Subscribe by Email

Every human interaction has two sides, two people with different personalities, different values, different wants and different needs. Good communication and positive enriching interaction comes from having an appreciation for the other person. We know ourselves, but what do we know about the other person? What is their state of mind? What are their experiences, what are they dealing with? Sometimes we can know these things and sometimes we can’t. Day Three at CASP was about learning a little bit more about the other person.

Actually, Day Three was specifically about the physiological and emotional aspects of aging. We discussed the changes in muscle mass, balance, flexibility, sensory perception, memory, cognitive abilities and more. I was well into information overload by lunch. But our lecturers were fabulous, in that the material was presented not for fact value, but to enlighten us so that we can better serve the resident population. How can CCRCs and particularly staff at CCRCs better serve residents by taking these physical factors of aging into account? How can they help and assist residents in maintaining and improving their quality of life and, perhaps more importantly, how can staff interact with the residents in a genuine and hospitable way by knowing just a little bit about what life is like in an 85-year-old body.

Let me give you a specific example and something that really struck me. We do not lose any ability to learn, nor do we lose our level of intelligence as we age. We have the same or greater ability to learn and reason at 85 as we do at 45. But here’s the insight – it takes longer at 85, because processing speeds in the brain have slowed for natural reasons. The quality of thought doesn’t necessary diminish, just the speed at which we can formulate those thoughts. Now think about our interaction with older adults? In this go-go world of instant communication, 24-hour news, over-scheduling and rapid technological evolution, do we have the patience and capacity to have the thoughtful, insightful, meaningful and personally enriching conversation with our 85-year-old friend on their terms and at their speed? 

As this was being discussed, I was thinking about a recent conversation with my 77-year-old father. I had asked a question about his boyhood. He began to tell a story I had never heard, but Dad, no fast talker 30 years ago, was telling the story at an agonizingly slow pace. And as interesting as the story was, I lost my patience, found a reason to excuse myself and went away thinking Dad is starting to lose it. What a wasted opportunity. Now I think perhaps it was just taking my father a little longer to retrieve those memories and find the words needed to describe what he was remembering. It is nothing that he can control, just a function of age. And the pace didn’t really affect the richness of his story or the enjoyment I may have gotten from it. But my inability to adjust my behavior to meet his needs caused a breakdown in communication.

Now that I know a little bit more, I have promised myself that I will sit down this weekend and ask Dad to tell me the lost jacket story again. And this time, I’ll be listening with different ears.

Print-Friendly Version