Sibling and Divorce Rivalry

A few days ago while visiting family, our 8- and 11-year old great nieces were doing homework and soon began fighting over a sparkly pencil. The older niece declared that her plain pencil was boring and demanded that her sister give her the pretty one. A heated debate, punch in the back and dramatic tears later, the problem was solved when I found a second sparkly pencil. Now they each had their own. I felt pretty good about salvaging the crisis only to hear the girls gearing up for the next round over who wants the pink sparkly pencil vs. the red one.

About a half hour later, our 2- and 4-year old great nephews arrived home from day care. Their tantrums began over who got the McQueen vs. the Thomas the Train sippy cups for their snack time.

And so it continues. These frequent childhood dilemmas become teaching moments about sharing, respect for others during conflict and problem-solving.

You'd think by adulthood, people would have learned these life lessons. Sadly, we often see this type of sibling rivalry morph into divorce rivalry during mediations. Now emotional arguments center on decisions like who gets the dog, the hutch, the vacation home and more.

The conflict isn't about "the stuff." More often it's about getting one's way, hurting the other spouse, a memory connected to the item. It takes a skillful, insightful divorce mediator to peel back the emotional onion and get to the core of the problem so that the childhood concepts of sharing, respect and problem solving can be addressed.

Elder Attorneys and Mediators: A Good Alliance

LinkedIn has a group called Friends of Elder Law Attorneys, and there's an interesting thread discussing if/whether attorneys and mediators can work together.

Brent Rosenbaum of Ventura County, California writes, "As an Elder Mediator, I feel that working with Elder Law, Estate Planning & Probate attorneys would make for a great alliance. Breaking through the impasse and not draining the entire estate would reflect their effectiveness in the eyes of their clients by their strategic utilization of mediators."

I like how Brent thinks, but of course he's an Elder Mediator (as are we). Anything we can do to work mutually with elder law attorneys would be a plus for our clients who are too often caught up in tension and conflict of family disagreements.

Elder Mediation: What's in a Name?

I just came across a 2009 blog by Stephanie West Allen re: our book, Elder Mediation: A New Solution to Age-Old Problems. Believe it or not, I agree with her re: not liking the Elder Mediation (EM) term because 1) it seems lopsided in focus, excluding everyone else involved in the conflict and 2) older adults do not like the term “elder,” especially in America.

However, in researching for our book, we found that the term is fairly well established among mediators. From inside the profession, we all know what it means; for consumers, it’s not commonly known. I think ACR has a new division for EM, but it is called something else that is more inclusive. Since our target market is largely the mediation community, we went with the more familiar term EM.

Who knows what in 50 years it will be called. I like Stephanie West's term intergenerational mediation; have also seen it under family mediation. However, these seem to exclude the organizational issues from nursing home/AL, physician/older adult disputes, funeral home/family disputes, etc. Am looking forward to seeing how the field unfolds and what term “wins out” in the end.

Interestingly, during the last 10 years or so, the topic of what to call people over 60 has come up a lot at professional planning meetings I’ve attended. We’ve asked these folks what they prefer to be called, and many of them can’t agree. Here in Ohio, they don’t like the terms senior, older, golden-ager, elder, late life adult…They’re not sure what to call themselves either!

The dialogue continues...