Loving Hard-to-Love Parents: A Handbook for Adult Children of Difficult Older Parents by Paul K.

Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life by Dr.

Passages in Caregiving: Turning Chaos into Confidence by Gail Sheehy.

Loving Someone Who Has Dementia: How to Find Hope While Coping with Stress and Grief by Pauline Boss.

Trading Places: Becoming my Mother’s Mother-A Daughter’s Memoir by Sandra Bullock Smith.

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande.

Below are some book recommendations on topics like dementia care, family dysfunction, end-of-life issues and self-help. While it is difficult to know where to start when searching for caregiving advice and counsel, we find the above works each provide a varied and important perspective. Hudson offers many innovative and creative ideas, along with practical suggestions for enhancing and sustaining quality of life. Handling these difficult objectives enables readers to develop a strategy for ensuring that they can achieve the quality of life they desire as they get older and serves as a guide for family members who will likely become caregivers and surrogate decision makers.

Her second core point is that articulating one’s personal definition of quality of life is something that must be done earlier rather than later.

First, she stresses the importance of planning ahead for the realities of aging and properly communicating those plans to family members. There are two central themes to Hudson’s work. This selection is especially helpful for those at the very beginning of their journey into caregiving or aging. Your Room at the End: Thoughts About Aging We’d Rather Avoid by Charlie Hudson You will likely laugh out loud, and that’s always therapeutic for caregivers!

Halpern encourages readers to question their assumptions about youth, aging and family relationships. The day’s humorous debacles lead these women discover important things about one another and their relationships. She asks her granddaughter to be her guide on her special day while Barbara and her best friend frantically search for a “missing” Ellie. The ensuing “young for a day” adventure causes Ellie to question nearly all the choices she has made throughout her life. As the adage goes, be careful what you wish for! On her 75 th birthday, Ellie wishes to be 29 again for just one day as she blows out her candles. Ellie strives to remain physically and mentally young, so she feels she has more in common with Lucy than her own daughter. This book tells the story of three generations of women: Ellie, a 75-year-old grandmother, her 55-year-old daughter Barbara and her 29-year-old granddaughter Lucy.

29 by adena halpern