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You’ve reached a standstill with your mother and father, who are in their late 80s. You think they need some help in the home, but they vigorously refuse. You’re frustrated because you want to make their lives easier. They’re angry because they think you’re interfering in their affairs.
Can negotiation and dispute resolution techniques used in the business world help defuse these kinds of conflicts?
Yes, say a group of researchers at Northwestern University. And they’re on to something.
These experts have developed a training curriculum on negotiation and dispute resolution for social workers, care managers, and health care professionals who regularly work with resistant older adults. Materials for family caregivers are being developed, too.
Instead of avoiding difficult issues or simply telling people what to do (“You’ll need home health aides several times a week for the foreseeable future”), professionals learn to elicit what’s most important to older adults and approach arranging care as a collaboration, not an edict from on high.
“People get into so many arguments when they get older. It’s something I see every day in my work,” said Lee Lindquist, chief of geriatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who’s leading the project. Its goal is to de-escalate conflicts and make it easier for older people to receive needed support, she said.
In May, Lindquist and her team planned to launch another part of the project: a trial of a computer-based training program for family caregivers of people with mild cognitive impairment or early-stage dementia. The program, called NegotiAge, features avatars of older adults and allows caregivers to practice negotiation techniques under different scenarios.
“You get thrown different situations, different emotions, and you get to play the game of negotiation as often as you want,” Lindquist said. Nearly $4 million in funding for the project comes from the National Institutes of Health. After evaluating the program’s effectiveness, Lindquist hopes to make NegotiAge widely available.
In the meantime, there are several steps family caregivers can take to forestall or resolve conflicts with older parents.
Prepare
Preparation is essential for any type of negotiation, advised Jeanne Brett, professor emerita of dispute resolution and organizations at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and a member of the NegotiAge team. “You…
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