Request for Sub-Forum

[LVKris]

I agree that this would be helpful. So many of us are dealing with elderly parents and college age children at the same time.

[ellemenope]

A great idea...I'm all for it!

[TrixieAnn]

Most parents of college age children are going to be impacted by this topic. I would love to be able to get the support from the same people who were so helpful on college related issues.

[Chedva]

The moderating team has discussed the request, and the consensus is not to add a subforum. These topics are appropriately discussed in the Parent Cafe.

However, there is no reason that all discussions must be maintained in a single thread in the Cafe. Please feel free to begin any threads you wish on any individual topics.

Thank you.

[LasMa]

Chedva,

We have done individual threads on separate topics in the past, many times. As I said above, they drop off the front page of the forum within a day and are thus not visible unless one knows to search for them.

However, we appreciate your consideration.

[somemom]

I appreciate your consideration, but must be frank in my response to your answer :


I don't think the point was that one thread got too long, I think the point was that the info is valuable long into the future and it would be great to have a place to easily find it.

But thanks for thinking it over

[mnmomof2]

I'd love a sub-forum on this topic if it's not too late to reconsider....

[3togo]

Sorry mods .. I think you missed with this decision. The parents forum listing is 44 pages long ... and the Parent Cafe listing is 17 pages long. Your decision guarantees related topics are widely dispersed around CC when they could easily be co-located.

[Lenitus]

Perhaps stickying this thread to ensure it stays on the front page is a good compromise for now, as it seems there is much support around this topic. Based on your responses, though, it doesn't seem this topic would ever escape the front page. There are examples of threads with longevity on the Parent Cafe: the Health and Wellness thread, which now has over 20,000 responses, has been going strong since December 2009. There is also a real estate thread from May 2011 with nearly 3,000 replies.

Our fear, too, is that creating a sub-forum for this topic would cause an avalanche of requests for other topics as well...such as the two mentioned above (and they honestly deserve it based on pure activity).

[3togo]

^ I get that logic but I think it is lacking a level of detail.

Right now if there was a Health and Wellness subforum I may go to see if there is a thread on arthritis in the knee ... if I did the odds any of the threads neighboring the arthritis thread are of great interest to me at this time are pretty minimal.

That said if someone when to look at the thread on dealing with dementia I bet the odds are way higher the neighboring threads are relevant to their current situation. Parents legal documents, when to consider assisted living/nursing, anyone exhausted from caring for their parent?, etc.

If this sub-forum existed it would be unique in the interest in multiple threads at the same time and having them live near each other would help the community IMO. And of course YMMV.

[LasMa]

Thanks for your reply, Lenitus. Please forgive the length, but I wanted to speak to your specific comments.

It seems to me that stickying the currently active thread isn't a good solution. I'm grateful to 3togo for starting it, but already there have been so many topics introduced that it's getting hard to follow any particular conversation. And problems don't get discussed at the depth they typically do on separate threads; these situations can be complex, and clarity often emerges from the back-and-forth of multiple people focusing on a specific question. At the same time, the popularity of the thread is, in my opinion, evidence that there's a real hunger for a place where we can talk with others who are going through this long and difficult passage with our parents.

I'd argue that this topic is different from the other two you mention. Real estate transactions can be difficult and aggravating, but they're time-limited. Eventually the house gets sold and life returns to normal. In contrast, caring for elderly parents will only get more and more demanding as long as they live. The other topic, health and wellness, is an ongoing concern for most of us, but it isn't overwhelming, all-consuming, and physically/emotionally draining, in the way that caring for our seniors often is.

There's another difference. For health/wellness, there are a multitude of organizations, groups, clubs, websites, plans, and other resources for assistance and support. For real estate, one can always turn to a professional for personalized guidance every step of the way. But I haven't found anything comparable to help me with my parents.

This is a community of intelligent, thoughtful adults whom I already know and like, with whom I already have something in common (those darn college kids!). They're a group who are where I am with the aging-parent issues, who can offer ideas and advice, share their expertise, tell their own stories, and occasionally supply some really great shoulders to cry on. Outside of this parent group, I haven't found anything like that, not in real life, not on the web. CC is my Parenting Your Parents Support Group.

Of course, there's nothing to prevent us from starting separate threads in the Parent Cafe, as we always have. But those threads do tend to drop off the front page of the forum very quickly once they've been discussed for a few days, and disappear altogether within a few weeks. The last parent-care thread that I started was back in March. The CCers, with their varied experiences and expertise, helped me to find appropriate post-hospitalization care for my father -- information that no one on his medical team bothered to give me. That thread is now long gone from the Cafe listing, which is a shame because no one else will ever benefit from the help I got, unless they are pretty expert in using the search function and know exactly what to look for.

