Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I think it's really finding what's the common, you know, finding a common denominator, maybe reminiscing. Reminiscence is a great tool to use with seniors. They love to talk about, you know, stories of their youth, of their experiences. And how does it resonate with maybe your grandson or granddaughter today?
Reminiscence is a great way, whether that be art, so whether that be cooking or baking or doing something traditional, sometimes things are cultural, as we spoke about earlier, but doing something for the holiday and bridging the gap in a social way and having that tradition to have that activity with their grandfather or grandmother.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: As our parents grow older, it can be difficult to guide them through their golden years while still respecting their autonomy and fitting it into our already complex lives. Welcome to the Parent Projects podcast, where our guests share practical wisdom to tackle the issues that impact adult children of aging parents. I'm Tony Siebers. Thanks for joining us today.
[00:01:13] Speaker C: Okay, so a loss of autonomy and a loss or an understanding of what legacy might look like are two things that we hear a lot and we talk a lot about apparent projects, both online, inside the app, or really around the shows that we do. And today I want to break down and introduce with you Nora O'Brien and Grace Ferrari with United Hebrew who have a great take in an understanding from their work out at Willow Gardens in Westchester or really just in general as senior living communities where they've had dynamic opportunities to engage and see multiple generations of people to come in. They've also got some unique aspects and insights against this because they've had parent projects, they get it, they know it, they've seen some level of that, and they know if you've seen one parent project, you've seen one parent project. But we have an opportunity to learn here today. Nora and Grace, I'm so blessed to have you guys here. Thanks for joining us on the Parent Projects podcast.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:02:07] Speaker D: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:02:09] Speaker C: It's awesome having you guys in.
This is a month in which we've been talking a lot about how there's multiple generations play a role in some place of a parent project or have these little tweaks for stuff. But in particular, we're closing out off of this with how we build these better relationships. How can you make a dent in some of these changes against it? And I could think of nothing better than you guys that you get to see in senior living communities and home health and across the whole board of what you guys do at United Hebrew, of how you actually can. Put kids into play or just that difference of what can an eight year old do to really impact a parent project right when they get involved off of that? Or what can a Girl Scout do? What's the basis of an organization like that getting involved? What can it matter? And how does it make a dent? So thanks for coming on today and starting to share some of those ideas for us.
Thank you.
Nora, I guess I'll start with you off of that. Talk to us about where you're at, what you're a how is it that you came to committing your life into looking at this? How did this become what you chose to do?
[00:03:19] Speaker D: So, for me, I was raised by my grandparents. I think grandparents give me a different perspective. By trade, I'm a physical therapist, and Grayson, I see hundreds of families every year. We interact with them. We try to encourage them to have healthy relationships, and we also try to.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Live it in our families as well.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: Yeah. Now, Grace, you are one that has to you'll walk a lot of families through this. You'll get to see that you might be kind of that tip of the spear oftentimes, or one of those first phone calls when people are saying, well, we need to know what life's going to look like afterwards, is my understanding here. How did you come to putting your life to dedicating yourself into this segment?
[00:04:08] Speaker A: So interestingly.
I always worked in the non for profit world and always been an advocate for people who couldn't advocate for themselves, and senior services really was my world. And so coming on the United Hebrew Campus afforded me the opportunity to really be the ambassador for the campus and to really provide families the tools that they need to make the best decision for their loved ones, whether that mean do they need home care services, do they need to go into assisted living? What resources on our campus can we provide or just help them or be a resource to the community to help their parents live a better quality of life?
[00:04:54] Speaker C: As you're walking through that, something was kind of clicking on the backside of Nora. Do I remember Dominican? I'm trying to remember, you guys have a social background or faith based schools and some other things that kind of had at least some influence in your education. Is that right? For, you know, it started hitting, and I actually honestly didn't even click completely against the connection until just be as my audience knows, I'm a Benedictine, and my Abbey, that is, back in Chicago, when it kicked off, it had retirement communities and it had schools, and they were two things. I think the hearts of people that serve both, maybe they're similarly aligned against the brothers, and there were sisters that were in and around that area as well that would participate and work through all that together. But there just seems to be something special about putting just a young person inside the middle of a group of older people, of an older generation there.
