The classic profile of an older person speaking to a younger person sometimes misses the point. Yes, grandkids love to hear a grandparent about walking how many miles to school…and that it was uphill both ways. If the grandkids are sufficiently older they may also be quite rapt by the harrowing adventure to the summit of a mountain or a first jump at parachute school or scuba diving. But as the kids approach their own maturation they can benefit from questions being asked of them and of the practical things the older generation has learned…some of which are not obvious.
- Fitness and Health: Older people need to be aware that they are still role models for younger family members. What older adults eat and how they engage in activity still provide models for younger generations. Yet, too many older adults are more active in seeking out the remote than in playing pickleball.
- Financial Literacy: It’s not just about saving money and living within one’s means. Older adults should help the next generations to see that preparation for life’s next stages is about informed planning. It may take more than Social Security?
- Friends and Family: Older individuals should role model how raising children is just the beginning stage of creating an intergenerational family for everyone’s benefit. And show the kids how good friends, the kind that start young, are there not just for the moment, but they grow with us as family as well.
- Staying the Course: Older individuals need to reinforce with their families how very few things are easy, but even fewer are impossible. The key ingredients are being resilient and being able to bounce back. Yogi Berra, the baseball legend used to say, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” That’s perseverance.
- Life-Work Balance: You hear most adults talking about those words flipped the other way: Work-Life Balance. If you have had a desk job, you need to insert enough proper diet and exercise to survive that sitting. Remind your kids that sitting is the new smoking. Life comes first.
- Change is a Constant: Older individuals know that yesterday’s change doesn’t prepare them for a tomorrow that is more of the same old. Change prepares us for being flexible to grow through life’s inconstancy.
- Mindfulness: Older people should share how to interpret the good things of life with gratitude as well as how to pass the goodness on. It’s not about constantly wanting more; it’s a virtuous cycle that keeps on giving.
- Time: Older individuals need to show the next generation that it’s about investing the most precious commodity, time, into what’s important. Set priorities that lead to meaning, and help the young learn how to both set priorities and to strive toward what matters.
Charlotte Bishop is an Aging Life Care Advisor, Retirement Lifestyle Coach and founder of Creative Care Management, LLC, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. She also is the co-author of How Do I Know You? A Caregiver’s Lifesaver for Dealing with Dementia.
