“Why is Grandma Naked” has been chosen to be featured & is recommended by AlzAuthors!
In this humorous self-help book, award-winning journalist and attorney Ellen Pober Rittberg serves as a guide and cheerleader to family members who undertake to care for their elderly parents.
Sharing the stresses and satisfactions when caring for her aging mother, Rittberg uses comical chapter headings such as:
Be The Alpha Dog
Boundaries? Huh? Your Aging Parent Has None
Your Parent May Develop Sticky Fingers
JEOPARDY! (why elderly parents need their favorite show even when they can't answer any of the questions)
Rittberg employs an upbeat breezy, can-do tone. She details common scenarios and techniques she used when caring for her aging parent at home, such as:
Toilet training your senior parents using the "rump on the hump" technique when incontinence is an issue
Taking away car keys before reading about a parent in a newspaper crime blotter
Their hobby of digging deep into their nostrils and other recesses
Staying awake while hearing the nineteenth retelling of childhood stories from your parent with dementia
Playing matchmaker to hired caregivers
Avoiding shopping trips turning into shoplifting trips
Understanding declining parents' sometimes hilarious fantasies and delusions.
Rittberg shares with readers the life-changing, humbling and deeply rewarding benefits of caring for elderly parents and knows a good belly laugh is the best stress reliever. Read an excerpt below!
THE NAKED TRUTH: YOUR PARENTS
It doesn't matter that your parent previously had been one of the most modest people on the planet and that growing up, you never so much as saw a sliver of undergarment or flash of a normally-covered up skin part. But you are all grown up now, You are too old to be shocked the first time you encounter your parent au naturel. So how should you react?
Don’t.
Regard Dad’s new clothing-optional preference as a No Biggie—no pun intended. And resist the urge to buy him a getaway vacation at a senior citizen nudist colony. It’s not like Mom or Dad are contemplating a new career as a burlesque queen or bachelorette party hottie. And I don’t recommend asking them (as I stupidly did) why they are disrobing in front of the big den picture window overlooking a busy residential street. If you do, you won’t receive an answer. They do it just because or because it feels good to return to the native baby state. It is why toddlers whip off their diapers. It is why the first time your aging parent does it, you are now prepared for it and you will respond with nary so much as a John Belushi raised eyebrow.