Loneliness is a common sight while you work in senior living/elderly care sector. While there are many reasons behind elderly loneliness, few of them have definite solutions and am picking three such reasons and possible solutions for them.
Inability to interact
While describing loneliness of elderly people scholars and experts often ignore certain important aspects of the issues. Major one lies with seniors themselves, their inability to connect with their next generation or younger generation. Surprised to hear this? let me dissect the problem further...
Elderly people often complain no one listens to them, no one values their words, people don’t get into conversation with them, but WHY?
In some cases it could be really because of apathy of people around them, but in larger number of the cases, it is an issue that lies with elderly.
Non acceptance of changing culture and value system: society is dynamic and so is culture and value system, what seems to be an acceptable value and culture for one generation gets modified with next generation. Clashes arise when members of one generation get stuck with their “ideal” systems and start finding fault with changed ones. For example, a particular way of dressing or eating habits was considered ideal during a generation and they find it terrible when next generation does not follow the same! Center of all their interaction is ridden with criticism of their children and grandchildren – the next generation, who find it nagging after some time and stop interacting with elderly! While ideally it is responsibility of both to get things going, it is actually easier for elderly to change their attitude to deal with the issue.
Boasting about my glorious days: Mostly with an intention to “educate” or pass on their “experience” to younger people, the cannon is misfired and elderly end up with a situation where youth start to ignore it as self-boasting. People are not interested in knowing “You know what command I had when I was abc of xyz company?” as it is often perceived as “you are good for nothing and I was a king”
Constant whining: In order to seek attention, elderly tend to seek resort in whining about their health issues, children, ex-boss, neighbors and so on. While people will be sympathetic about these for some time, but when it is repeated again and again, people start avoiding whiners like plague.
Uncontrolled temperament and expectations: Many elderly find it difficult to control their temperament and tend to claim special attention and their “right” as senior citizen. While it may work to some extent, but quickly such people will be labelled as “short fuse”
What elderly can do to develop better rapport and communication with their next generation?
- Accept the fact that culture and values keep changing, what was ideal to you may not be for younger one, getting frustrated and agitated about this will not help. Instead of criticizing about every cultural change, see if you can focus only on universal values and imbibe them in grand kids by “walking the talk”
- If you want to befriend with your next generation, apply the basic rule of interaction – avoid speaking about yourself, instead find means to indulge in conversation about other person, with your experience this should not be a challenge!
- Look for topics which can keep the conversation going with younger ones, do not bank on topics of your interest
- Limit your “advice” and “insight sharing”, spend them only when asked!
- Respect time and schedule of others, just because you have ample time, does not mean that the other person also is free! Notice signs of detachment or disinterest in other person and wrap up the conversation immediately.
- Have smaller interactions, unless they are your buddies or close friends, do not interact for longer duration, let the interaction be limited to a maximum of 10 minutes, lesser is better!
Loss of partner/Living Alone/Living away from children
Elderly are often forced to live alone due to loss of partner or due to many reasons in which their kids and grand children are not with them or near them. This could lead to lack of motivation to interact socially making the situation worse. There could be limited opportunities to interact socially as well.
How to overcome this challenge?
- Identify at least 5 people in the neighborhood with whom one can have short interactions and develop 2-5 minute interaction on daily basis.
- Get out of your house at least once a day creating excuses like buying vegetable/milk or morning/evening walk. Start with greeting people and after being familiar with few people, try short interactions
- Get connected electronically – many seniors these days are tech savvy and are active in social media. One can make friends, interact and have fun online! Video calls with friends and family also is very effective tool to overcome loneliness.
- Seek help from professionals or from those who often help. There could be hundreds of means and methods by which one can over come loneliness. Ranging from pursuing hobbies, volunteering to second career, your well-wishers may suggest the best for you.
Hearing Loss
Hearing loss is often ignored by many elders and by their family members. One major reason behind social dissociation, people with hearing loss avoid people as they are ashamed of not understanding the other person or the need of asking them to be “louder” or for the need of asking them “can you repeat please?”
In most of the cases, hearing loss is either treatable or manageable. Solution is simple – seek professional help!