5 Steps To Help Our Elders Overcome Loneliness Epidemic

We may have improved in our communication methods, but every 2 out of 3 elderly adults feel lonely and neglected by their children. This brings into light the undeniable fact that loneliness is brought about by our relationships not being meaningful. The modern trend where there is hardly any interaction between the elders and their children and grandchildren makes elders feel they are forgotten or pushed aside.

5 Steps to help our elders overcome the epidemic of loneliness: 

1) “Tell me more” is the best gift that we can give our elders from the bottom of our hearts; encouraging our elders to express themselves and listening to them would help discover those interests and passions that lay dormant in them and need to be rekindled. We need to dig really deep before you know the forgotten activities that need to be awaken.

2) Next we need to develop a strategy help them get over loneliness; if a person has cut all social contacts and loves cooking, one of the strategies would be to encourage her to cook her favorite dishes and invite some of her trusted friends for lunch. Similarly a man, who is dejected and loves music, can be helped get over his loneliness by rekindling his desire to sing.

3) Volunteer to learn from the elder in the family; allowing them to pass on a part of their vast store of hard-earned knowledge helps to not only learn something new every day, but it is also a bonding experience. Asking our mother to teach us how to embroider would not only build stronger bonds, but would also add a bit of balance to the child-parent dynamic that may have been affected when we started caring for her.

4) We as a caregiver of your elders can play a vital role in bridging the generation gap between elders and their grandchildren; most youngsters today view their grandparents as crazy or boring when they can benefit a lot from their wisdom and knowledge. Elders can be engaged to share stories and passing on their wealth of knowledge to the youngsters. This would not only benefit the youngsters, but would also stop the fast decline of the cognitive abilities of elders at home.

5) We need to connect in various ways to make the elder feel loved and connected with the rest of the family; it could be as simple as sending a card, dropping a small present of their favorite food or something they like and making sure to call and talk to them quite often to overcome their loneliness.

Making sure that the elders at home feel less lonely and loved would help them live longer; it would also make their eventual passing away much easier.

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