Abstract
Young adults’ concerns and coping strategies related to their face-to-face interactions with their grandparents/great-grandparents with dementia were explored through the lens of a solidarity-conflict conceptual framework. Participants indicated concerns about their inability to maintain the relational connection, not knowing what to say or how to behave, their lack of perspective-taking skills and emotion-regulation strategies, interacting with an ever-changing other, as well as concerns about other co-participants in the interaction. Participants’ coping strategies were driven by two interaction motives: maintaining solidarity (e.g., desire to maintain and improve the interaction with the grandparent by seeking the other’s company, loving the other, and maintaining the other’s personhood) and dealing with conflict (e.g., dealing with self-focused concerns about lack of skills and knowledge by engaging in substitute avenues for communication and down-regulating negative affect). Implications for improving interactions between young adults and their grandparents/great-grandparents with dementia are discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1025-1041 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Dementia |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 1 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The first author received funding for this work from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh Faculty Development Board, FDR 943.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2017.
Keywords
- concerns
- coping
- dementia
- grandchildren–grandparents
- interaction
- solidarity
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article