eldercare Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Aging, caregiving and the journey through the second half of life

Shutting Down The Planning Conversation

December 1, 2014

“Despite good intentions, outdated assumptions about older clients may lead advisors to inadvertently send out the wrong message–and it is this poor signaling, not the eccentricities of aging, that proves to be a primary cause of communication setbacks. The good…

Best Possible Day

October 7, 2014

Atul Gwande’s article “Best Possible Day” is compassionate and articulate about asking the right questions, over and over again, in a world where time is running short… Best Possible Day…

Poetry and Aging Parents

August 31, 2014

The drama of aging parents takes courage and poetry. Mark Halliday’s moving poem about the legacy of his aging parents reminds us that every life longs for a narrative, albums that celebrate the journey and comfort the hearts of those…

Caregiver Support Lessons…

February 12, 2014

Last fall, I started a caregiver’s support group. The goal was to offer a non-judgmental setting for adult children to share their stories. While being the facilitator, my real job was arranging chairs and making sure everyone had a turn…

Dancing with Negative Feedback: Redirection and Resolution

November 21, 2013

I wrote this article for an assisted living magazine but the technique of “Redirection and Resolution” works in a wide range of situations where negative feedback needs to be managed in a calm, professional manner. Asking the daughter of a…

Communicating with Older Adults: An Update

March 16, 2013

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…

David Solie on Communicating with Senior Housing Clients

January 18, 2013

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…

From Pleading To Informing…

January 6, 2013

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…

The Caregiver Dance: Compassion and Equanimity

April 1, 2012

Last year I went to a conference on accepting the limits of being a caregiver. It was attended by mostly hospital-based healthcare professionals who have to deal with suffering and loss on a daily basis. The focus of the program…