Sunday, January 09, 2011

Things I learn from my elders

One of the elders in my life is losing her faculties, and one of the consequences is that she literally cannot learn new skills. Existing skills are still more or less present, but acquiring new skills has become basically impossible.

This struck me, because all the time I've known her she's always had the attitude that she's too old to learn anything new. And now she actually is. Food for thought for if I ever find myself falling into those thought patterns.

I keep thinking of solutions to the problems of aging that would require a computer and/or the internet. It would provide entertainment and socializing, automated reminders could be set up to compensate for lapsing memory, it would make it possible to read (by enlarging text size) as eyesight fails - some days it sounds like panacea! But we can't use them because she never became comfortable with using a computer and never learned to use the internet. And now she literally cannot learn.

I'd strongly recommend to anyone who has an elder in their life who isn't on the internet to get them there now, so they will have internalized the skills already by the time they actually need them the most.

3 comments:

laura k said...

This is incredibly relevant to my life.

We tried to do this with my mom - and she really wanted to get on the internet, because she loves to learn.

She did learn how to use the internet and to use email, but it is always a struggle, will never be effortless, and she never moves out of her comfort zone of the 3 or 4 things that she knows how to do online.

I never realized it before, but your post makes me understand why this is: she learned too late for her brain. She was unable to acquire new skills, even though most of her peers (some of whom are older than she is) were able to.

impudent strumpet said...

That really scares me, because if I'm interpreting this correctly you're talking about over a period of years. The idea of spending years and years unable to learn is just too scary.

wenderjeser said...

I love your post and I am very sorry for your friend. We all eventually stop learning in a way. We all fall into a patten I should say. We follow a routine everyday and we just keep doing the same thing. It's deppressing to think that we can not learn again but do we even put attention to what we learn now?