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Baby Boomers still have worries about their own adult children. They help take care of grandchildren. And now they must face up to the aging of their parents. Boomers can feel like triple-generation parents, even as they age into retirement themselves. Boomers need help!
The Unexpected Caregiver: How Boomers Can Keep Mom & Dad Active, Safe and Independent, by Kari Berit (2007: Attainment Company, Verona, WI), has arrived at just the right time. Read it quickly, searching for advice that matches your particular issues and questions. Or read it through slowly, grasping the all-important frame of mind and ideas for maintaining a sense of independence by older parents. Either way is helpful.
Kari Berit is as delightful in print as she is during her professional speaking engagements. She tells it like it is: with humor, respect and wisdom. Kari Berit is savvy about family challenges that can arise in the care of aging parents and is a fountain of knowledge about creative activities that work. She uses many practical lessons for the seasoned caregiver as well as for the newcomer to help Baby Boomers adjust to the possibility of "parenting their parents."
For example, there are several sections on healthy activities that can engage parents both mentally and physically, including up-to-date material on scrapbooking, mentoring, traveling and writing family histories. The four chapters on end-of-life issues are written with great sensitivity for spiritual issues and with a sense of reality about the different expectations, often unspoken, among family members.
The Unexpected Caregiver tackles head-on what is perhaps the most important, yet misunderstood, dimension of taking on a caregiving role with your parents: enabling aging parents to retain a sense of control over their own lives. As their parents' need for assistance grows with age, Boomers must find ways to keep them in the loop of influence and bi-directional support, making resourceful decisions about how to relate to their parents and to those who
provide care and support for them. The Unexpected Caregiver has inventive suggestions for how to make that happen.
Not only is The Unexpected Caregiver a helpful guide, providing important and workable steps for making a difference in the lives of aging parents, but it also makes an emotionally upbeat gift. Baby Boomers will appreciate any person who hands them a copy of The Unexpected Caregiver, whether they're a family member or a concerned source of expert advice - financial planners, insurance companies, retirement centers ...the list goes on.
In The Unexpected Caregiver, Kari Berit's personal experiences as a caregiver, combined with her professional training, give her a unique sensitivity that can help Boomers reduce their anxieties over how to handle the new, perhaps unexpected, challenges of caregiving for their parents.
Bruce B. Roberts, Ph.D., is the former chair - and now Professor Emeritus - of the Department of
Psychology at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. He is the co-author, with Howard Thorsheim, of
I Remember When: Activity Ideas to Help People Reminisce (2000: Elder Books, Forest Knolls,
CA).
© 2007, Bruce B. Roberts. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to reproduce this review, in whole or substantial part, provided it is edited only for space considerations, and not in ways that significantly alter content or context. As a courtesy, please send a copy of the review, as published to Bruce Roberts, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN 55057 or online to bruroberts@gmail.com
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