Recently there have been reports of a few nurseries taking children to old peoples homes.

 

The benefits of this experiment appear to be endless to both the children and the pensioners. Some children haven’t got grandparents who are still living or they may live a long distance from them, equally some elderly folk don’t get to see little people very often.

My experience of this was when my 2 sons were of a pre-school age and I took them to visit my grandparents who were staying in an old peoples home, I took along a few toys  to keep my boys occupied, they started to push their cars along the floor, at first I was concerned that one of the residents may trip over them but as most were sitting this wasn’t an issue. Instead a few of them picked a car up and began to ask my children questions about them which led to conversations taking place.  My sons then told jokes (I don’t think many of the oldies could hear what they were saying let alone understand!) but they did seem to enjoy spending time with them.

My grandchildren went to visit their great grandfather in a home and my granddaughter enjoyed pushing one particular lady around in her wheelchair, I am a wheelchair user myself and she likes pushing me also. One a similar note when she visited me and I walked to the downstairs toilet using my walking stick she followed then when I sat down she said “I’ll take that back for you.” thinking she was helping and she walked away with my stick. Luckily my husband had heard and brought it back enabling me to rejoin my family.

My grandson used to like sitting on my lap when I went out on my electric scooter. One time he turned it up to full speed until I convinced him to turn it down again.

 

When I was child minding  I took a child into a shop to buy a birthday card. There was an elderly lady also looking at cards the little girl went over to see the card the lady was choosing, the lady kindly started to show her more and more cards, I commented that she would be there all day to which she told me that she doesn’t see young children often and she was enjoying talking to her. Another time I had to visit the dentist (I wouldn’t usually take children with me) one of the children looked as if she was going to try to climb on a gentleman’s lap, when I went to take her away, he told me “Please let me talk to her as I don’t see my grandchildren as they live away” I sat next to him with the girl on my knee and they chatted for a good while.

There has been a documentary on television a while back called Old peoples home for 4 year olds were a group of children went to visit some of the residents. The results were incredible:

The old people seemed to get a new lease for life and the children enjoyed ‘helping’ the adults and working together with them on arts and crafts activities. Several of the old people found that their balance and walking had improved after spending time with the children and they said that they felt happier as a result.

Some of the children’s parents asked if they could ‘adopt’ a resident of the home as a suffragan grandparent  for their child.

So are there benefits of putting young children and the elderly together? I would say absolutely.

I would be interested to hear what others think of this.

As always questions/comments are welcome.

Until next time.

Karen

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