For Seniors: How Grandparents Can Improve Family Relationships

Assisted Living

By Karl Edmunds:

Playing with grand kids for many seniors in today’s environment means sitting and watching the grand kids play video games or perhaps even participating in a video game, if invited.

The art of direct and active interaction with family members is almost lost. Society is being sucked into a world of electronics that often doesn’t support relationship building. So take my challenge and target a weekend where you and your children and grand children leave the electronics behind and engage in fun activities that may be considered non-traditional, don’t cost much, if anything and promote better family relationships.

Leaving the blogs, the web, your email, reality shows and TV may seem impossible but it is rather easy and best of all highly rewarding. To get you started, consider the following tips and ideas for setting an agenda of fun:.

Target a Weekend: Coordinate with family members and find a good weekend that will work. Get a commitment to participate and then request each family member to recommend an activity. The activity may be new or it may be an old standby but it must allow everybody to participate.

For example:

Nightly story telling
Contest for the best self portrait painting
Hikes in the mountains
Ball games in the summer
Ice Skating in the winter
Card games or board games
Treasure hunts or neighborhood scavenger hunts
Eat Together: Great family memories are often made during meals together.
Have breakfast and lunch buffets that everyone can help prepare.

Have everyone recall a good memory with someone else in the group. Increase the drama by having everyone answer an interesting fill in the blank question submitted by each person such as:

Who is your favorite actor?
If you could have one power over people, what power would you select?
What is your most embarrassing moment?
Organize a Craft Project: Select a place in the home that is set up just for crafts. Create a theme, organize teams and set a timer and see who can make the best craft project for the selected theme within the time set. Give an award for the winner.
Dissolve Barriers with Charades: Few things loosen up a group faster than charades and the ones that need loosening the most are the seniors in the crowd. Great memories occur when young family members see the older people give charades their best shot. You can even provide props that can be used such as house pillows, pots, kitchen utensils, empty boxes, toilet paper tubes and old noise makers.
A Weekend Journal/ Photo log: Find the historian in the family and be sure to take plenty of photos for all the participants. Or pass out single use cameras to everyone and have each person take their own pictures during the weekend and see what incredible memories are captured. Also, set a place aside for everyone to write a sort of journal entry about the weekend.
Make Your Memories Live: At the conclusion of the weekend it is always fun to sit around with some great snacks and each tell stories about good memories, fun trips, strange moments, fearful times and spiritual journeys. These times of sharing weave a family tapestry that holds the group together when the going is rough.
An unplugged weekend with family doesn’t happen without planning and a willingness to take a risk. Sure, old wounds may surface, past offenses may be revisited but if everyone is committed to having fun, and seeing what is good about the time spent, it will all be worthwhile.

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For more than 20 years, Karl Edmunds has been a noted author within the business and management consulting arena. As a senior, he now engages his curiosity and observations about life to write about key issues of importance to the growing community of seniors (Boomers), and the value of living life to the fullest every single day. Give me your comments and suggests at http://For-Seniors.org