Mutual-Admiration Society

Photograph by Gus Ruelas

On a typical day at One Intergenerational Day Care Center Program, in Los Angeles, toddlers can be found dancing the macarena, baking muffins, or playing bingo with people who range in age from 60 to over 100.

The center, created in 1994, offers one solution to two problems: a shortage of child-care providers and a growing demand for relief from the 24-hours-a-day responsibilities shouldered by adults who take care of elderly friends and relatives with diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Most of the day-care center’s operations are financed by fees charged to program participants, but the center receives grants from corporations and foundations that cover about 30 percent of older people and 15 percent of children who could not otherwise afford the program.

The joint activities benefit both age groups, says Donna Deutchman, director of development. The children, whose grandparents might live far away, receive one-on-one adult attention and heaps of affection. An added bonus, says Ms. Deutchman: “Our kids come out of the program and look at disability in a much better light. They see disability as part of life — not as a handicap, just as something different.”

For their part, the elderly people get more than an emotional lift from the youngsters. They have a chance to work on verbal and motor skills that have become impaired through illness, and they feel needed when they show kids how to throw a ball or recognize a word.

Here, two day-care participants create a Play-Doh sculpture together.