When Mom and Dad Grow Old: Step-by-Step Planning for Families and Caregivers

In "When Mom and Dad Grow Old: Step-by-Step Planning for Families and Caregivers" the authors address the entire continuum of aging from healthy, independent living to death. This book is unique because it not only discusses aging issues, but it includes 27 worksheets that encourage a family to create its own "care plan" so that there is less likelihood that parents and their adult children will be caught unaware by the "precipitating event" that changes everything. While every contingency cannot be anticipated, much sorrow and alienation can be avoided with thoughtful and compassionate foresight. This book can help adult children provide that. Both authors have extensive professional expertise as well as personal experience in providing care for aging parents. Thus readers can expect the facts to be textbook accurate and helpful. The book is written in the form of fictional diary entries by an adult daughter who signs herself first as the "Delighted Daughter" and then spirals downward through her parents' decline from darling, doubtful, dutiful, disoriented, dumbfounded, and so forth until the final chapters, distressed, disloyal, deranged, desolate and depressed. Using the tools provided, readers can avoid some of these painful experiences and in the process experience rich and rewarding closure in their relationships with their parents.