Thanks again to you and all the mods for considering this.

[ChuckleDoodle]

Moderators, I wish you would reconsider this topic. LasMa is correct in that this thread could offer so much more as a sub-forum than a long continuous thread.

I reviewed each page and categorized the items that have been discussed in just the short two weeks that this thread has been open. The 147 total replies can be deceiving as some people would make multiple responses to different categories in a single response.

Here are the results of 184 replies during 14 days:

General Support, Caretaker, Out of State Support- 61 replies (33.2%)
Legal Items, Driving Issues- 49 replies (26.6%)
Assisted Living, Retirement, Rehab, Nursing Home- 36 replies (19.6%)
Physical or medical issues, supplies- 25 replies (13.6%)
Alzheimer’s, Dementia, Parkinson’s- 13 replies (7.1%)

As LasMa stated, we can create individual threads for these items. But what happens when they drop off and can no longer be found? I am a long time lurker on this forum and CC junkie- I have posted several times, but not nearly as much as the rest of the group here. But I always know that if I have questions about ANYTHING- from colleges, to specific programs, to the inane; I can come to College Confidential and find an answer from someone who has “been there, done that, and got the t-shirt.”

If we can have an election and politics sub forum for 2 years why can’t we have something that adds value to our lives- a “Parenting Your Parent” sub forum? A place where we can get answers to specific problems that each of us may experience at different times in our lives? A one-stop shop that acts as a collective memory for us that needs that extra support since we are being squeezed in so many different directions and under stress every day- a place to make our lives so much easier?

Please reconsider, you would have the gratitude of all of us who are dealing with this sometimes painful experience.

Thank you
ChuckleDoodle

[Lenitus]

Thank you for the added input on this topic. There was mention earlier in this thread that there have been multiple threads in the past on this subject. Can one of you do a bit of detective work and share several of them here? The reason I ask is that we would want to ensure that if we were to create this sub-forum it would indeed be active.

[LasMa]

Good morning, Lenitus.

Most of these, maybe all, are no longer visible unless one knows to search for them. But there is a great deal of collective wisdom here which is just as relevant today as the day it was posted. I believe that if these were more visible, many of them would spring back to life, and that they would inspire new discussions in new threads.

Thank you.

Senior Citizens- the downward spiral and when to step in
[This is one of the more epic threads, focused on the specific problems associated with the beginning stages of parent dysfunction. It started with the question of how to safeguard the elder's money, and morphed into a discussion about one of the hardest issues we face: how and when to take away the car keys. This is a good example of the in-depth discussion that happens when we're focusing on a single or question or two, as opposed to multiple topics in a single thread.]

Dementia in Elderly Mother?
[And this is an example of a different type of thread -- one with a quite specific question and relatively more specific answers, although there's also a great deal of information about dementia and Alzheimer's. This thread was so helpful to me, and would no doubt be helpful to others in the future.]

Some others to give you a flavor:

Anyone dealing with an aging parent?

Really angry with FIL, what would you do?

Parenting your parents

Another Aging-Parent Problem

Bittersweet Death

Aging Parents living with children

Aging--need for help & DENIAL

Don't be too quick to take money from Grandma

When your parent breaks your heart

Read your/your parents Medicare supplement health insurance coverage NOW!

Dad's Life Insurance

Insurance Company Home Visit?

[somemom]

Lenitus:

Thanks for being willing to continue the discussion. We did not post this on the current aging parent's thread, but could do so if you want more input? I can understand the Mods wanting to ensure a new sub-forum would get sufficient traffic to justify it's existence.

I think the parenting parents forum would get use comparable to the pre-med forum, not as busy as some others, but busy enough and making a significant difference in people's lives. Just like the pre-med forum, excellent stickies could be developed as a starting point and then threads can be started as follow up, for more complex issues, and just to discuss things.

When people use the health and wellness threads they are generally making decisions regarding their own health, when you are working on decisions for your parents, it involves you, them, caregivers, siblings, other family, social workers, etc. It can be very difficult to make changes and get buy-in from all involved.

A parents senior parents sub-forum could actually help people make changes in their real life far beyond the things we learn on kitchen remodel or how to dress threads (not that those are not great, too!) I think you could give it a try and evaluate after six months to see if it is a viable sub-forum.