aging parents

Explores the challenges children face when they must care for their aging parents and offers practical advice on how to best cope with the changing dynamic of the parent-child relationship.

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through a mixture of cartoons, family photos, documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the "crazy closet"--with predictable results--the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies--an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades--the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.

An abridgement of Shakespeare's "King Lear" that tells the story in thirty minutes while keeping the language intact. Includes stage directions and character suggestions.

Millions of American parents sit down to dinner every night, wondering why fully grown children are joining them-or, more likely, grunting good-bye as they head out for another night of who knows what. Sally Koslow, a journalist, novelist, and mother of two "adultescents" digs deep to reveal what lies behind the current generation's unwillingness-or inability-to take flight.By delving into the latest research and conducting probing interviews with both frustrated parents and their frustrated offspring, Koslow uses humor, insight, and honest self-reflection to give voice to the issues of prolonged dependency. From the adultescent's relationship to work (or no work), money (that convenient parental ATM), or social life, Slouching Toward Adulthood is a provocative, razor-sharp, but heartfelt cri de coeur for all the parents who sent their kids to college only to have them ricochet home with a diploma in one hand and the DVR remote in the other.

A memoir in which the author describes her experiences caring for her father in the final months of his battle with Alzheimer's disease, and shares the insights she gained into his, and her own, life.

Demonstrates simple strategies and techniques designed to help mothers and daughters communicate better about sensitive topics.

Presents William Shakespeare's tragedy in which a king foolishly disinherits his favorite child when she speaks out against him and splits his kingdom between the daughters who are plotting against him; and includes explanatory notes and an introduction on the play's sources, language, composition, and performance.

Two sisters, Cat and Joely Doyle face an emotional journey of healing when their mother has a stroke and their father finally returns after three decades.