Generational Therapy

When elderly people debilitated by diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s get together with youngsters from Advocate Health Care’s preschool center, the adults are treated with a kind of respect that they don’t always get from their peers.

“Kids don’t traditionally look at these people and see an impairment,” says Gwynne Chovanec, director of the Older Adult Service Programs at Advocate Health Care, a network of hospitals in Illinois. “They just see someone who’s loving and nurturing and wants to spend time with them.”

Similarly, some of the children who participate in the program suffer from behav ioral problems, such as attention deficit disorder. “You put them together, and the adults don’t see a child with problems. For a few minutes, these children are just like other kids,” Ms. Chovanec says.

The network makes a practice of getting the two groups together at least once a week to make crafts and to socialize. Together, the elderly people and the kids read, play games, and make and decorate cookies.

“We just see it as a natural therapeutic way of enhancing the life of both the older person and the younger child,” says Ms. Chovanec.