What's the best of what you guys see with that?
[00:06:10] Speaker A: I think when we do intergenerational, when you see a younger person comes in, I think the seniors see life and effervescence and a new generation of what's to be. And when they have conversations that bridging of the generation gap. It could be as simple as we have students from Iona University come to our assisted living to teach our seniors how to better use their cell phone or to use an so they could FaceTime with their families. And the senior looks to them as a wealth of knowledge. But conversely, the younger person looks at the senior because they have a lifetime of wisdom and how do they connect and what occupation did this senior have that this younger college kid can really learn from? And I think sometimes we live in a world where seniors are kind of shunned and we're not revering them as they do, maybe in a far western country. But here at Willow Powers we could take a look at the student, goes to the senior and learns a little more about what value they had, whether it's in their career and they could learn from one another. So it's a great opportunity and they really forge a friendship and a bond. So you'd be surprised if they come here on their free. They don't have to come here and we're lucky.
[00:07:48] Speaker D: I'm sorry, Tony. I was saying we're lucky because we're of this awesome community. But if your parents aren't part of that type of community, there are still.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Places where you can find this experience.
[00:08:02] Speaker D: In our churches, in our temples, senior centers, there are places for all of these generations to come together because I think it's amazing how much both of.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Them get from this experience. It's certainly not one sided that's right.
[00:08:20] Speaker C: Well, you touched the importance of socialization, which probably is that for right. We are social creatures and so having that socialization is something really important. Oftentimes I think when our lives get busy, it seems like we tend to only connect ourselves to those people that are just like us. But maybe as that space gets out, you see well, maybe when you look generationally, maybe they have more in common than they think they do. As much as the world changes around there's, just like you're saying, you're pointing out there's a lot to be learned from one generation to the next of something, or at least just that experience. I think of also how many of us when is it 23 ANDME or whatever, that as genealogy starts to come, there's just something that long where you're just interested, right? Like where do I come from? How did that work? And there are a few times to make that conversation happen, but I can imagine that those conversations probably happen all the time in your communities.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Especially when we had veterans who live here and the students really want to learn about their experience.
If they were in the Korean War, we had some the greatest generation World War II veterans, they're very interested in learning about that something that they couldn't get from a textbook.
[00:09:44] Speaker C: Right?
Yeah, right. And those are hard things.
I guess over time those can become a lot easier for veterans to have. And to have it kind of in that type of a context towards end of life when you're trying to point out a learning lesson or somebody's really you feel like you're not belaboring somebody with what war was like, but instead they're really looking to hear a little more about that. I could definitely and appreciate that as a veteran myself of a war and just what that would look like. I could see as time will go where that could become a lot easier maybe for my grandkids than it is to have that conversation with my own children right now.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: I think it's not about warp but about the feeling of American pride and how proud they were to serve the country. And that's the conversation which I think is something unique and interesting, that they're not really concentrating on the negative, but bringing out the positive of this pride for their country and they were willing to do whatever they needed to and.
[00:10:45] Speaker D: The camaraderie they felt.
[00:10:51] Speaker C: Right.
I think time really helps you do that. It makes it a lot easier to do that. It takes the emotion from it and it lets you be able to look back at a lot of those things. So that makes a ton of sense. So when kids will go I'll bet the first time I ever had that type of an interaction, I was writing a paper for school and I think we visited. Our Boy Scout troop visited and I got to do my paper at the same time while we were doing this other service project. I think we were playing music. I played some piano or something and then I realized, oh wow, man, I bet I can learn these things that I need to have for this project at school that I can figure all that out.
Is it just families that do that or is there a place if your grandparents don't live near you but is there a safe way, is there a way that that can happen? And those introductions happen in communities today between just multiple people's, generations maybe, whose families aren't close by, but they can still get that multigenerational connection.
