What Can Grandparents Do To Help Their Grandchildren and Vice-Versa?
Commentary by: Margie Eulner Ott, Operations Chief of CER
For the past several years, I’ve been a board member of a local aging in place village. We organize volunteer services for our elderly neighbors so they can safely remain in their homes as they age. The other evening we were meeting (via Zoom) about what we could do to continue to support our neighbors in the era of social distancing, and I mentioned the resources that we at CER were pulling together to support in-home learning for all of the students out of school. One of the members got very excited: because she can’t go help her children care for her grandchildren, she saw our resource list as a great way to help from afar. Many of the resources can also help seniors occupy their time while isolated. A FaceTime, Skype or Zoom conference call with a grandparent on a daily basis can be a win-win for parents juggling work at home, teaching at home, and worrying about a parent alone. And finally, if families want to use this time to help their elderly neighbors, visit the Village to Village Network to see if there is an aging in place village in your town looking for help (social distance protocols in place, of course).
