Psychology of Aging Parents

Communicating with Older Adults: An Update


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I have been studying how to unlock the communication code of older adults for the last twenty-three years. My first breakthrough came early on with developmental psychology, a model based on age-specific tasks that are easy to understand, easy to…

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David Solie on Communicating with Senior Housing Clients


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This is an interview I did for the Senior Real Estate Institute on January 17, 2013. The topic was communicating with senior housing clients, older adults and adult children. The focus was the two psychological hurdles that have to be…

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From Pleading To Informing…


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A lead caregiver of aging parents was going to extraordinary lengths to keep everything together only to find herself drowning in transactional quicksand. As her parents drifted into the land of “more and more care,” her uninvolved siblings either refused…

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Dangling Conversations…


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Conversations with adult children about their aging parents eventually include the dilemma of declining health. Embedded in this emotional topic is the volatile issue of “advanced directives.” Everyone knows that you need one, but having just one version turns out…

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Where Do I Start? Coaching Aging Parents


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Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. Dr. Seuss For the last twenty years, my work has involved helping adult children find a new rapport with…

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Bad Parent Connection: Now What?


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It’s one thing to have a decent connection to our aging parents. We may not be close, but we still feel compelled by love and loyalty to come along side them in the in last years of their lives. But…

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The Wrong Signals: Shutting Down Change Before It Starts


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How do we help our aging parents consider making positive changes in their lives? We want to help, and feel we have good ideas that could improve their quality of life. For example, we would like for them to consider:…

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I Don’t Need Assisted Living!


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An older adult is ready to move into an independent living community and undergoes a “pre-placement” health assessment by the facility’s physician. Based on the findings, the physician indicates that the older adult “needs assisted living.” The older adult and…

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Conflicting Layers of Longevity


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As boomers approach the outskirts of being old, a new aging dilemma is beginning to emerge: simultaneous developmental phases with their aging parents. It is one thing to be fifty-something and have aging parents in their mid to late seventies.…

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