[00:11:55] Speaker D: Do you know what? In our post COVID world, the one good thing I will say that came out of COVID is our seniors ability to use technology.
All of a sudden seniors were going across state lines using their iPads to see their children and grandchildren. And I think one of the best things we can do is help give them those skills.
For our seniors, they're new skills, but if we can teach them how to be able to text their grandchild to say hello, their grandchild will be much more likely to text back than to pick up the phone and have a conversation.
I don't know about your children, Tony?
A lot of kids in this generation would prefer quick text.
[00:12:46] Speaker C: Yeah, well, and I think that becomes that's a light spot we see in technology. In fact, I'll be at the tomorrow night, I'll head out to San Francisco for TechCrunch and be down there for this year where we're looking at the use of technology to be able to bridge some of these gaps. And a lot of it's all about timing. So behind me, just back this way, I've got eliq, right. Ellaq is primarily set up for this is one for my mom where it can have a conversation for my mom when it's the right time for her to have that conversation. Like, hey, do you want to see something that your grandson posted online?
And she'll want to see that. She'll see it. It'll ask her how'd that make you feel, what'd you think about. And then maybe a couple of hours later, or maybe a day or two later when that timing is right and it needs to come in a text message form to the kiddo that grandkid can get a text message says, hey, by the way, your grandparents saw this photo and this is what she had to say about that. And all of a sudden that kid's like, I'll send another what do you I mean, next thing they do, right, I'm going to send another photograph and you start kind of those things. There's some amazing things that technology can do when you design it to work really well with that age group. Right. And I think it's one thing not to push one particular I'm not a paid spokesperson for LAQ or off of that side, but I look at the brilliance in technology. I love what they did with the creators of that started out to do was, well, let's build a technology platform that those folks want to do. And sometimes that communication, our timing doesn't always match up. And so we didn't expect to talk about this, but maybe it's about that technology can maybe help us when the essence of the moment works for one party, but it doesn't work for the other party.
I can put a text message or I can make a voice recording and I can send it to my grandmother and she's got that at the right time in which she needs it to hear it, even though I can't necessarily be there. And that's not something we could do 15 years ago, right. Isn't that crazy to think about?
You would have had to what, take a tape recorder, probably record yourself off of that. And maybe she had that tape recorder and it sat someplace, but here I remember watching my grandmother going back over and listening to a voice memo that my mom had left when she wanted to listen to know again and again. That's kind of cool. I think it's pretty our we're going to take a quick break here. Want to see a little bit about what you guys do? We're going to run that back when we come back from this. We're going to continue to dive in with Nora O'Brien and Grace Ferry and to we're going to start working through some practical tips of ways to introduce the multi generational thing, some ideas of what you can be doing between them and ways to continue working and building a better relationship between generations. Stay tuned right after this.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: At United Hebrew, we've got it all independent senior housing, memory care, assisted living, nursing care and rehab to get you on the road to recovery.
[00:15:52] Speaker C: My wife and I looked at over a dozen places. This is the best one. It's heads and shoulders above any other place we saw.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: I personally want to come to visit my mom. It was the best decision that I ever made.
Come see us here's to life.
[00:16:11] Speaker C: Welcome back. This week we are talking about building a better relationships between generations. We are sitting down with United Hebrews Nora O'Brien and Grace Ferry. And ladies, welcome again back into the show. So we talked a bit about different concepts of why this is going to be good, what they might be looking for, something like that. Let's dig into some meat and potatoes. What are some things that I can do to create some multigenerational moments between my parents and my kids?
[00:16:43] Speaker A: I think it's really finding a common denominator. Maybe reminiscing. Reminiscence is a great tool to use with seniors. They love to talk about stories of their youth, of their experiences. And how does it resonate with maybe your grandson or granddaughter today?
Reminiscence is a great way, whether that be art or whether that be cooking or baking or doing something traditional. Sometimes things are cultural, as we spoke about earlier, but doing something for the holiday and bridging the gap in a social way and having that tradition to have that activity with their grandfather or grandmother.
