Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
My Story
I know a lot about a lot of things because for my entire life I have been a most voracious reader. I think as a kid I lived in the library I still would but it's closed because of the pandemic. I have now taken to loving e-books.
What I know the most about I think are things in the realm of psychology. I went to graduate school in psychology because I wanted to be a researcher instead I got in with a group of psychologists as Developmental Psychology was just becoming a field and I got totally intrigued with the entire lifespan.
Over my many years of teaching I have taught classes on everything from Child Development to Aging. So I do know a lot about the lifespan. And I also know how the research has changed over the many decades that I have been in this field.
And because I myself have been aging over this same period of time I know a lot about aging from a very personal perspective. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it - at least for this blog post.
The Problem As I See It
It can be a problem or not, but the fact is we have no real definition of old, elderly, or other words related to aging. As with most things psychology, terms change over time because norms change over time. I've said it before and I'll say it here:
normal is a statistical term and It changes as what is being measured changes
A Solution?
I spend a lot of time reading and writing. I write a lot about aging, I read a lot about aging, and one of the many things I get so annoyed about is reading words like "how do you teach old people over 40 to use computers?" Or in terms of the current pandemic, pronouncements like: "the elderly should stay home." Every country has its own definition on who those elderly are who should be staying home.
Is it people over 50 or 60? or over 80? And why is it everybody of those ages? The pandemic has made me think a lot more about how we label different ages and stages of life. It's been something I have pondered and written about over my lifetime and there is no answer - because as I said above it's all based on statistics and things change and therefore norms change - but in most cultures the labels never change - which is why I hate using specific labels - because they stick.
It's an ongoing conversation that needs to happen. And it has to Include the media who portray older people as useless, in wheelchairs, forgetful, and even useless. I see friends online saying things like "oh I had a senior moment" because they forgot where their car keys were. That's not a senior moment - that's normal. Some of us have been doing that since we've been driving - and that's often when we were teens.
And we have to stop saying "oh you don't look your age" because that means we have a very different idea of what specific ages look like and those ideas reflect our bias about those ages.
I have another blog, Grow Older Better, where I do write about aging - well I used to write about aging. Now that I'm getting back to blogging and redoing my website - I will be writing about aging over there.
What are your thoughts on aging? Thank you for your input...