Successfully Navigating Your Parents' Senior Years


Book Description

No matter your parents’ age or stage of life, this comprehensive guide walks you step-by-step through developing a flexible, proactive plan that will allow you to make the most informed decisions for your parents’ well-being—and your own. Millions of Americans are in an active caregiver role or will be in one in the future, yet few have a solid plan for the inevitable challenges of aging. Whether your parents are in their 60s or their 90s, and whether they have years of health ahead of them or already need more support, Successfully Navigating Your Parents’ Senior Years provides the framework and information you need to prepare for and handle with confidence the changes to come. The responsibility of caring for an aging loved one is often daunting—and when trouble hits, the sudden barrage of questions you face can be overwhelming. Have your parents executed their Advance Directives? Do you know what to look for in a senior community (and how to ensure a spot is available when you need it)? If your parents want to stay in their home, what can you do to ensure their safety? Certified aging life care specialist and CEO of Senior Living Strategies Star Bradbury draws on her 25 years of experience in senior living to bring you an up-to-date, comprehensive guide to navigating the tricky waters ahead—starting with putting a plan in place now that maximizes your parents’ independence while providing them with the support they need. Successfully Navigating Your Parents’ Senior Years covers: How to bring up sensitive topics with your aging parents Steps you can take to keep your parents safely independent in their own homes for longer Red flags that indicate your parents may need more help Senior living options and the key questions to ask in choosing any kind of retirement community Alternative living arrangements to consider for aging parents, such as senior roommates, cohousing, and/or niche retirement communities How to get help paying for your parents’ medical care (you have more options than you think!) Legal and financial documents to have on hand in case of a sudden medical emergency Insider tips, helpful checklists, and more Don’t wait for a crisis to begin planning for the future. Successfully Navigating Your Parents’ Senior Years is an indispensable blueprint that will give you the tools and knowledge you need to advocate for your parents when they need you most.




There Is Life After College


Book Description

From the bestselling author of College Unbound comes a hopeful, inspiring blueprint to help alleviate parents’ anxiety and prepare their college-educated child to successfully land a good job after graduation. Saddled with thousands of dollars of debt, today’s college students are graduating into an uncertain job market that is leaving them financially dependent on their parents for years to come—a reality that has left moms and dads wondering: What did I pay all that money for? There Is Life After College offers students, parents, and even recent graduates the practical advice and insight they need to jumpstart their careers. Education expert Jeffrey Selingo answers key questions—Why is the transition to post-college life so difficult for many recent graduates? How can graduates market themselves to employers that are reluctant to provide on-the-job training? What can institutions and individuals do to end the current educational and economic stalemate?—and offers a practical step-by-step plan every young professional can follow. From the end of high school through college graduation, he lays out exactly what students need to do to acquire the skills companies want. Full of tips, advice, and insight, this wise, practical guide will help every student, no matter their major or degree, find real employment—and give their parents some peace of mind.




We Can Do This!


Book Description

Practical, conversational and authentic, this timely book by Lorraine Morales, is a must-read for the increasing number of people with aging parents. The book partners Lorrie’s journey and real-life stories with essential facts, take-aways, and practical advice to help caregivers and their loved ones make realistic, knowledgeable, and simple decisions before they’re in a crisis. Focused on Alberta but applicable to all Canadians, Lorrie’s insights touch on everything from organizing medical information to choosing a nursing home. Readers will benefit from the wealth of knowledge shared by the author, and they will feel encouraged and equipped to do what needs to be done. We Can Do This! offers Lorrie’s personal story to help others realize that planning for later years in life can be a relatively stress-free process. A tribute to her parents and a guide to all those struggling with the “What do I do now?” questions associated with aging parents, We Can Do This! is one of the new generation of books in health care and senior communities containing indispensable information for all readers.




Saving Our Sons


Book Description

Help Your Son Grow into the Man He's Meant to Be There's never been a more challenging time to be the mother of a teenage boy. Our young men are currently in crisis, falling far behind their female counterparts in school and in life and failing to learn the lessons they need to survive and thrive in the adult world. With SavingOur Sons, veteran psychotherapist and founder of The Quest Project(R) Clayton Lessor, MA, LPC is out to reverse this trend. Based on years of research, study and practical application, Saving Our Sons provides mothers--as well as fathers and other caregivers--with the expert guidance they need to help their sons navigate the turbulent transition between boyhood and manhood. You'll learn: - Why what you're doing now isn't working - The wound that all adolescent boys share - The five things a boy needs to grow into a healthy man - What mothers can (and can't) do to help their sons transition to manhood - How to tell when your son is in trouble, and where to turn for help - An overview of The Quest Project(R), including exercises you can do with your son at home - Case studies of eight young men who have completed The Quest Project(R) - And much more