[00:17:31] Speaker C: That'S interesting because I wouldn't have naturally thought of reminiscing through cooking or from doing something act. I always just think about story or what they talk or discussion. But that's brilliant.
Sitting down and spending time going over a family recipe or doing something at that moment while physically doing it, that is one of my family's most treasured things, is my grandmother's cinnamon roll recipe, which sits on a wall so that we won't forget that. Right.
That is really pretty, darn. Yeah, that's really neat.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Okay.
I'm sorry. For the younger person, it's something that they will hold on to and that would be a cherished memory for them that I baked my grandmother's cake that she's been making for Christmas for the last 40 years and I had the opportunity to sit with her and for her to show me how she did it.
[00:18:25] Speaker D: And for that adult child, the person that's bridging that gap, so that person holds a lot of responsibility it's very challenging to be the person that's bringing those two generations together.
And I think for the adult child, it's that person we need to reach out to and say, what do you want to do? What do you enjoy that you can now bring your parent and child together to do well?
[00:18:54] Speaker C: And it definitely takes the weight off of an obligation into that moment and more of just setting up something that both those or all of those different forms you guys just talked about sharing, these are all they address autonomy.
The seniors doing something like they're useful, they're doing something great. Right? And working off of that and legacy, they're leaving some behind. I mean, it literally taps, like, the top two things right off the top of that. I love that.
I know one a friend of the company and one of our advisors, Matt Paxton. Fantastic.
His concepts of utilizing legacy lists, he's talked with us about on the show. That would be to give if something I'm trying to think of something I could grab that was really important to a water bottle. Okay. But when a parent is having a difficult time moving in a direction that they needed to go into, like transitioning or seeing themselves in some other place because they're surrounded by things and they're not sure where it goes, he introduces these concepts of kind of what you're talking about in action. They walk through, they pick about five different items of significance, and they provide an opportunity for their parents to sit down and talk about that thing. This is where it came from. This is the history of this thing and where it happened from, all of that. And they found that with about five or so items, once they completed that, it lets go of, like, they might as well have done that with everything in the house to give that moment, either at a community down there or at a veteran's home or even at a family. We're coming up on the holidays. We'll be coming up here unbelievably in a couple of months. That opportunity of carving that off, where they have that time to prepare, they could think through that. And then there's like, this presentation of, hey, talk to us about these items today.
And they get that ability to turn that over to the family.
I hear that resonate completely with what you were talking about there, with the cooking as well.
What are some other activities that we see for multigenerational that we could use to set up our kiddos or other generations?
[00:21:13] Speaker D: So for us, one of the things we find resonates so much are looking at pictures. Looking at pictures of our senior generation, looking at what they did, what were they wearing, try to take something for the youngest generation that they're interested in. If the grandson is interested in cars, maybe we can find pictures of the grandfather's cars and look at what these cars look like, and let's talk about what cars were like when I was younger.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: We talk about sports a lot. And so we're in New York, and so we had pictures of the old Yankee Stadium, and we had pictures of how they dressed. Men had Fedors and they would dress. Women had dresses on to go to the and, um, today, you know, the ball game is quite different. And so, again, this reminiscence is something that really seniors dive into and love to talk about. And I think intrinsically, a younger generation is fascinated how things were so different back then and what they are today and evolution.
[00:22:26] Speaker C: Yeah. And of course, we'll hope that some of those moments for our generation, like the rat tails and parachute pants, hopefully get to stay buried, and we don't have to actually have those conversations all the time. But I know the kids will take my grandkids will take great notice with our hairstyles and how big you could get it and what it was going to be back in our day. So that should be pretty fun as we get older. How about organizations?
I'd seen some of our earlier conversations here. Scouting, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, or other organizations that kind of come in. What are the things that organizations tend to do? Non family related groups that could come and go.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: So a lot of dance troops would come through. So we have, like, the Nutcracker that would come through. In our assisted living for St. Patrick's Day, we have Irish step dancers come in, which is fabulous because it's sensory. The music is loud. They love to see costume. So I think that's a great bridging of the generation where you have some seniors here who did some dance when they were younger, but a different type of dance. So it's not only formalized Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, or it's a confirmation or a Mitzvah project, but you have these extracurricular groups that come in that really want to be around seniors, and they are able to show off their talent, and the seniors are really able to embrace it.
