Common Family Conflicts

Caring for Your Elderly Parents: How to Handle Family Conflicts

Caring for an elderly parent is hard work, and it can also be hard on family relationships. The strain of the situation can heighten old resentments and create new conflicts over everything from medical decisions to finances. Here's how to avoid conflicts with family members and work through them when they occur...

My brother and I are adults, but when it comes to taking care of my mother, we fall right back into the roles we had as children.

As the oldest in the family, I've always been very responsible, while my younger brother has tended to stand back and let others do the heavy lifting. Now that my mother is ailing, I've been doing much more than my brother in terms of her care...

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How can I take over caretaking decisions when my brother has power of attorney?

My brother has power of attorney over our mother, who is in a nursing home and has dementia. The nursing home has had problems getting in touch with him to make decisions for her. He is unwilling to make contact with me about her welfare. How can I take over making decisions for her care if he will not work with me on this or talk to me...

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Does a sibling have any say in her mother's burial planning if she does not have power of attorney?

A friend of mine has a sister who has recently become their mom's power of attorney. I don't know if it is general or health type. My friend's mom has recently been transferred to a hospice care facility. My friend already has a mortuary site and stone paid for. She is concerned that her sister won't want their mom to be buried where previously decided...

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How can I persuade my siblings to visit my mother, who has Alzheimer's, more often?

Our mother has Alzheimer's. Two of my siblings (there are five of us left) consider our mother already dead and refuse to have any contact with her. Do you have any suggestions on how to persuade them to come and see her?

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My know-it-all sister will be here for ten days at Christmas, and I can already feel my stress level rising.

My mom lives with my family and me. She's 82 years old and uses a walker. She also has lung problems and needs breathing treatments. My sister only visits twice a year, but you'd think she deserved a Congressional Medal for it! She waltzes in with her husband and their little dog (without even asking...

8 Ways to Preserve Family Memories While You Can if Your Parent Has Alzheimer's

An often-overlooked reality of Alzheimer's is that your parent's memories and knowledge of family history will eventually disappear along with her personality. Fortunately this doesn't happen instantly. Early in the disease process, even when short-term memory loss is obvious, long-term memories tend to persist...

How to Tell Your Kids About Your Parent's Alzheimer's Disease

Your parent's Alzheimer's disease affects not only you; it has an impact on your children, too. The time Grandma blanked on your son's name? Those overheard long, worried phone conversations with your siblings about Grandpa?

The Importance of Respite for Family Caregivers

Every caregiver needs respite time if he or she is to last. It may be hard to think of yourself and your needs at this time, but if you don't, your life will be consumed by your duties and you will burn out. Respite (a temporary break from responsibility) is not a luxury, it is a necessity.

Special Occasions and Challenges When Caring for Someone With Alzheimer's

An important part of caring for a person with Alzheimer's disease is to help her to continue to engage in activities that have special personal or family meaning (this is not a big problem in the early stages.) With suitable support, she will be able to enjoy taking trips, participating in events that...

Community-Based Services

Many services are provided free by local or community groups. The groups are sometimes repaid by state, local, and federal governments, but often volunteers provide meals and social and health care services.

How can I encourage my wife, who has diabetes, to exercise more?

My wife has type 2 diabetes and she is on home partial disability at the ripe old age of 38. I am having a very hard time motivating her to "REALLY" exercise regularly. What can I do before it is too late?

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Paying for Care: Community-Based Services

How to Get the Help You'll Need to Care for Your Parent With Breast Cancer

The cardinal rule of caring for a parent with cancer is that no caregiver can do it alone. The following categories of care will help remind you which things need immediate attention when someone asks, "How can I help?"

How to Ask for Help With Breast Cancer Care Giving

When you tell family members, friends, or neighbors that your parent has cancer, one of the first things they'll ask is, "How can I help?" In fact, as soon as the news that your parent has cancer begins to spread, offers of help are likely to begin pouring in, often from unexpected sources...

How do I cope with an aging parent living in my home?

My mother is 85 years old, relatively healthy, and living with me. We used to have a very good relationship so I thought this would work out. Unfortunately, she gets mad at the drop of a hat, is judgmental of everything I do, just waits for me to shut up so she can talk, and never hears a thing I say...

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How do I get my siblings to realize that it is important to be with our parents during the holidays?

How do I get my siblings to realize that it is important to visit my parents during the holidays? They never come on holidays and it makes me so sad for my parents.

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Can my parent give durable power of attorney for healthcare to one child, and durable power of attorney for finance to another?

Please solve a debate in our family. I think my parents should give durable power of attorney for both healthcare and finance to one sibling, so that one person is in charge of helping to arrange for their care. My brother thinks these powers should go to different siblings. Who's right?

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How can I get my brother to help out more in caring for our mother?

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Managing Friends and Family When You're the Primary Caregiver

From holding family planning meetings to running your own blog or website, you can do a variety of things to enlist the support of friends and family -- and keep them informed -- when you're caring for your parent.

For people with Alzheimer's and other dementias, there's more evidence of the benefit of day services in an online preview of an article to appear in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. Researchers compared 30 patients who used respite care with 30 people of the same age and cognitive ability who had only...

Should the family member who's handling the lionshare of caregiving for a parent with Alzheimer's be paid for his or her (usually her) services? That "increasingly popular option" came up in a?Wall Street Journal column?on blunting the costs.

Lillian Rubin would like you to know that 80 is not the new 60. In her latest book, 60 on Up, Rubin tries to dispel that and many other myths and slogans of the "new old age," including that "thinking young" and "brain nutrients" will somehow stave off age's inevitable corrosion. As she says in the feisty opening of her book: "Getting old sucks...

When is the best time to have an important conversation with a dying parent or relative? "Now," says David Kuhl, a palliative care doctor who studied the most important wishes of people with terminal illnesses for his book What Dying People Want.