Navigating Life


Book Description

You might learn a few useful things at school, but most of what matters, most of what makes you into a fully functioning human being, no teacher will ever tell you. This diamond-sharp, honest book of hard-earned wisdom is one mother's effort to equip her daughter for survival in the real world. Heartbreakingly funny, Navigating Life has invaluable tips for students of life of all ages. It will challenge you to lead a more meaningful life and to tackle the bumps along the way with grit, style, and ingenuity.




At Peace


Book Description

The authoritative, informative, and reassuring guide on end-of-life care for our aging population. Most people say they would like to die quietly at home. But overly aggressive medical advice, coupled with an unrealistic sense of invincibility or overconfidence in our health-care system, results in the majority of elderly patients misguidedly dying in institutions. Many undergo painful procedures instead of having the better and more peaceful death they deserve. At Peace outlines specific active and passive steps that older patients and their health-care proxies can take to ensure loved ones live their last days comfortably at home and/or in hospice when further aggressive care is inappropriate. Through Dr. Samuel Harrington's own experience with the aging and deaths of his parents and of working with patients, he describes the terminal patterns of the six most common chronic diseases; how to recognize a terminal diagnosis even when the doctor is not clear about it; how to have the hard conversation about end-of-life wishes; how to minimize painful treatments; when to seek hospice care; and how to deal with dementia and other special issues. Informed by more than thirty years of clinical practice, Dr. Harrington came to understand that the American health-care system wasn't designed to treat the aging population with care and compassion. His work as a hospice trustee and later as a hospital trustee drove his passion for helping patients make appropriate end-of-life decisions.




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.




How to Navigate Life


Book Description

An essential guide to tackling what students, families, and educators can do now to cut through stress and performance pressure, and find a path to purpose. Today’s college-bound kids are stressed, anxious, and navigating demands in their lives unimaginable to a previous generation. They’re performance machines, hitting the benchmarks they’re “supposed” to in order to reach the next tier of a relentless ladder. Then, their mental and physical exhaustion carries over right into first jobs. What have traditionally been considered the best years of life have become the beaten-down years of life. Belle Liang and Timothy Klein devote their careers both to counseling individual students and to cutting through the daily pressures to show a better way, a framework, and set of questions to find kids’ “true north”: what really turns them on in life, and how to harness the core qualities that reveal, allowing them to choose a course of study, a college, and a career. Even the gentlest parents and teachers tend to play into pervasive societal pressure for students to PERFORM. And when we take the foot off the gas, we beg the kids to just figure out what their PASSION is. Neither is a recipe for mental or physical health, or, ironically, for performance or passion. How to Navigate Life shows that successful human beings instead tap into their PURPOSE—the why behind the what and how. Best of all, purpose is a completely translatable quality to every aspect of life, from first jobs to last jobs and everything in between.




Grown and Flown


Book Description

PARENTING NEVER ENDS. From the founders of the #1 site for parents of teens and young adults comes an essential guide for building strong relationships with your teens and preparing them to successfully launch into adulthood The high school and college years: an extended roller coaster of academics, friends, first loves, first break-ups, driver’s ed, jobs, and everything in between. Kids are constantly changing and how we parent them must change, too. But how do we stay close as a family as our lives move apart? Enter the co-founders of Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington. In the midst of guiding their own kids through this transition, they launched what has become the largest website and online community for parents of fifteen to twenty-five year olds. Now they’ve compiled new takeaways and fresh insights from all that they’ve learned into this handy, must-have guide. Grown and Flown is a one-stop resource for parenting teenagers, leading up to—and through—high school and those first years of independence. It covers everything from the monumental (how to let your kids go) to the mundane (how to shop for a dorm room). Organized by topic—such as academics, anxiety and mental health, college life—it features a combination of stories, advice from professionals, and practical sidebars. Consider this your parenting lifeline: an easy-to-use manual that offers support and perspective. Grown and Flown is required reading for anyone looking to raise an adult with whom you have an enduring, profound connection.




Race, Ethnicity, and Disability


Book Description

This book focuses on the post-Civil War experience of African Americans and immigrants, investigating their decision to seek government assistance and assessing their resulting treatment.