Coping with Your Difficult Older Parent


Book Description

Do You Have An Aging Parent Who -- Blames you for everything that goes wrong? Cannot tolerate being alone, wants you all the time? Is obsessed with health problems, real, or imagined? Make unreasonable and/or irrational demands of you? Is hostile, negative and critical? Coping with these traits in parents is an endless high-stress battle for their children. Though there's no medical defination for "difficult" parents, you know when you have one. While it's rare for adults to change their ways late in life, you can stop the vicious merry-go-round of anger, blame, guilt and frustration. For the first time, here's a common-sense guide from professionals, with more than two decades in the field, on how to smooth communications with a challenging parent. Filled with practical tips for handling contentious behaviors and sample dialogues for some of the most troubling situations, this book addresses many hard issues, including: How to tell your parent he or she cannot live with you. How to avoid the cycle of nagging and recriminations How to prevent your parent's negativity from overwhelming you. How to deal with an impaired parent who refuses to stop driving. How to asses the risk factors in deciding whether a parent is still able to live alone.




Doing the Right Thing


Book Description

Now in paperback, one of the first books to help navigate the profound emotional challenges of caring for elderly parents in a strained parent-child relationship.




Taking Care of Parents Who Didn't Take Care of You


Book Description

A self-help guide for those who have to take care of their aging parents. Caring for aging parents is difficult-it's exhausting, expensive, time-consuming, and under appreciated. And that's under the best of circumstances, when the caregiver loves and respects his or her aging parent. What happens when adult children are asked to care for elderly parents who were abusive, neglectful, or absent? Here is a compassionate and practical guide to facing the psychological and emotional issues that arise when caring for aging parents. Eleanor Cade offers sound as well as personal accounts from individuals who have made the choice to care for difficult parents. The result is a powerful guide to moving beyond feelings of anger, regret, and grief in order to build healthy new family dynamics based on decency and mercy.Target audience For individuals who are caring for aging, dysfunctional parents, as well as counselors and therapists who work with familiesFeaturesan authoritative resource for baby boomers caring for aging parentsdefines differences between "normal" and "dysfunctional" familiespersonal stories validate the experiences and feelings of readers




Children of the Aging Self-Absorbed


Book Description

Growing up with a parent who is self-absorbed is difficult, and they may become more difficult to deal with as they age. This essential book shows how to cope with your aging parent's narcissistic behavior, and provides tips to help protect yourself and your children from their self-absorbed, destructive actions. As your self-absorbed parent grows older and becomes more dependent on you, hurtful relationships may resurface and become further strained. In the tradition of Children of the Self-Absorbed, author Nina Brown offers the first book for adult children of aging narcissistic or self-absorbed parents. You will learn practical, powerful strategies for navigating the intense negative feelings that your parents can incite, as well as tips to protect your children from the criticism, blame, or hostility that may exist between you and their grandparent. In this book, you will gain greater awareness of how and why your parent's self-absorbed behaviors and attitudes get worse, and develop strategies to manage the negative feelings that can arise as a result. You'll also learn to reduce the shame and guilt that may be felt when you feel like you don't want to be a caretaker. Finally, you'll learn to set limits with your parent so you can stay sane during this difficult time. Having an aging parent can be stressful enough, but dealing with an aging narcissistic or self-absorbed parent is especially challenging. This essential guide will help you through.




