You can make a big difference in the life of a young person. Your perspective, wisdom and learned patience are often what today’s youth need in a world of constant change and challenges.
Youth who have an older caring adult in their life — whether a grandparent or mentor — do better in school, are less likely to partake in dangerous activities or drugs and more likely to continue with their education. That’s according to Amanda Cavaleri, founder of Connect the Ages, a startup designed to bring younger and older people together through storytelling and mentorship.
“Older adults have that macro view of the world. They’ve seen things go through cyclical change and know that things work out. This can give young people hope,” she says.
Echoing Cavaleri, the authors of a Stanford Center on Longevity report write: “Simply stated, older people’s qualities and their affinity for purpose and engagement position them to make critical contributions to the lives of youth who need help the most.”
Here are three ways you can benefit the lives of youth:
1. You Can Help Build Resilience
Not every child grows up in a loving, healthy environment. Children who struggle early in life often lack resilience and the ability to recover and carry on after hardship. As the Stanford report points out, this is where older adults can “complement family relationships or provide important support where family structures are weak.”
What’s more, according to a groundbreaking report by Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, children who’ve endured poverty, abuse or other kinds of stress and still “end up doing well have had at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver or other adult.” Youth who’ve had relatively normal, happy upbringings also stand to benefit from such a relationship. As Cavaleri says, older adults have experienced failure, something that today’s youth need to know is a healthy human experience.
2. You Can Offer Mentorship
Older adults are a kind of living library of experience and wisdom, which they can share with youth in the form of mentorship. Sure, one can volunteer to help younger people in a structured environment, but Cavaleri feels that organic relationships can provide just as many benefits. Her group connects older and younger adults around a shared passion, such as architecture or even skydiving, to surprising results. “After meeting an older adult who was a stranger, and getting to know them, they tried harder to get to know their own grandparents,” says Cavaleri.
3. You Can Help Break Stereotypes About Aging
Young people have the luxury of forgetting that one day, they too will become older adults. But as NYU Steinhardt’s Tracy Chippendale learned, intergenerational relationships allow both age groups to open up to each other’s experiences and learn empathy.
A researcher in gerontology, Chippendale designed a program called Living Legends to encourage older adults to write their life stories. In a multi-center clinical trial, she found that exposure to these stories helped younger adults “see the older adults in a different light and really appreciate all that they offer.” She firmly believes that we should make friends of all ages. “It’s important that people realize [aging] is a continuum, and there are lots of good things about growing older we can share,” she adds. Cavaleri agrees: “We really need these intergenerational connections in our lives to give us different perspectives.”
