Caring for an aging parent poses many concerns: How can an adult child (or chadult, as author Harriet Schiff calls them), protect the dignity and independence of an aging parent? When should a chadult take over the grocery shopping, house cleaning, checkbook, and medical decisions? When is a nursing home the best option? How can parents and chadults prepare for the future before a crisis is reached? Schiff, an accomplished daily news reporter and book author, addresses all these questions and more, using real life anecdotes and her professional experience as the admissions coordinator for 13 nursing homes.
From Publishers Weekly
Schiff (The Bereaved Parent; Living Through Mourning) explores the complex relationship of aging parents and their adult children, to whom she gives the clumsy label "Chadults." Her reports, however, drawn from experiences of working with nursing home residents and their families, are graceful, eloquent and full of warmth, wisdom and practical good sense. Among the issues considered are planning for the future before a crisis precipitates hasty decisions; long-distance care; nursing home choices; finances; and intimate, including homosexual, relationships. Sarnoff shines when she addresses such intangibles as forgiveness, without which the adult child remains a victim, and the usefulness of psychotherapy as a tool for understanding unresolved issues in order to better get along with one's parent. While Sarnoff's copious use of anecdotal information can sometimes be distracting, this is a helpful, hopeful approach to a subject of interest to baby boomer sons and daughters whose parents are now senior citizens.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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