Like you, I’ve been staying home and my time has been spent “seeing” clients on the phone and via Zoom, FaceTime and Skype. As I listen to them and to my friends, I hear a consistent theme: that living with this pandemic and its impact, many of us are finding ourselves re-evaluating important aspects of how we want to live our lives.

As we’ve been forced to alter our rhythms, schedules and locations of work and even to face unemployment, much of “the old normal” seems to be up for review and re-consideration. People are noticing some of the “good things” about what’s likely to be ahead – living on a cleaner earth, innovatively attending meetings and doing our work, but differently. And many of us are actually “taking the reins” over things we’ve taken for granted up until now. We’re seeing more clearly what’s always been there: we can make different choices today about our expenditures of money and time, about our careers and how we want to live our lives.

I am a Master Certified Parenting Our Parents (POP) Family Coach for which I feel truly fortunate. I get to Coach all kinds of terrific inter-generational families who’ve chosen to do what I call POP (Parenting Our Parents) Coaching, which is done via Skype and other communications platforms. And during these days of anxiety and overwhelming uncertainty, these services that are focused on supporting families to take good care of our beloved elderly are in more demand than ever.

The Certified POP Family Coach program has allowed me the immense pleasure of helping transform troubled family relationships into very supportive ones, and strengthened existing relationships so that the challenges of aging families are resolved effectively and harmoniously. In all my years of doing this work, I’ve never heard a family member say they wished they’d not done POParenting. And in addition, I’ve personally had the satisfaction of helping career-changing professionals learn to develop additional skills so they too can help families turn what could be have been disastrous situations into some extraordinary journeys of healing and love.

POP Family Coaching clients have had the forethought to acknowledge that there will come a time, or it has now come, when their aging loved ones need help. They have questions and concerns and recognize the value of bringing to their situation a professional who’s experienced in guiding families through completing the tasks that are necessary. From their Certified Coach, they get specific help:

• planning for “The Conversation” regarding POParenting, so that all feel assured that the purpose is to collaboratively develop a team approach with loving family members to plan for what’s likely to be ahead;
• creating a POPteam to formulates a specific and workable POPlan with senior parents, whenever possible, That will include help to obtain needed legal documents, make health care decisions, review the advantages and risks of moving parents out of their home, bringing in the help that’s appropriate, arranging for all the “stuff” gathered over the decades. Unfortunately these days, too many families are limited to doing “crisis Planning,” but, with guidance, that can be reversed;
• monitoring the POPlan to see that its solutions are useful and being followed;
• tweaking the POPlan when things change; and then… going out to have family fun together again!

As we’ve all seen, this virus so gravely impacts our elderly, not only in their physical health but also clearly in their mental health. The problems are intense: isolation; extraordinary loneliness; losses to family savings; the complicated nature of everyone trying to live together in some homes and the endless anxiety. These challenges may continue indefinitely without getting better.

Therefore there is an extraordinary need now for more Certified POP Family Coaches to join our existing cadre across the country. Even before this outbreak of coronavirus, 1-in-4 American families was struggling, most without a clue, figuring out how to execute the steps I described above. Today that number is growing, even more frighteningly. To hopefully provide the most impact I am temporarily discounting our Becoming a Certified POP Family Coach Training Program from $1500 to $1099 if you register by September 16th!

If this time of staying at home has resulted in your re-examining your life, reflecting on what’s most important to you and you’re considering what you might do differently, this might be the right time for you to become a Certified POP Family Coach. I’ve been afforded such joy from seeing the healing in families I’ve coached. You can be part of making the world a better place one POP Family at a time – find out more here and join us!

Parenting Our Parents: Transforming the Challenge into a Journey of Love is the basis for the Certified POP Family Coach Training Program. If you are one or work with seniors or people who have aging loved ones in their lives, this memoir/self-help story of my life with my parents has developed a reputation as a great referral for family members of all ages. Please take a look: I so hope it will encourage you to join us in this meaningful work!