Senior Citizens are NOT children!

Posted on November 5, 2011 Updated on November 1, 2013

An epidemic has taken hold of this Nation.  Adults 70 years or older are being infantalized.  Adult children have decided that their parents can’t do anything without their guidance.  Service employees, e.g. restaurants, retail store clerks and the like, feel compelled to talk down to their Senior customers.  Caregivers in long-term care (LTC) facilities further degrade the residents with baby talk.  These residents downsized their living space; don’t downsize who they are by treating them as anything other than who they are: intelligent adults.

Only you can put an end to this epidemic.  If it is not eradicated by the time you reach the Senior Citizen age, you too will be subjected to its horrors.

Adult children.

Mom moves into your house because of a financial or medical reason, and suddenly Mom has no say in what goes on in her life.  Everywhere she turns, her son and daughter-in-law are bossing her around in the guise of trying to do what is best for her.  Mom wants to stay up late reading or watching TV and she’s told she should go to bed.  Mom wants to do this activity, or that activity with friends outside of the home and she’s told not to leave the house because the son and daughter-in-law want to make sure she doesn’t get into any trouble.

PA-LEEEEEZE!!!!!

Your Mom raised you and somehow you turned out o.k.  She must have been a good parent, teacher, guidance counselor, child supporter, you name it.  Just because she is living under your roof doesn’t mean she’s lost her right to have a say in matters that go on in the household.  Ask her opinion from time to time.  Let her somehow contribute to the functioning of the household, e.g. day-to-day participation in household functions, helping you with decisions you’re making about your own lives.  Doing so will restore her pride and make her feel less superfluous.  It’s quite o.k. to be concerned about her well-being – you should be – but you can do so without suffocating her.

Service employees.

Why is it that wait-staff, retail sales clerks and the like feel an immediate need to speak super loudly to a Senior citizen customer?  In my work with the elderly, I made this very mistake by talking loudly to a LTC resident I had just met.  She finally interrupted me, put her hand on my knee and said, “Irene, I’m old; not deaf.  Please stop yelling at me.”  So simply lower your voice and don’t call her a pet name such as “Sweetie,” “Hon,” etc.  I’ll never forget my mother’s phone call to me many years ago when she was barely over 70 years old.  She went to the Dept. of Motor Vehicles to renew her driver’s license.  After filling out the paperwork and getting her photo taken, it was time for her to leave with her newly issued license.  The DMV clerk then said quite loudly, “Now Sweetie – before you leave, make sure that you have everything with you that you came with.”  My mother called me that evening, both angered and in tears, bristling at the way in which she was treated.  In my mother’s eyes, the DMV clerk downsized her intelligence and abilities and that thoughtless act forever changed my mother as a result.  Please treat your Senior consumers with respect and with dignity.  They know they are older than you are – you don’t have to remind them of that fact with your ill-placed attitudes and gestures.

An aside:

When I was 58 years old, a couple years ago, I picked up some items at my local grocery store and used the self-checkout counter to purchase my groceries.  As I was leaving the store, the retail clerk said, “Thanks Dear!”  A male customer who was older than me also went through the self-checkout at the same time but that retail clerk didn’t say a cutesy name to him!  Oh Boy – she didn’t know what she had just started.  I didn’t make a scene.  I left the store, wrote a letter to the manager and included this blog entry/article with a suggestion that he update his store training to include my suggestions about how to treat Senior Citizens.  He wrote me back to thank me and stated that he planned to provide updated sensitivity training to his staff.  BRAVO!

Professional LTC caregivers.

Oh boy – I see this a lot.  Caregivers who, God bless them, have a job that not many of us would willingly perform – especially at the low hourly wage at which they are paid.  I admire you and I respect you.  You’re a better person than I because I don’t have what it takes to do what you do.  But please address your patients/residents by their given names.  I would even go so far as to suggest that you call them by their surname until they give you permission to use their first name.  “Good morning Mrs. Smith.  It’s so good to see you today!”  That’s a far more respectful greeting than the following:  “Good morning Sweetie Pie.  Let’s get you ready for breakfast, shall we Hon?”  YUCK!  God help the person who addresses me that way when I reach my Senior years.  I’m a friendly person at heart, but I too would bristle at any condescending treatment directed towards me.  (And considering how I reacted to the cutesy name directed at me in the supermarket a few years ago (above) I may not be quite as civil in my later years.)

BOTTOM LINE FOR EVERYONE CONCERNED.  These Senior Citizens with whom you have contact survived the Great Depression and at least one World War.  Surely they have the ability, and the right, to be treated with respect and given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making their own personal decisions.  Don’t take away their ability prematurely.  Eventually they may not have the ability to function independently, but it doesn’t do them any good for you to hasten the time in which that may happen.