In Minneapolis, caregivers connect kids and seniors — and everyone benefits

Music, yoga and science classes are built into the weekly routine for infants and preschoolers at The Pillars Child Care in Prospect Park. At least twice a week, though, those fun activities come with an extra treat: the “grandfriends” come down to play.

The child care center sits on the ground floor of The Pillars Senior Living Center. Older residents — the grandfriends — come to volunteer, working with the kids and caregivers. For preschooler Marais Hendrickson, 4, it’s simple.

“Grandfriends are upstairs, and sometimes some live downstairs,” she said.

That kind of structural understanding works no matter your age. At The Pillars, it also has a purpose — improve the quality of life for the senior center’s residents and teach small children how to interact with people different from them. Research shows those intergenerational ties can help combat isolation and loneliness and improve health for older adults.

“Every person and every generation has a different way of learning and teaching, and I think bringing the elder generation to the younger generations just brings a whole other model of learning,” said Marie Abear, assistant director of child care at The Pillars.

‘They’re really nice to you’

A recent visit to The Pillars offered a look at how that intergenerational care model works and why it can be valuable. 

The preschoolers shake hands and give high-fives to their grandfriends while children’s music plays in the background. It’s something 5-year-old Josh Michel looks forward to.

“They’re really nice to you,” Josh said of the older volunteers. “They’re at music sometimes and they kind of listen to the music teacher.”

Caregivers of infants and young children play an essential role in helping them develop secure attachments and other skills needed for their development. Kids learn from observing adults, and it’s no problem if that adult is much older, said Ka Ip, assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Institute of Child Development who researches intergenerational connections.

“I think it’s really both of them benefiting,” Ip said. “It’s not really just reducing the loneliness of the older citizens, but also I think it’s actually really a good way to improve social skills, self- regulation, perspective-taking, empathy.”

Sammatha Vang, a teacher at The Pillars whose 4-year-old and 1-year-old are students there, said the connections at the center have helped her kids build a stronger bond with their own biological grandparents and the community around them.

“Every time we go out [to]the grocery stores or something, they’re like, Oh, Mom, look, there’s a grandfriend.” Vang said. “They’re like, ‘She looks like grandfriend Launa,’ like someone in a wheelchair. So it just brings a great awareness to my kids that they can see these grandfriends are also their friends. And then they don’t have to be afraid of them.”

‘Make everybody’s life better’

Young children have always been important to Barb Thomasson. At 79, she’s a retired social worker who became a preschool teacher who was then an early childhood special education paraprofessional for over a decade. Kids are what keep her going.

“This was one of the reasons that we moved here, was because there was the child care,” Thomasson said. “That age, under the age of four, just fascinates me.”

Thomasson was also a nanny and Sunday school teacher and while she does like talking with the older kids, it’s the babies she likes to hang out with now. She volunteers three times a week to rock the children in the infant room.

For 80-year-old grandfriend Launa Ellison, she said reading to children gives her back a sense of usefulness. She used to be a school teacher and said she cried when she had to retire.

“I was just so sad because teaching made my life better. So here I get to read stories and make everybody’s life better,” Ellison said. “This place for the elderly to have a way to still keep in touch with the young ones. It’s very valuable for me, and so I love it here.”

Paige Anderson’s 2-year-old son Gus has been at The Pillars since he was 11 weeks. She said her family values having their children feel like a part of a complex community — and gaining 10 quasi-grandparents was a bonus.

“I think there’s a sense of confidence from his grandfriends,” Anderson said. “There’s a sense of fun and playfulness. I think one of the things I see is that these grand friends are reading, they’re cuddling, they’re playing on the playground with them sometimes and there’s this sense of being playful that’s really, really important for kiddos for their development.”

The youngest kids are always learning how to connect with others, she noted. “Same thing with older adults, as they move into memory care, assisted living, they’re trying to figure out who they are in this world. That is what I’ve seen in Gus. He relates to the world in such a curious way and I credit that to this place, because he gets that modeled to him every single day.”

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