
The year in grandparents
The best stories from my site and beyond in 2019.
A middle school in Ohio has a novel take on the Senior Prom.
When three young men saw an older woman eating dinner alone at a restaurant in Oxford, Alabama, they asked her to join them. It turned out that she was a widow, and that the next day would have been her 60th wedding anniversary.
Kids are often closer to their maternal grandparents than to their paternal ones, research suggests, perhaps because mothers tend to maintain closer ties with their own parents than fathers do.
Depression is common in Zimbabwe. Psychiatrists are not. So grandmothers are being trained to step in.
Children who see their grandparents at least once a week and describe these visits as “happy” are much less likely than their peers to buy into negative stereotypes about elders, a new study suggests.
Many kids in India are growing up far from their grandparents, so a grandma in Bangalore is using her smartphone to tell them bedtime stories.
“This is such a joyful place,” says a vice president of the St. Ann Center for Intergenerational Care. “The adults bring joy to the kids, the kids bring joy to the adults.”
A new app will connect young people who need housing with empty-nesters who need income.
When she was in her mid-80s, Kusum Lele lost interest in everything. A friendship with a 24-year-old brought her back to life.
For the most part, we spend time with people close to us in age. Here’s why we should branch out.
“When I tell people I live in a retirement community, I get a lot of mixed reactions,” says 26-year-old violinist Tiffany Tieu. “Some people don’t believe me.”
Kids need love. Grandparents are good at giving it. That’s why an army of them is being recruited to serve in the public schools of Syracuse, New York, where too many students have been getting suspended and too few have been graduating.