Teens Share Positive Feelings About Old People

I still have difficulty thinking of myself as old, but we've been a part of Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community's Park Village since the fall of 2011. VMRC began as an "old people's home," and all of us residents are "senior citizens." We are privileged to live in this unit sandwiched between wonderful next door neighbors who, like all members of the human race, are getting older every day.

Thanks to a teacher friend at Eastern Mennonite School, I recently got some interesting feedback from a younger generation about how they view 80-year-olds like myself. At my request she had 45 teens in her classes write responses to the following:

1. What four words come to your mind when you think of someone in their 80's? 

The word that came up most often (32 times) was simply old, a largely neutral term, but the next three words were positive: wise  (17), grandparents (12) and retired 9. Slow (5) was next, followed by experienced (4), kind (2), loving (2), free (2), and sweet (2). There were numerous other positive words cited, like caring, nice, peaceful, story teller, and stable. Single mentions of negative terms included fragile, cranky, frail, grumpy, wrinkly, gray, fat, and worried.

Overall, I found the results more positive than expected. 

2. When would you likely no longer look forward to having another year added to your numerical age?

The youngest age chosen was 16, with a reference to his or her finally being able to drive. The next was age 21, followed by 25, 29, 30 (4 respondents), 40 (6), 49,  50 (6)  60 (3), 70 (3), 75, 80 (2), 85 (3) 90,  100 (4) 101, Never (3). 

I was impressed by the number of teens saying they would keep looking forward to each next birthday with anticipation rather than with dread. 

3. What four words come to your mind when you think of someone in their 20's? 

I was really interested in seeing how their feelings about 20-year-olds compared with their perceptions of those in their 80's, and whether the words chosen for my age group would be mostly positive or negative. 

The words youthful or young came up most often (25 times), followed by college (13,) adult or young adult (10),  parties (6), adventuresome (4), learning (4), energetic (4), broke or poor (4), free (3), busy (3), and cool (2) and there were single mentions of  responsible,  beginning, love, discovery, strong, energetic, passionate, happy, along with negative terms like inexperienced, dumb, stupid, naive, alcohol, confused, immature, crazy and irresponsible. 

This was by no means a scientifically done research, but I was pleased by how mature and how positive the results were, given the common perception that teens have mostly negative attitudes toward old people.