Tagged with seniors …

Teens Mentoring Seniors and Mobile Phones

Saw this article, Want to Know What Your Cell Phone Can Do? Ask a Teenager, published in a Patch.com Reston,Virginia edition. The article describes how middle and high school students, from schools in the Reston, Virginia area, volunteered to be cell phone tutors with seniors, showing the elders how to use mobile phone features such … Continue reading →

Friends or Friends of Friends: What’s the Difference?

Many of our senior parents use Facebook, and they are having great fun. However it’s important to help them understand the importance of carefully accepting friends. Seniors need to understand that strangers should never  be accepted as electronic friends, and understanding the difference between “friends” and “friends of friends” is critical. The potential for privacy … Continue reading →

Senior Emergency Centers at Hospitals

If you have taken aging parents for a noisy, confusing, not to mention long, emergency visit, you will want  to keep well-informed about hospitals that are developing facilities expressly tailored to seniors. Yesterday, March 14, 2011, The New York Times New Old Age Blog posted an article, Emergency Rooms Built With the Elderly in Mind. … Continue reading →

Banishing the Myths of Aging

The University of Pittsburgh Institute on Aging has a superb website, filled with information and resources on aging and supplemented with links that can help people solve problems and better understand medical conditions. The site is easy for seniors, families, and caregivers to navigate. Many of the resources are Pennsylvania specific, however others, like the … Continue reading →

Seeking Better Things to Buy as We Age…

A must-read article, In A Graying Population, Business Opportunity, appeared in the February 5, 2011 New York Times. Reporter Natasha Singer describes her visit to the MIT Age Lab as well as her experience wearing the Age Gain Now Empathy System (listen to an NPR system about these special suits), and she writes about the need for … Continue reading →

Cold Where You Live? Keep an Eye on Elders

Is it getting cold where you live? Here in my mid-Atlantic location, the bitter cold hit a few days ago, with wind even, and we’ve been bundling up every time we go outside. On the way in and out of the supermarket I’ve noticed quite a few older seniors who are clearly bothered by the … Continue reading →

Too Many Medications? More Aging Parent Health Problems?

Polypharmacy is a serious problem for many seniors. Here on AsOurParentsAge I’ve written multiple posts (links to a few at the bottom of this page) about the medications that our aging parents take for various chronic conditions. I’ve wondered, after considerable experience with my husband’s and my parents, why they have so many, and more … Continue reading →

Holiday Gifts: Buying an iPad for Your Senior Parent?

If you like this post, read some of the other descriptions of our Father/Daughter iPad adventure.  iPad for Dad, #1, iPad for Dad, #2, iPad for Dad, #3,  iPad for Dad, #4, iPad for Dad, #5, iPad for Dad, #6,  iPad for Dad, #7, iPad for Dad, #8,  iPad for Dad, #9, iPad for Dad, #10, iPad for Dad, #11, iPad for Dad, … Continue reading →

Aging, Falls, Music, and Dalcroze Eurhythmics

How interesting to read about the research Effect of Music-Based Multitask Training on Gait, Balance, and Fall Risk in Elderly People (abstract), an article published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The article is not freely available from the medical journal, so to read it you will need to speak with a librarian or go to … Continue reading →

Protecting A Senior Parent’s Online Privacy

Every time I visit my parents, I check their computers to be sure the privacy controls are on the maximum settings. Since we all use computers all the time, significant privacy concerns exist, but seniors have even more concerns, because they welcome and enthusiastically use the added communication opportunities that the Internet provides. Moreover, few … Continue reading →

Advertising: Do Seniors Need Media Literacy Training??

Most advertising that sells things to seniors frustrates me. An article, from the Tucson Citizen, gives but one example of just how much target people who are older, in this case by the AARP. AARP Advertising to Seniors, posted about a year ago in October 2009 by the newspaper’s MedicareBlogger, tells the story of an 80-year-old … Continue reading →

Senior Falls: Different Types – Different Interventions

If you have aging parents who fall — and most of us have some experience with parent falls — read the article about senior falling in the September 9, 2010 Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. On its website (not active in January 2012) , the Mobilize Boston Study organization that conducted the research states that, “The purpose of the … Continue reading →

Long-lived Seniors Give Advice to Med Students

A delightful article appearing in the September 7, 2010 Cleveland Plain Dealer describes a panel discussion presented to second year medical students at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Panel members, all in their 90’s, told the medical students what physicians need to do to be more helpful to elderly patients. The article, Elders … Continue reading →

Scams and Seniors

My amazing 83-year-old mother has not found a technology that she does not want to learn. Computers, scanners, Facebook, mobile phones, printers, e-mail, you name it. Most recently she learned to text — though her texting circle only includes three people — me, and my daughter (her granddaughter), and my cousin, Sandy. So it was … Continue reading →

iPad for Dad, # 14: A Report from Dad

When my daughter and son-in-law provided this iPad, it was with the knowledge and recognition that I never honed my computer skills to my satisfaction. Nevertheless, I made significant strides using a laptop and writing paragraphs of opinion over the years. The laptop, while useful, could be complex. The iPad is not. I have been … Continue reading →

Yes, Grandma is on Facebook

Join Facebook?  For three years I avoided the site. I knew that some of my friends from work, church, and other activities were joining, but I just did not feel like it was a fit. My daughter, then in graduate school, used the social networking site, and she occasionally suggested I get started with Facebook. … Continue reading →

iPad for Dad, #6 – Choosing an iPad

If you like this post, read some of the other descriptions of our Father/Daughter iPad for Dad adventures — iPad for Dad, #1, iPad for Dad, #2, iPad for Dad, #3,  iPad for Dad, #4, iPad for Dad, #5, iPad for Dad, #6,  iPad for Dad, #7, iPad for Dad, #8,  iPad for Dad, #9, iPad for Dad, #10, iPad for Dad, #11, iPad … Continue reading →