Nearly a quarter of the American adult population provide long hours of voluntary care for an older or sick family member and friends, The Aggregator - edited by Nikki Waller in the The Wall Street Journal Sunday.

How many of you have cared for your aging relatives, either getting paid or not? My family, mostly 2 sisters, cared for our parents. As a family unit we paid one sister $10 hour plus gas, and the other one lived in my parent’s home “rent free” for a couple of years. It seemed fair to the family at the time.

My friend’s family hired an older grandchild to help care for her elderly father, age 98. He just passed last month at the age of 101. The grandchild received a monthly stipend. I never asked her how much that was but it sounded like he was well compensated.

Another interesting story that you might want to read.. Mom and her teens care for dad with early onset Alzheimer’s - it seems as we get older.. our parents will need our help more and more.

What is your story? How is your family compensating the primary family caregiver for the care he/she gives to aging mom and dad?

I’ve been asked by several caregivers if the government like Medicaid is currently paying family members to help elderly parents. They believe by keeping the parents out of a nursing home helps tax payers save money. That’s a good point.

But most families are taking up that burden.

Read the full story on Getting Paid to Care for Mom and Dad

Carebuzz and Working Caregiver would like to know how you folks use social media. Click Here to take survey We hear stories that the median age on Twitter is 45. I wonder if that is true because I just read on a Pew Internet study, published October, 2009 that the median age is 31 - see that study posted here on Twitter and Status Updating .. but I have a hard time believing that too.

Since we will never know and not sure which study to believe, Carebuzz just published this very short survey. We are curious about how people really use social media, for what purpose and how can we help improve our online strategy - would you please help us out? Thank you.

The Carebuzz Survey Click Here to take survey

Just eight months ago, a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, October 21, 2009 by Susannah Fox, Kathryn Zickuhr, Aaron Smith, reported that 11% of internet users said they use a status-update service - that number today is 19%.

The study goes on to say that there are three groups of internet users responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users – those under age 44.  And the more devices someone owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter or another service to update their status, such as:

39% of internet users with four or more internet-connected devices (such as a laptop, cell phone, game console, or Kindle) use Twitter,

28% of internet users with three devices,

19% of internet users with two devices, and

10% of internet users with one device

The median age of social media users:

Twitter user is 31

MySpace is now 26

LinkedIn is now 39

Facebook is now 33

Read the full story Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009

If you have not had the opportunity to care for an elderly loved one yet, you will. It’s up to you how you handle it.. with grace and ease or with stress.

There are many opinions of “how” to care for the aging and most importantly “where” do you care for them? If the elderly are unable to eat, bathe, communicate with you..do you place him/her in a nursing home facility? That’s a personal call that each individual must make. It’s easier if the aging senior helps you make that decision by putting in place a DNR, a last will..drawing out specifically what “they” want done to/with them once life leaves their body drenched in lifeless activity.

Here’s an amazing story of a man, a caregiver, living in Georgia…who helped his Grandmother care for her husband..his Grandfather. The author of this amazing story is Elmer.

Read In Grandpa’s Service.

You may not think much about how your brain operates since we have a tendency to take it for granted.. like we do when it comes to the heart and it’s tasks and efficiencies.

Take the brain for example, do you realize how quickly it filters through information without giving much conscious thought about it? For example, as you go through your day.. what sights, sounds, and smells are more important than others? Which ones must not be missed?

And have you considered how to make sense of complex visual patterns and build a database (internally) of familiar people and places? How do you choose what stimuli to distract you? Your brain works quickly to pick and choose “what” will take you away from the “current focus” and attention.

Now this will get your brain reeling.. consider, for a moment the importance of our language skills. As we  communicate an idea while talking, our brains run ahead of us searching for “the right” words to use. If you’re like me, I have not built a rich search skill that helps me quickly select the most effective way to describe my ideas.. that keep people intrigued.

So, what does that say about my brain?

To read more on CogniFit Training: The key to cognitive vitality - click on it!