Summit Fifth Graders Gain Perspective On Aging

SUMMIT, NJ — What does it feel like to age and get older? About 60 fifth graders from Summit’s Lincoln-Hubbard Elementary School experienced first-hand what older adults go through on a day-to-day basis as they participated in sensitivity training at SAGE Eldercare.

The program is designed to help the students understand what it is like to age and gives them an opportunity to interact with older adults who attend SAGE’s Spend-A-Day program.

Students were given activities to complete with glasses that simulated a variety of vision problems and rubber gloves with cotton inside the fingertips that simulated arthritis or polyneuropathy symptoms. The children quickly learned that it is hard to write, use buttons and feel items and that it was also hard to see what they were trying to do with the “special glasses” on.

Another task was for some of the students to cover their ears while others spoke quietly to them showing them what having a hearing loss might be like. They also breathed through straws to demonstrate asthma and a reduced lung capacity that can sometimes occur with the aging process.

Students were also able to spend time with older adults in SAGE’s Spend-A-Day adult day health care center and ask them questions.

Susan Wirth, manager of recreation for Spend-A-Day, discussed dementia and Alzheimer’s with the students.

“This is an invaluable experience because it affords our students the opportunity to grow in perspective, which is something that is so often challenged with the many distractors children face in today's world. More importantly, it allows them to make ‘connections,’ listen and simply enjoy time spent in conversation with their new found friends at SAGE,” said Matt Carlin, principal at Lincoln-Hubbard Elementary School.

To learn more about the training, contact Marianne Kranz at 908-598-5514. The training can be adapted to fit any age group of students or co-workers from a local organization or corporation.

(Photos provided)

Photo 1: A SAGE Eldercare Spend-A-Day participant and a fifth grader from Summit’s Lincoln-Hubbard School became fast friends during a sensitivity training program held at SAGE.

Photo 2: Fifth-grade students at Lincoln-Hubbard School in Summit used altered glasses to see how difficult it might be for an older adult to read with age-related eye disease, one of the activities of a sensitivity training program held at SAGE Eldercare.

Photo 3: Fifth-grade students from Lincoln-Hubbard pose in the Meals on Wheels kitchen of SAGE Eldercare with a generous donation of food. The students brought the food for the SAGE pantry when they came to attend a sensitivity training program.

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