Elder Rage


Book Description

Elder Rage, or Take My Father... Please: How to Survive Caring for Aging Parents--is a riveting true story as well as an extensive self-help book, with solutions for effective management, medically and behaviorally, of challenging elders who resist care. Jacqueline Marcell's poignant and often-humorous story of caring for her challenging elderly father and sweet but frail mother, addresses issues like how to get an obstinate elder to: give up driving, accept a caregiver, see a different doctor, take medication, go to adult day care, move to a new residence, etc. Includes: Behavior Modification Guidelines, 25 Q&A's=How Do I Handle My Elderly Loved One Who...?, Long-Term Care Insurance, Ten Warning Signs of Alzheimer's, How is Alzheimer's Diagnosed, Three Stages of Alzheimer's, Startling Statistics, Other Diseases That Act Like Alzheimer's, Jacqueline's Top Ten Recommendations, Hope For The Future, The Search for the Cure, Valuable Resources, Recommended Reading. Internationally known dementia specialist, Rodman Shankle, MS MD, contributes the Addendum: A Physician's Guide to Treating Dementia. Over 50 endorsements include: Hugh Downs, Regis Philbin, Dr. Dean Edell, Duke University Center for Aging, Dr. Nancy Snyderman/ABC News, Leeza Gibbons, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Rudy Tanzi/Harvard Medical School, and The Johns Hopkins Memory Clinic. http://www.elderrage.com




Caring for Your Parents


Book Description

"Practical advice you can trust from the experts at AARP"--Cover.




Role Reversal


Book Description

Designed to help caregivers understand how to cope with and overcome the overwhelming challenges that arise while caregiving for a loved one—especially an aging parent—Role Reversal is a comprehensive guide to navigating the enormous daily challenges faced by caregivers. In these pages, Waichler blends her personal experience caring for her beloved father with her forty years of expertise as a patient advocate and clinical social worker. The result is a book offering invaluable information on topics ranging from estate planning to grief and anger to building a support network and finding the right level of care for your elderly parent.




When Parents Have Problems


Book Description

Numerous books have been written for adults who grew up coping with troubled and difficult parents. Often the adults who read these books say, I wish someone had told me that when I was a kid; it might have helped me so much. Unfortunately, not much has been written for the kids who are coping in the present with difficult or troubled parents. This book is written out of the belief that intelligent kids can use sound ideas to improve their lives, either on their own or with the help of healthy adults. It will offer help in sorting out whether a difficult situation may be a result of a parent’s problems. In this new third edition, changes have been made throughout in order to update and refine the author’s ideas. Two new chapters have been added, as well. The first new chapter addresses parents who tell lies. Dishonest parents are motivated in several different ways, but all dishonest parents pose special problems for their children. The second chapter discusses the idea that all parents have problems some of the time. In this chapter, the author helps young people look at the challenges posed by recognizing that all parents, even excellent ones, have shortcomings, and it differentiates between the ordinary shortcomings that all parents have and more serious problems in parenting. This book is an excellent resource for therapists, school counselors, group leaders, and others who work with children and teenagers and who want reading materials to recommend to them.




How to Care for Aging Parents


Book Description

Thoroughly updated and expanded, a compassionate, single-volume reference to the many emotional, legal, financial, medical, and logistical issues associated with caring for aging parents covers such areas as nursing homes, finances, finding a good doctor, legal arrangements, redefining parental relationships, and handling emotional challenges. Original.




Parenting Our Parents


Book Description

This book is a “must read” for anyone who is presently caring for their aging parents, anyone who will eventually care for their aging parents or anyone planning on growing older. The author brings her decades of professional experiences as a psychotherapist, an attorney, a coach and a daughter to this book. She simultaneously chronicles her own heart-warming and touching journey as well as providing a comprehensive guide on doing effective family caregiving in the 21st century. Many report feeling “deeply understood” reading this book as they resonated with the candid revelations of the author’s inner struggles. Others find hers “a sane voice in a difficult world.” You will not be disappointed with reading the dilemmas, insights and decisions told in “My Story,” as you see what can be learned from this expert’s mistakes as well as her successes. Jane Wolf Frances offers many valuable tips and insights as she guides you from the beginning of the POPcycle, as she’s termed it, all the way to the end of her own parents’ lives. Whether you’re one of the 75 million Americans who are lucky enough to be “ParentingOurParents,” or you’re still struggling with overwhelm and confusion, you’ll need to know what’s being offered here. You will learn how you can: read the signs your parents need help; have “the talk” with your folks; make crucial decisions to get the maximum benefits available; enroll more family to be on the team; balance the elements in the new life you’re taking on as ParentingOurParents will change your life; transform the remarkable challenges of role reversals - legal, emotional, practical, residential - into a true journey of love.