Supporting Families across Generations

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Families play a vital role in an individual's life. There are so many important people that can have such a great impact on thoughts, words, and deeds. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, siblings, and parents have so much to offer. Through different personal experiences they have had, they are able to share words of wisdom and comfort. "The adult child-parent and grandchild-grandparent relationships provide satisfying emotional bonds, as well as tangible help and assistance between generations...In earlier times, most grandparents died before or shortly after their grandchildren were born and it was unusual to have more than one living grandparent when a grandchild was an adolescent. However, today 97% of 20-year-old grandchildren have at least one grandparent still alive and 76% still have a living grandparent when they are 30 years old." It is amazing to see how much of an impact medicine has caused on the family and being able to learn from our elders. They have so much to share from their life experiences. I think that a lot of times the elderly get pushed to the side and not appreciated as much as they should. I admire and love hearing the stories they have to share about the "good 'ol days."  Growing up I was always taught the importance of respecting my elders. I saw great value in learning so many different things from them. It is such a great thing for adult parents to seek advice and counsel from their elderly parents as they experience life themselves as their elderly parents once had. They have so much wisdom to offer in a way that the adult parent may have not even thought of initially. We must never take the elderly for granted because in actuality, they do so much for communities and families themselves. We should always seek opportunities to reach out, serve, and love these family members. For there is always strength in numbers and we can definitely find this within our families.