How Seniors Can Help Young Students & Themselves

Health Wellness

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Some common complaints among many seniors is that they are lonely, and they no longer feel useful or productive or they just don’t have a purpose. This often leads to depression and losing the will to live. They simply give up and wither away.

The feelings of loneliness or uselessness can also result in stress, which affects the heart and mind. It also leads to many seniors’ inactivity, which in turn accelerates the loss of muscle mass and muscle tone, making them weaker, frailer, more susceptible to falls, fractures and illnesses.

Seniors need a purpose and reason to get up every morning and a school in Dallas may have inadvertently found a way to help seniors in their quest to help and teach young students. It involves a lost practice – pen pals.

Cursive writing is no longer taught in many schools. The Common Core standards do not require cursive writing to be taught, so many schools aren’t bothering to teach it. Some experts have said that cursive writing is becoming a lost art, but it’s not lost to all. There are still 11 states that require the teaching of cursive writing and 10 more states are toying with legislation to require it in their schools.

The Good Shepherd Episcopal School in Dallas is teaching third graders to write cursive and they have enlisted the help of seniors. Tim Mallad, the father of one of the third graders had an idea to help:

“Wouldn’t it be fun for the children to begin to learn how to read letters and perhaps get the thrill of getting a real letter in the mail?”

After writing a letter to his daughter when she was away at camp he learned later that she couldn’t read it. He explained:

“‘She said she was mad at me. ‘Well, why are you mad at me?’ ‘Well, your letter.’ And I’m thinking I didn’t say anything bad in the letter,’ Mallad said. ‘No, you wrote it in that funny writing.’”

Mallad came up with a way to help – pen pals. Mallad works with an organization that oversees several retirement homes so he got some of the seniors to write letters to some of the students.

One of the seniors, 75-year-old Sue Standlee commented about her becoming a pen pal:

“It’s difficult for me to do text and emails, or text, anyway, because there’s so many shortened, abbreviated things, that… I don’t know what they are.”

Standlee ended up writing to 9-year-old Samantha Moseley, who commented about getting the letters and writing back:

“I feel like I’m actually talking to her. This has made me like — like to write a lot more.”

Another pairing was that of 80-year-old Nancy Miller and 9-year-old Ahan Jain. Miller commented about their instant connection:

“And in the very first paragraph or two, he says, ‘I’m a Dallas Cowboys fan and my favorite player’s Dez Bryant.’ And I thought, ‘Wow, we have a connection right away.’”

The teacher, Karen Gunter, said that when the students are writing their letters, they are very quiet. She has also seen the enthusiasm in the students and the wanting to learn to read and write cursive.

After reading this story, I couldn’t help but think that this is an easy way for many lonely and non-productive-feeling seniors to find a purpose and reason for going on. Contact a local school. Tell them you want to be a pen pal to young students who are learning to read and write cursive. It will help the senior and the student. They both will look forward to receiving the letters from each other. It will help teach kids and help keep seniors connected with someone else. Getting connected can create new friendships and help improve the health of any senior who gets involved.

The report from the school said that after several months of writing back and forth, the students got to meet their pen pals. After meeting each other in person, Standlee and Moseley have become much more than just pen pals – they are friends, as they both commented:

“Well, she’s just flamboyant. She a pistol … it was wonderful to meet her, just wonderful.”

“I got to meet someone new and not just writing to them … in short letters and stuff. I actually got a friendship with her.”

Everyone can use a new friend, regardless of the age difference.

Loneliness Seniors Writing

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