“Worth Repeating” is a weekly feature on the EngAGE Blog that will bring you previous posts that we think are still timely, interesting, or just plain fun! From 3/ 3/13:
Recently, Karen Austin wrote a guest post entitled “Elderspeak: Baby Talk Directed at Elders” for the excellent Changing Aging Blog. In it, she talks about the all too common tendency to talk down to older people: using a sing-song voice; speaking slowly; speaking loudly; using the pronouns “we,” “us,” and “our” in place of “you” (“How are we doing today?”); using pet names such as “sweetheart,” “dearie,” or “honey;” and other examples. She reports that research has shown that when older adults are exposed to this kind of patronizing language, their performance on tasks decreases and their rates of depression increase.
A personal example: few years ago, my mother, now 90, went to a new doctor. The nurse was incredibly patronizing, often asking me questions instead of her (in spite of my insistence that my Mom was capable of answering them), and repeatedly calling my quite able and alert mother, “honey bunny!” Mom was deeply offended, as was I. And, as a result, the doctor/patient relationship was as brief as possible.
Have you had a similar experience in which you or a family member or friend were confronted with elderspeak? How did you handle it?
A bit about Karen Austin: After spending 30 years teaching writing and literature primarily to traditional-age college students (18-25), Karen decided to focus for the next 30 years on “the generation above me.” Currently, Karen is a graduate student in Aging Studies at Wichita State University and a volunteer working with older adults in a variety of venues.
Two well-known companies in the fashion/cosmetics world have chosen mature women to represent their brands.
“Mr. [Vasilis] Dimitriou, 78, has never met a Hollywood star, but he has painted thousands of them. Nearly every week since the age of 15, he has immortalized legends of the screen in dreamlike friezes of love, anger, pride or temptation — often deftly, sometimes not, but always with flair. . . . Today, he is the last living movie billboard painter in Greece, and one of only a handful in Europe, his craft on the verge of extinction.” Read his fascinating story, and the story of his craft, 
Alexander McCall Smith, 65, is “the scholar who wrote the leading (and only) work on criminal law in Botswana, where he lived for a few years setting up the law faculty with the University of Botswana. Nine universities have granted him honorary degrees. He was a professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh, an expert on medical ethical issues, before he devoted himself full-time to his literary career in the wake of becoming a global publishing phenomenon with his The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, in the early 2000s. (It has sold 20 million copies worldwide.)” Read the full story 
L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez tells the story of Cathy Youngblood, 62:
BenefitsCheckUp
many people don’t know these programs exist or how they can apply.
