an older family member live an average of 300 miles away, this is a great gift to midlife family members and their loved ones.
