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Last month, in the entertaining blog, Linda's Backroads Musings, Blogger Linda, a "rural mail carrier" on the Kansas prairies, wrote an entry about an NPR story on aging:
Talk of the Nation on NPR had a show entitled, “Teaching the Young to Empathize with the Old.” The guests were Jason Wilson, editor of The Smart Set, an independent magazine published at Drexel University; author of the article "Old Like Me" and Peg Gordon, intergenerational coordinator at the Macklin Intergenerational Institute and teacher of the class "Xtreme Aging."
Jason Wilson told his experiences simulating being old. This involved corn in his shoes, Vaseline on his glasses, earplugs and bandages tied tightly around knees and elbows. He almost gleefully told of his difficulties going to the bathroom and other daily activities.
Wilson's description of the aging simulation exercise in his article from The Smart Set:
My feet hurt. My knees are so stiff that walking has become a chore. When I climb stairs, I’m out of breath by the time I reach the top. It takes a special effort just to tie my shoes. My vision is so poor that I require a caregiver to accompany me on my morning stroll. I can barely hear when she asks what I’d like for a snack. But it doesn’t matter anyway. Food just doesn’t taste the same as it once did.
After I’m told I’ve been eating an oatmeal cookie, I face an even worse indignity: shuffling and feeling my way, alone, into the men’s room — or at least I hope it is the men’s room. After fumbling with my zipper, I can barely make out the urinal. It is my sincere hope that my aim is true. As I exit, I’m nearly knocked backward by a couple of young guys barreling through the door. “Damn kids!” is what I want to shout.
This, apparently, is what they call aging. I’m told that my tribulations are common, and I’ll likely be labeled a complainer around the senior center. Aging is not for sissies, I’m told. But here’s the big difference. Twenty-five minutes ago I was a relatively fit 37-year-old. Not a triathlete, but certainly someone who didn’t need help opening a pill bottle. Now I am suddenly old and feeble. Allow me to be perfectly candid: It really sucks.
I’m undergoing an aging simulation administered by Monika Deppen Wood, a sociology professor at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. Wood teaches an undergraduate course called the Sociology of Aging, in which she requires all of her students to undergo the same simulation. “Reading about aging is not the same as experiencing it,” Wood says.
Such classes offer a new twist on sensitivity training - "aging sensitivity training".
Again, from Jason Wilson:
Aging simulation exercises like the ones I underwent at Rutgers and several other locations around the country lie at the heart of so-called “aging sensitivity training” that’s been practiced now for at least two decades. Originally, these exercises were designed for nurses, physicians, therapists, social workers, and others who work with elderly patients.
For instance, at Valparaiso University’s College of Nursing — highly regarded nationwide for its emphasis on gerontology — every student must take a junior-level course called The Aging Process, regardless of what field of nursing they intend to enter. One of the first assignments in that course is an aging simulation.
“Even some of the nursing students, when they first get here, will tell you, ‘I hate old people. I’d never want to work with old people.’ They want to work with babies, or in the ICU,” says Kristen Mauk, a nursing professor at Valparaiso and one of the nation’s leading experts in gerontological nursing.
“We have to prepare our students, because there are going to be so many more older people in years to come,” Mauk says. “We’re preparing our students to be nurses in the future.
The Macklin Intergenerational Institute, founded by philanthropists Marilyn and Gordon Macklin, has been in the forefront of such formal training. This is reflected in the Institute's mission statement: "To continually improve lives of all ages through multi-age programming, care, community relationships, and creative communication."
One of the Macklin Institute's program is "The FamilyRoom Approach™":
Daily, children and senior adults come together in a home-like setting referred to as the FamilyRoom Approach™. In this relaxed environment that emulates the family home, interaction is emphasized and multi-age relationships are built. It is not all uncommon to find a grandpa feeding a baby, a grandma rocking a toddler, or several preschool children
