This article originally appeared in the July-August 2001 issue of the Children's Advocate, published by Action Alliance for Children.

Bringing generations together

Children and seniors enjoy and inspire each other in programs that bring them together

By Kathleen Barrows

In our age-segregated communities, children and seniors may rarely encounter each other. But people and programs like the ones profiled here are beginning to change that. Organizations like Generations United, a national coalition of children's and seniors' organizations, are promoting and assisting intergenerational programs.

North Inland Intergenerational Mentoring Program: "Keep showing up"

Jennifer, a mother of three with a full-time job, has only one complaint about the North Inland Intergenerational Mentoring Program. There are times when her 12-year-old son's mentor keeps him out until nine o'clock on a school night, gazing at the stars -- like the time they visited the nearby Palomar Observatory.

Actually, Jennifer is a big fan of the program, developed by the North Rural Recover Center in Ramona, where she works. And she sees its benefits from both sides, since her son William's mentor happens to be his own great-grandfather. The new mentor relationship is "bringing out the kid in my grandfather," she says, "and with my son, it's helping him look up to someone."

William and his great-grandfather are one of 22 pairs in this intergenerational program of Mental Health Systems, Inc., which links "at-risk" kids, ages eight to 12, with seniors, average age 70. Here in the back country of San Diego County, both seniors and youth can be socially isolated, says Joe Hacker, who heads the mentoring program. "It's such a waste. The seniors have so much to give and no outlets. And there are so many kids that could use help."

The kids, including some foster children and some from the local Indian Reservation, are recommended by their schools. Mentors and "mentees" get together one and a half hours weekly -- for anything from soap-making to roller-skating to going out for pizza -- and attend monthly meetings.

Hacker describes his own 12-year-old mentee as a "quiet kid, who doesn't talk a lot. The other kids laughed at him," and the state of his tattered clothes had provoked playground fights. Since Hacker's presentation at the local Kiwanis Club, the Ramona Clothes Closet now offers three outfits to each of the mentees. Hacker's contact with the Salvation Army brought scholarships for each of the mentees to attend a week of summer camp.

His advice to mentors: "Don't expect things to happen overnight. Keep on showing up, and eventually something starts happening."

Generations: Where "simple things" count

An elderly man dozes in his wheelchair as Kelley Sheldon, coordinator of the Generations program, sets up a wooden train on the floor of the sun-filled lounge in San Francisco's Herbst Intergenerational Center. She explains that gong-gong, Chinese for grandfather, recently had a stroke. "He used to go for hot chocolate with us."

Soon a group of seven preschoolers bounce around the corner with a teacher. They greet the seniors with smiles and "good morning." Three girls join an elderly woman at one table to construct sculptures of blue play dough, while the boys scramble to the table in front of gong-gong to drop marbles into a colorful marble shoot.

The old man wakes and watches. Sheldon gives him a marble and he drops it in the tubular structure, watching as it descends with a clickety-clack. One of the preschoolers scrambles to pick it up and sets it gently in his outstretched hand.

"Grandma," who had slipped off to her room with her walker, returns with a bag of chocolate kisses for the children, who eagerly flock around her.

"We want to create a program which is structured yet open enough that seniors and kids are just hanging out," Sheldon explains. "We" is On Lok Senior Health Services and Wu Yee Children's Services. Wu Yee runs a preschool that's housed in a corner of On Lok's four-story Victorian, where frail seniors reside and others receive adult day care and health services. Three times weekly, a group of the preschoolers spend time with the seniors.

In our age-segregated culture, Sheldon says, "it's easy to lose sight of the cycles of life." In this program, kids "receive the attention and focus they need" -- and learn compassion. One recently explained to a parent: "You have to let old people get on the bus first because their legs aren't as strong."

The program also involves kids and seniors in special activities, including the regular "Happy Feet" community walk, with coffee for adults and ice cream for the children, and work in On Lok's small garden. "Birds, flowers, leaves and fresh air -- that's what everybody needs," says Sheldon.

Intergenerational Writing Project: "There isn't an age to become old"

Fourth and fifth graders alternate with gray-haired elders, sitting around tables, writing in silence. It's the last day of an eight-week oral history class, and seniors and students are composing farewell letters to their classmates. One senior, Ruth, arrives a little late, and her young partner, Michael, bursts into applause as she hands him a family portrait in a gold frame, saying, "I finally found my picture."

A few minutes later, sharing begins. Michael says he'll miss Miss Bee, the 87-year-old who, as the students discovered in their interviews, once worked as a secretary to Eleanor Roosevelt. Shahnaz says she's sad the class is ending: "The seniors have been like grandmothers to me." KC offers: "I will never forget how they made me feel free, and that I could tell them something and they would not laugh." Wilma, his senior partner, thanks him for "throwing your arms about me when I finished my interview."

Nakela, who's written a whole page, concludes, "I learned there isn't an age to become old. You can be 79 and still have the energy you had when you were 21."

Sponsored by the California Arts Council, the Intergenerational Writing Project uses poetry, oral history, and journal-writing to link fourth and fifth graders in San Francisco's Castro district with seniors, ranging in age from 70 to 87. It's a program that builds community -- with the students drawn from a senior center and two nearby schools.

"We're using the arts for building bridges across the generations," says Program Director Nancy Deutsch, a former social worker turned poet. "When the kids and seniors are writing together, it's a creative act outside of age. A peer relationship develops. It's not just one person helping the other." 

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Resources for intergenerational programs

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Action Alliance
for Children
e-mail aac@4children.org
1201 Martin Luther
King Jr. Way
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 444-7136