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Becoming a grandparent is one of the greatest joys. Spending time with grandkids and bonding is an enjoyable experience for both generations and can have a lot of benefits for both the children and the grandparents.
But just having grandkids does not help you access these benefits, reported USA Today. Today, millions of grandparents in the US are helping to raise their grandchildren and this is assisting in keeping the caregivers brains sharp.
A study that was conducted by the American Psychological Association and published in the journal Psychology and Aging, found that caregiving for grandchildren can help slow cognitive decline in seniors.
Why Study Caregiving?
Grandparents taking care of grandchildren plays an important role for families and communities, according to a press release from the American Psychological Association. But what it does for the grandparents was an open question, stressed the lead researcher Flavia Chereches, MS, of Tilburg University in the Netherlands.
She said in the press release: “In this research, we wanted to see if providing grandchild care might benefit grandparents’ health, potentially slowing down cognitive decline.”
Chereches and her research team examined data from 2,887 grandparents all over the age of 50 who participated in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. The participants answered survey questions and took cognitive tests three times over the course of the study.
The survey questions revolved around whether the participants provided care for their grandchildren, how frequently and what it consisted of. Things like whether the grandparents cared for sick children, helped with homework, cooked meals for them, and whether they took them to school also mattered. The grandparents who provided childcare scored higher on memory tests and verbal fluency.
“What stood out most to us was that being a caregiving grandparent seemed to matter more for cognitive functioning than how often grandparents provided care or what exactly they did with their grandchildren,” said Chereches.
What are the variables?
With the cost of childcare rising, many grandparents must take care of their grandchildren so the parents can work, according to USA Today. Estimates are that 42 percent of working parents rely on grandmothers for childcare. But it has to be voluntary.
“A lot of them feel taken advantage of,” DeeDee Moore, founder of the grandparenting advice forum More Than Grand, told USA Today. She added that one of the top things that brings people to her platform is “grandparent babysitting burnout.”
She said it was especially important for families to get together to discuss boundaries and expectations so that caregiving roles work for everyone.
Still when it works, the benefits to grandparents in terms of brain health, mental health, and being less lonely are vitally important, reported The New York Post.
With the number of people with dementia expected to double in the next 30 years, activities that can help you stave off cognitive decline are extremely important.
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