As I have shared before I consider myself very fortunate that I get to work with the most loving of families. For the most part everyone truly wants the best for their aging parents.
However it seems inevitable that each and every family member believes that they and they alone know the best ways to assist their loved ones as they prepare to move to smaller space. And that is when family relationships, at best, feel the strain and, at worst, completely derail.
I have known rational, successful middle aged siblings reduced to frustrated sniping and, in some cases, screaming matches that can resemble interactions between eight and ten year olds more than the 58 and 60 year olds who they are today. Many of these folks are professionals who hold senior positions at their work or businesses but when they come back into the family home it seems like they also return to a time when empathy, maturity and wisdom were vague qualities as yet to be fully developed.
It is fully expected that different people who are raised in the same family will hold very different values. Ages, birth order, gender roles, personalities, societal expectations and life experiences all play some part in how they view their role in the family and also their beliefs of how to best deal with their parents’ changing needs.
Typically if an older adult has three children, one will look around their parents’ home and want to call a dumpster. Another will not want anything to change and will want their parent or parents to keep everything, regardless of looming space limitations. A third will want their parent or parents to be happy but will not want to deal with the sibling dynamics that they know from experience are sure to get stormy.
And this is where an objective senior move manager can bring sanity, if not serenity, to a potentially stressful situation. A skilled senior move manager is also an active and astute listener and an advocate for the older adult who is in transition. I can’t tell you how many times my older adult clients don’t want to offend their loved ones but truly have no desire nor need to move many of the gifts that are lovingly bestowed on them several times a year.
It also continues to surprise me how many items in a typical family home evoke entirely different memories for each person involved. Mementos from a family vacation might be treasured by one of the adult children who thought that that trip was the best time ever. Another sibling might not even recall that particular vacation and the older parent may have his or her own memories of a time when they unselfishly kept it positive for the kids but really it was not a good time or a good memory at all…
Such is the fabric of life and recollections. An objective senior move manager can help to keep your project going smoothly but perhaps more importantly, can help to prevent disputes that can have more longevity than some of the family members involved.
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