Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Young at heart
OLD PEOPLE’S HOME FOR 4 YEAR OLDS C4 9pm
IN an ambitious experiment, 10 four-year-olds are leaving behind their nursery classroom to join 10 pensioners in a retirement village near Bristol.
Run by geriatric specialists and based on similar successful schemes in America, the two groups will work, play and socialise together for six weeks.
And the idea is that the intergenerational contact will help to improve the memory, mood and mobility of the older people. Something that’s clearly very needed, as the health experts carry out a comprehensive study of all the older participants at the start of the programme and discover that most of them have signs of depression, are severely inactive, and feel lonely and hopeless.
Throwing in a gang of rowdy pre-schoolers might not seem to be the obvious solution. And there’s certainly a fair few doubters at the start. But there are also things these two groups inherently have in common – perhaps needing help with mobility and everyday tasks, spending most of their time in a small, restricted world, sometimes unaware of social conventions and expected behaviour, and testing people’s patience!
And it’s these similarities that could actually make pre-schoolers and pensioners ideal companions.
As for the effect on the older people, it stands to reason that being surrounded by infectious energy, curiosity, joy and nonjudgmental friendship could be transformative. Take curmudgeonly Hamish – an 84-year-old with a prosthetic leg who questions the point of the experiment.
The transformation of this sceptical chap, who could barely get out of a chair and was happiest alone reading his paper, is remarkable. Within no time he’s helping his new young friends with drawing or playing with ducklings, and even crawling on the floor roaring as he makes them scream with laughter while playing Sleeping Lions.
It’s remarkable, important and heartwarming stuff.