g) Intergenerationalism
Infants go to the nursery.
Toddlers go to creche.
Preschoolers go to kindergarten.
Then they all go to school for twelve years where they mix predominantly with children whose birthdays fall six months either side of their own.
Then there are youth clubs and twenties/thirties meets…on and on and on….until you become a Senior Citizen and are entitled to free coffee at McDonalds and entry into a new range of special housing complexes, clubs and cruises.
As a society, we split people up according to age and don’t give it a second thought.
It even happens in the church, which is supposed to be a “family”, an entity, which you might expect would take a different approach.
We believe there is great benefit in olders and youngers living life together.
Perhaps that’s why Grandpa is joining us for a good part of the trip and why we have lived so closely over the years.
This page is dedicated to jotting down our observations of relationships between the generations across the world. We are going with eyes open to find encouraging anecdotes.
This 105-year-old lady lived with one of her twelve children and their kids in Luang Prabang, Laos:
The whole village turned out for a Book Party at the school in Laos:
We found older people embraced the children wherever we went in the countries where people tended to live more intergenerationally:
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