Making Friends to Bridge Generations

When two buses filled with elderly folks pulled up to Balboa Magnet School on Thursday morning, a child waiting outside yelled, “Our buddies are here!”

As 12 residents of the Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda exited the buses, children from the school quickly accompanied them, pushing their wheelchairs or walking beside the ones using walkers.

The 19 third-graders guided their “buddies” to a classroom, where the students performed two short fairy-tale plays and sang songs. The children and their older friends also played bingo and ate deli sandwiches.

The event was part of a 4-year-old program between the school and the Home for the Aging, said teacher Angela Bronson. A $3,000 private grant funds the program each year, she said.

It was a special visit for both age groups because the seniors, many of them too weak to travel much, visit the school only about twice a year. But the children visit the elderly at the home once a month, providing arts and crafts, entertainment, flowers, and, most important--friendship.

The visits teach the children, who are paired with one or two elderly people, how to relate to a different generation, Bronson said.

“A lot of relationships are formed, and the children give back to the elderly,” Bronson said. “Some children don’t have a significant elderly person in their lives. These are like their great-grandparents.”

The relationships often continue outside the program. Some of the children’s families pick up the seniors and take them out, Bronson said.

The students also interview their buddies throughout the school year and write short biographies filled with drawings and pictures about their much older friends, which they give to the seniors at the end of the year.

Nine-year-old Kathryn Shields, who is paired with 91-year-old Charlotte Guyer, said she has learned about what life was like decades ago.

“Everything was a lot cheaper,” Kathryn said. “Kids didn’t have video games.”

Guyer said she and Kathryn immediately took to each other.

“I was very lucky to get Kathryn. She’s a very unusual child, almost like an adult,” Guyer said. “She’s patient.”

Guyer almost didn’t show up Thursday because she wasn’t feeling well.

“Coming here has pepped me up like you wouldn’t believe,” Guyer said. “You can snap out of these things with children much better than with the grown-ups.”