By Mary Pat Flaherty - Washington Post
Jo Rinehart arrived at her parents' home and knew the empty driveway and locked house were bad signs. When she went inside, she saw that her mother's cellphone had been forgotten on a kitchen counter. It was filled with worried, frantic and plaintive messages from Rinehart and her siblings, all left in the previous 12 hours.
Rinehart's parents, William Fresch, 85, and his wife, Betty, 79, had not been seen or heard from since about 5:15 p.m. Friday, when they left Rinehart's home in Mechanicsburg, Pa., for what was usually a 40-minute drive back to their house in Shippensburg, Pa., 25 miles north of the Maryland border.
The grown children had brokered a deal that might sound all too familiar to adult children trying to protect - and yet, respect - aging parents. The Fresches could keep their car, but drive only to Rinehart's home or around Shippensburg, and only if they called to say they had made it back home safely.
After she didn't find her parents at their house, Rinehart, 54, and her husband called police, who put out a regional alert for the couple. Rinehart and her husband talked to reporters, posted her parents' pictures on Facebook and searched roadways themselves, even going up in a private helicopter Tuesday to scour the area.
By 11 a.m. Tuesday, their wait was over, Her parents' bodies had been found. Authorities think William and Betty froze to death in a steep farm field off rural Gene Hemp Road in Frederick County, Md.
Full Article
Showing posts with label adult children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label adult children. Show all posts
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Majority Who Care For A Relative Suffer From Anxiety And Stress, According To Study
from Medical News Today
Eight out of ten people in charge of caring for a relative suffer from anxiety and stress, regardless of their socio-demographic variables. Families, and particularly daughters, assume the "informal care" of dependent elderly people in most of the cases. This follows an investigation carried out by Ruth M ª Calero Pérez and directed by professor José Mª Roa Venegas at the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the University of Granada.
The work in the UGR shows that in some cases this care in the family creates inappropriate behaviour in the relationship, and that the negative effects on the physical, psychological and social caregiver are highly related to the previous life history between caregiver and care recipient, social isolation felt by the caregiver, and the feeling of loneliness in the relationship with the care recipient.
Continue Reading
The work in the UGR shows that in some cases this care in the family creates inappropriate behaviour in the relationship, and that the negative effects on the physical, psychological and social caregiver are highly related to the previous life history between caregiver and care recipient, social isolation felt by the caregiver, and the feeling of loneliness in the relationship with the care recipient.
Continue Reading
Monday, December 28, 2009
Kim Peek, Inspiration for ‘Rain Man,’ Dies at 58 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com
By BRUCE WEBER
Mr. Peek was not autistic — not all savants are autistic and not all autistics are savants — but he was born with severe brain abnormalities that impaired his physical coordination and made ordinary reasoning difficult. He could not dress himself or brush his teeth without help. He found metaphoric language incomprehensible and conceptualization baffling.
But with an astonishing skill that allowed him to read facing pages of a book at once — one with each eye — he read as many as 12,000 volumes. Even more remarkable, he could remember what he had read.
Indeed, Mr. Peek, who died Dec. 19 at home in Salt Lake City, had perhaps the world’s most capacious memory for facts. He was 58. The cause was a heart attack, said his father, Fran Peek.
Almost all documented savants — people with an extraordinary depth of knowledge and the ability to recall it — have been restricted in their expertise to specific fields like mathematics, chess, art or music. But Mr. Peek had a wide range of interests and could instantly answer the most arcane questions on subjects as diverse as history, sports, music, geography and movies.
Read More
Mr. Peek was not autistic — not all savants are autistic and not all autistics are savants — but he was born with severe brain abnormalities that impaired his physical coordination and made ordinary reasoning difficult. He could not dress himself or brush his teeth without help. He found metaphoric language incomprehensible and conceptualization baffling.
But with an astonishing skill that allowed him to read facing pages of a book at once — one with each eye — he read as many as 12,000 volumes. Even more remarkable, he could remember what he had read.
Indeed, Mr. Peek, who died Dec. 19 at home in Salt Lake City, had perhaps the world’s most capacious memory for facts. He was 58. The cause was a heart attack, said his father, Fran Peek.
Almost all documented savants — people with an extraordinary depth of knowledge and the ability to recall it — have been restricted in their expertise to specific fields like mathematics, chess, art or music. But Mr. Peek had a wide range of interests and could instantly answer the most arcane questions on subjects as diverse as history, sports, music, geography and movies.
Read More
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
‘Mom Always Liked You Best’ - The New Old Age Blog - NYTimes.com
By Paula Span
(excerpts)
The notion that parents cherish all their children equally — or at least say they do — is so entrenched in our culture that colleagues warned Karl Pillemer, a gerontologist at Cornell University embarking on the first of many studies of family favoritism, that his research would prove futile. No mother, they insisted, would admit to caring more for one son or daughter than another.
So much for that. His team’s interviewers, talking to mothers ages 65 to 75 in the Boston area about their adult offspring, found that most were perfectly willing to name favorites.
. . . . . .
One might file this under “Stuff I’d Just as Soon Not Know,” except that the care of the elderly falls mostly to their children and that one child usually shoulders the bulk of the responsibility. Mothers also express clear ideas about whom they want and expect to take on that role, it turns out, so their partiality has consequences.
Read More
(excerpts)
The notion that parents cherish all their children equally — or at least say they do — is so entrenched in our culture that colleagues warned Karl Pillemer, a gerontologist at Cornell University embarking on the first of many studies of family favoritism, that his research would prove futile. No mother, they insisted, would admit to caring more for one son or daughter than another.
So much for that. His team’s interviewers, talking to mothers ages 65 to 75 in the Boston area about their adult offspring, found that most were perfectly willing to name favorites.
. . . . . .
One might file this under “Stuff I’d Just as Soon Not Know,” except that the care of the elderly falls mostly to their children and that one child usually shoulders the bulk of the responsibility. Mothers also express clear ideas about whom they want and expect to take on that role, it turns out, so their partiality has consequences.
Read More
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Adult Child Reponsibility for Parents
By By Jane Gross Published: November 20, 2008 in the New York Times
In 30 states, adult children are legally responsible, on paper at least, to pay for food, clothing and medical care for indigent parents.
States With Filial Responsibility Laws
In 30 states, adult children are legally responsible, on paper at least, to pay for food, clothing and medical care for indigent parents.
States With Filial Responsibility Laws
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