Day Care Center for the Aged

“Papa, are you ready? Hurry up, I am getting late for work” said my cousin as she picked up the clothes from the sofa and started to fold.

Her 80-years-old dad emerged from his bedroom and came to sit on the sofa next to me.

“You know they treat me like a little child, these children of mine” he said, annoyed at being forced out of his slumber.

Cousin starts to adjust her father's collar and buttoned his shirt, asking him to stand straight.

“I want to go to the toilet” he said and he walked towards the service room and locked the door. After much prodding and tapping on his closed door, he relented

Every morning was the same story. Cousin did not want to leave her father alone at home so she dropped her father at day-care center for the aged for few hours in the morning but her father was most reluctant to go and he preferred sleeping all day.

Every morning she had to forcibly take him to Day-care center for the aged.

But once there, he is fully entertained,

The volunteers involve the senior citizens in various activities like playing ball and other indoor games, painting and drawing. There are separate rooms for different activities that include gym, reading room, physiotherapy room, dinning room and a garden. It is a small institute with about 30 senior people of which only ten are regular.

The volunteers are informed about the medication of each person. Breakfast, lunch and evening snack is served at the institute. It is observed that women are more cheerful, they gossip, laugh and even argue amongst themselves whereas men are more reserved and often wander off in dark corridors lost in their own world.

There are many such day care centers for the aged in this town, at Tenerife, where I have come to spend some time with my family. This is a boon for the elderly whose children are too busy to look after their parent’s needs and health.