[00:23:56] Speaker C: Love that great opportunity to always also to encourage those kiddos and to let them get out there and see let others see them. That opportunity to be out front and to do something very cool. Tell us, above all, when people are starting to look at, are there safety considerations or things that we need to think about as all that's coming in? Are there difficult things that conversations to avoid or anything like that that we see out there? Is everything pretty usually you can just trust it's going to go pretty well.
[00:24:31] Speaker D: We want to bring people in. There's always some safety issues. But for us, the most important thing is to give life to the residents entrusted to us. So the more life we can bring in, the more it impacts them. When you're on vacation, Tony, it's the middle of the week. Do you know what day it is? You don't because you've lost your routine. Our goal is to make every day.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: Have something that's interesting for our residents.
[00:25:02] Speaker D: And it doesn't matter what it is, if there's a popular book that's out. We love having intergenerational book clubs. Our residents can read a book. And if they've lost the ability to read books, we're so lucky that we have Audible books now so they can listen to a book on tape and still be able to join that conversation.
[00:25:26] Speaker C: That's fantastic.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:29] Speaker D: The more different things we expose people to, the same way you look at it for your children, you don't want to pigeonhole your children into only one aspect of a hobby. Same thing for our seniors. We want them to experience music and dance and sports, art. We bring in college professors to speak to them.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: We do Ted Talks here, which is something that's really great. And I think sometimes seniors, they are not exposed to a lot, but when they come to live in a community, they're dealing with people who from all walks of life. So they're learning not only different things like art and culture, but they're learning someone of a different religion or of a different nationality, and how others celebrate, whether it's different holidays and cultures and how they're constantly learning from their peers.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
Between that work that can be done, neighborhoods, special interest groups, those other things.
I might state this, and I know you guys look a lot of in the context of when people might be there in a senior living community, but I noticed you guys also work with folks that are coming through, maybe in a rehab community or this is like a short stop. Their focus is not to be there. Right. Their focus is they want to get back into their home or they want to go off of that.
Are there any tricks for the trade or things that could be done?
That's a very stressful, and it can be a very scary time. I think we see a lot for seniors because that uncertainty is high. They're still hoping to get back to what's familiar and back into that familiar at that time. Anything that's worked really well at that particular time, just keep lifting the spear.
[00:27:21] Speaker D: Hopefully they will get back. That's exactly what we want by trade. I'm a physical therapist. My goal is always to rehabilitate people to get back. But what can we do while they're in the middle of their rehabilitation that can take their mind off of it? So maybe part of it is just to have a leisure event where they're doing something that takes their mind off of their illness or injury.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: But we also always want to bring.
[00:27:50] Speaker D: Their family into it as well.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Sure. And just the power of positive conversation, of always having a positive outlook and perspective on what's going to be better. So they can either go back home, even if they go home with a device, whether it's a cane that they never used before or a walker, but to spin it in a positive way and to have the backing of the family to kind of fortify what the team, the rehabilitation team is providing them.
[00:28:22] Speaker C: Yeah, a few years ago, maybe 2019 or so, I'd had to have a back surgery. And while going through the rehab process, I had several other people that had had back surgeries that were older than I was. And at one point in time, I was having a conversation with a neighbor who had gone through this as well. And we realized, man, see, it's not a getting older kind of problem. And we found this common ground by both of us having to go through a rehab, and it opened up that conversation of, well, this isn't just an older thing. This is just like something happens in your body and you end up having to work off of that, and we have this great opportunity to get through something. And I would have never thought we both complained about our physical therapists together and how hard they were, and there is some neat camaraderie off of there. I was like, she's letting you off easy. Right? But that's what it always looked like he thought. And I thought it so clearly they were equal opportunity to both of us. It just was hard to go through.
