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Katie Sloan, AAHSA's Consumer Focus Columnist
Take a good look around your home. What would it take to live there for many years to come? Which parts of your home will support you – and which parts will fight you – as your lifestyle, health or physical abilities change with age?
Perhaps you’d like to spend more time working or playing at home in your later years. Will you need a home office or more space for a favorite hobby? Maybe you’re hoping the grandchildren will spend more time with you after you retire. How can you make your bathroom and kitchen more “child-friendly”? What if you develop mobility or dexterity limitations – or open your home to an older relative who has these limitations? What will you do, for example, if climbing stairs becomes problematic? Or if an injury or disability makes it hard to reach high cabinet shelves?
At AAHSA, we’ve spent years thinking about what it will take to help older people age in place while remaining safe, healthy and happy about their choice. The result of that thinking – and the thinking of many innovative designers – was on full display at the AAHSA Annual Meeting & Exposition, which took place last week. The meeting featured the amazing “AAHSA Idea House,” a 2,600-square-foot model home that we built right inside Chicago’s McCormick Center. The house contained innovative technologies and designs that could soon make aging-in-place a reality for most Americans.
The AAHSA House wasn’t just for older people. Many of its features would be just as appealing to a 30-year-old as to an 80-year-old. It incorporated barrier-free designs and recycled products. It featured water- and energy-saving devices. And it also included some pretty neat devices to help younger and older occupants remain safe, take care of their health and enjoy meaningful social interactions.
Americans repeatedly say in surveys that they wish to remain in their homes for as long as possible. The AAHSA Idea House was a wonderful way to get us all thinking about the features that would make our homes good places to age.
Treat yourself to a video tour of the AAHSA Idea House, which appears in three parts on the Web site of McKnight’s News Service. As you consider your own aging, what features are most important to you? What technologies should be included in the next Idea House?
As kids, we all had heroes in our lives. Your hero might have been a favorite teacher or the President of the United States, a baseball player or even a fictional character. These were women and men whom we admired. These were people we wanted to be like when we grew up.
As we grow older, we still need heroes in our lives.
Katie Sloan, AAHSA Consumer Focus Columnist
But the heroes we choose today will be different than the ones we selected when we were young. Presumably, we’ve already grown up. Now we need heroes to help us grow old.
These new heroes are people we admire because they remained actively engaged in the business of living right up until they had no life left in them. These are people we’d like to emulate because they don’t let their age stand in the way of making a difference in their world.
Tran Thi My is my hero. This 86-year-old Vietnamese woman has run the Center for Lonely Mothers in Saigon for the past 20 years. Twice a month, Ms. My and her cadre of retired doctors and nurses climb into a donated truck and head for remote areas, where they offer free medical examinations, treatment and gifts to poor older women who live alone.
It’s not an easy task. The roads are rough and muddy; the trips are long and uncomfortable. But Ms. May endures all this because she has committed her heart to this work – and she’s not afraid to translate that commitment into action.
Ms. My’s family wants her to quit her job so she can enjoy her old age in peace and comfort. She refuses. The long trips into the countryside don’t bother her, she maintains. On the contrary, she says, giving help to old, needy people makes her feel useful and happy.
I want to be like Tran Thi My when I grow old. Who would you like to be like?
Katie Sloan, AAHSA Consumer Focus Columnist
“It’s good to be young, but getting old isn’t half bad either.”
That’s the opinion of Kenji Toba, a professor of geriatrics at Kyorin University in Tokyo. Toba is the eternal optimist – and we could learn a lot from him.
Got wrinkles? Don’t worry about it, he says. Those lines on your face are “indelible evidence of maturity.”
Getting forgetful? That’s only half the story, says Toba. Your memories may fade, but your thoughts and feelings become richer as you age.
It’s no wonder that Toba doesn’t like the term “anti-aging,” which we have come to associate with skin creams and vitamin supplements that promise to keep us young forever. Toba prefers the term “with aging.” Instead of fighting the aging process, he says, we really should be looking for ways to see aging as something natural – and to embrace it gracefully and gratefully.
Reading about Kenji Toba got me thinking about the words we use to describe aging – and what that language says about our attitudes toward older people. Think about it. When we talk about 85-year-olds, do our words focus on “disabilities” and “deficits” or do they recognize “abilities” and “assets”? As providers of long-term services and supports, do we “care for” older people or do we find ways to “empower” them?
The language we use may seem insignificant at first blush, but we can’t ignore the power of words to form our perceptions and direct our actions.
What words should we stop using when talking about aging and older people? What new words should we adopt? I’d love to hear your suggestions.
Katie Sloan, AAHSA Consumer Focus Columnist
There’s nothing like a 401(k) statement to give you a reality check on your retirement. Sure, some of the big financial institutions are starting to bounce back from the recession. But the financial crisis promises to have a long-lasting impact on retirement nest eggs, especially for baby boomers.
Dreaming of a retirement filled only with travel, leisure time and volunteer activities? Think again. As our 401(k)s lose value, it becomes more likely that many of us will have to work for more years than we expected, just to pay the bills.
Depressing thought? Maybe not.
A recent study suggests that this turn of events may, in fact, be good for us. The study, published in the October issue of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology and reported in Science Daily, found that people who work after retiring have fewer major diseases and are able to function better on a day-to-day basis than people who stop working altogether.
We’re not talking about working 40 hours a week. The researchers studied people who engaged in “bridge employment” – a transition period between full-time work and full-time retirement in which people work part time, are self-employed or temporarily employed. Having this kind of work makes it more likely that retirees will transition into full retirement in good physical and mental health.
These results, which are based on data from over 12,000 people age 51-61, are pretty compelling. As more of us consider the likelihood that we will have to work during retirement, it is reassuring to know that, in addition to drawing a paycheck, we’ll achieve important health benefits.
There’s another important message here. Bridge employment may be good for retirees, but it can also be good for providers of long-term services and supports who are concerned about the labor shortages that are likely to occur when more baby boomers begin to reach retirement age. Encouraging our employees to work part-time as they transition into full retirement will help our workers stay healthy. But it will also help our organizations maintain a trained workforce that has had years of experience providing quality care and services to our residents and clients. Do you agree?
