|
Adjusting to a New Living Situation
Most "experts" will advise allowing as long as six months for a senior to adjust to a new living situation. Both moving in with family and moving to assisted living require a process of adjustment by everyone. Knowing how most people typically work through this kind of adjustment will help you weather the storm. Way back in 1965 a social scientist by the name of Bruce Tuckman published a theory of group dynamics called "Tuckman's Stages."* While he had the dynamics of workplace groups in mind, his observations transfer to most groups. Groups are nothing but a collection of individuals who have come together for a specific purpose. Senior living is no different in many ways. Understanding the four stages that individuals in groups usually must work through can help us comprehend the process of adjusting to senior living changes, too. How Tuckman Described the Four Stages that Groups Go Through: Forming: Team members are on their best behavior and very self conscious. In this stage the members of the team get to know one another, exchange some personal information, and make new friends. this is the "Honeymoon" phase. Don't we see this when someone moves into a new assisted living residence? The new resident wants to make a good impression. Especially in the dining room we can watch the new resident work hard to ingratiate herself with her table mates. Everyone is sizing up everyone else, and everyone wants to look good. The same thing happens at home. When Grandmother Alice moves in with her daughter's family, everyone is unusually polite and solicitous. Gram Alice "loves" everything and everybody. She has no opinions and no complaints. Then comes the "Storming" Phase: In the Storming phase, keeping that best foot forward is getting tiresome. Everyone is getting irritable, is starting to find things to dislike about everyone else and wants to back out of the whole deal. In assisted living, there is something to dislike about everyone at the table. The activities director never offers anything interesting to do, and all the other residents are "old, feeble and crazy." If it's at home, Gram Alice is driving everyone nuts with her kleenex obsession and the fact that she's "always" there. She, on the other hand, is overwhelmed by the activity level in the house and the irregular meals and she always has a headache. The teenagers are feeling unfairly put upon, and the husband/wife team are feeling opressed by the loss of space and lack of privacy. Everyone is becoming hypersensitive to the "bad" qualities of everyone else. Some seniors in residential care, and some families, never get past this stage. The Norming Phase: Everyone is getting used to the new way of doing things. The new assisted living resident may have found a small group of compatible people to hang around with, at least at meals. Or she has slid back into her old habits of spending most of her day piddling around alone in her apartment. She is developing a new routine and way of doing things that gives her a degree of contentment. At home, the family has begun to feel more "normal" with the new status quo. Sometimes with much discussion and trial and error, and sometimes without much thought, they have established some new schedules, rules and boundaries. All is not sweetness and light, however, as some members of the family "team" may begin to feel the effects of too much responsibility and not enough freedom. This can easily set things back into the "storming" phase again. The "Performing" Phase In workplace group dynamics, this is the phase when the work group is actually functioning as a unit and getting something accomplished with a minimum of fuss. In the eldercare world, we call this the "waiting for the other shoe to drop" phase, because life is much more unpredictable in our world. If you find your elder and yourself in the smooth "Performing" stage, relax and enjoy it as long as you can. There is nothing earth-shattering about this simplification of how most groups work, but it can be illuminating to see it spelled out. We've watched our little ones work through these phases in kindergarten and at the beginning of every school year. We went through it ourselves with the addition of every new child to the family and with every new job. Knowing how we humans tend to work through these things will help you sidestep feelings of guilt when you see it happening as your elder, and maybe you, adjust to a new living situation. It's especially helpful to know what's going on when you hit the "Storming" phase, which has brought many a caregiver to their knees in despair.
|