Those are interesting things. And so maybe not even with grandkids, but I can see even multigenerational just between us and our parents generation, being able to share just the struggles of staying on the horse. That doesn't go away when you get older. Life is still life, and you don't have to be 75 years old to lose your keys or to go through to have these kinds of we all have these challenges. And being able to go through them together and have a conversation about that, I can just think that's got to settle the soul a little bit of people who are really trying to live well at the end of life and not just waiting to die right. Or just to sit out, but we instead want to engage them. And I love what you said and just making something each day be that thing that they can help grasp on and understand where they're at in the day. And those things we want our seniors.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: To live not exist. And that's really our goal, is to live life the best quality of life that that person can.
And how do we, as an organization, provide them the tools to lead the most robust life? Whether they're walking around, whether they're in a wheelchair, whether they're using a walker, what can we do as an organization? Or whether they have family who lives far away? It's our responsibility to become their first family. So sometimes we forge the closest and best relationships with the. Seniors who live here because we live with them every day.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: Right. Well, and it comes back to it's that community that's the community, then you guys very clearly doing very well at that. I'm going to quickly try to succinct this one and then make sure that our audience knows where to find you guys and how to get more information. But as we walk through some of these tips and these trips off of this, we talked about reminiscing. We talked about doing it in stories, doing it in cooking, doing it in holding things and storytelling about an item or working through something in that translation of history, or where things are looking at not just in spoken word. Talked about looking at pictures and giving that opportunity of being able to look at what events looked like at that time, or to recall different things that happened or the different styles that we went into in that time of life. Great introduction of the use of things like folk dancing or other things that take costumes or performing arts, and that and the positive impact that can have. And not just in entertainment value, but maybe in even reinforcing a cultural event that somebody may have. The use of book clubs, multi generational book clubs for those things. Our brain keeps working, and the more we engage that, if we just stay on top of that, I just think of the value of reading anything from Tolkien to JK. Rollins or whatever it might be and just breaking it down for what that meant from their life experiences to other generations. Those are neat things. And overall, I really loved it. You're looking for people that are living, not existing, and your mouth to God's ears.
I think it's a real awesome thing and the way that you guys approach it. Anything in there that we could throw on top, or did I catch everything you were throwing down at us?
[00:32:40] Speaker D: I think you did a great job. That definitely is what we're looking to help our seniors gather in this life. We're all here together.
[00:32:50] Speaker C: Yeah. Amen.
[00:32:51] Speaker D: So we get as much from them as hopefully we give to them.
[00:32:56] Speaker C: Ladies, where can we find more information on you guys and what you guys are doing at United Hebrew?
[00:33:01] Speaker A: Well, you certainly can go onto our website and take a look at there's the website on the screen, and there are links to Nora's email address as well as mine if anybody has a question or has a problem. And we are certainly not only a resource to the people who live on our community, but we're a resource to everyone. And we certainly always go out into the field and try to answer questions and be a fountain of knowledge to people who really we live in a world in a broken health care system. And how do you know what's available and what resources are available to you until you're in crisis mode? And who can make a great decision in cris mode? No one. So there needs to be people who can advocate for those and give them the information and tools they need to make the best decision for their loved ones.
[00:33:50] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Nora O'Brien, Grace Ferry. It just really was a pleasure to be with you guys today. The whole discussion and building these better relationships between generations was advanced because of you. I loved what you threw down. Thank you for spending that time with us and sharing your time, talents and treasures with the Parent Project podcast.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you very much.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: Well, that's it for the team this week, and thanks for joining us. If you've enjoyed the content, remember to subscribe and to share this episode on the app that you're using right now. Your reviews and your comments, they really help us expand our reach as well as our perspective. So if you have time, also drop us a note, let us know how we're doing for tips and tools to clarify your Parent Project, simplify communication with your stakeholders, and verify the professionals that you choose. You can find us on YouTube, follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Thanks again for trusting us. Until our next episode. Behold and Be Held.
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