“They are so mean to each other,” the administrator tells me.

“There is a group of them that says terrible things to some of the other residents.”

“They act like children – the way they fight with each other!”

“They are a bunch of bullies and should be ashamed of themselves – at their age!”

Do I believe that elders act this way?

Yes.

Do people of any age sometimes act this way?

Yes.

Why is my stomach hurting when I think about this topic?

Perhaps it is because no one likes a bully (or maybe I am remembering the time my childhood bully punched me in the stomach). But it is unsettling me and I’m not sure why yet. What I do know is that when I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach, I have to hold the topic or idea in front of me and work through it. Will you help me do this, for the sake of my stomach?

There has been a lot of attention lately about “elderly bullies”. My sense is that it might refer to a lot of different ways of acting, but in this context the term bully is usually used to describe older individuals who are mean to others – they might exclude them from activities, or generally treat others in an insulting, rude, or offensive way.  The term is usually reserved for actions from one elder to another, not necessarily from an elder to a professional, although this could also be the case.

More broadly, the term bullying is defined as “unwanted aggressive behavior” toward another. Many definitions also include that this behavior is repeated and that there is a power imbalance between the individuals.

Bullies have unfortunately been around forever. Most of the time, when we have talked about bullies, this has been centered around children. So, this is kind of new to consider bullying among elders. However, it is not necessarily a phenomenon for just the very young and old. People of any age bully each other. Have you heard of mean tweets?

I worry over how we are thinking about and addressing bullying in elders, and how this might be related to their age and the way we think about growing older.

I have more questions than answers. However, perhaps these questions will challenge us to think more deeply about bullying.

What are we considering bullying?

I’m not entirely clear on when and how we are using the term in the context of elders. What is actually happening to label it as bullying? If Mrs. Wilson one day yells at Mr. Gomez in their art class, because he is “going too slow” is this considered bullying? Or, is it just a rude way of Mrs. Wilson expressing her frustration? If a group of (older) women tell the “new person” she can’t sit with them for lunch, are they being bullies? Or, are these ladies exercising their rights as adults to choose who sits with them (even though this is not polite)?

If the people involved were younger, would we consider it bullying?

Is bullying in the eye of the beholder? Maybe it is defined by the reaction of the person being bullied. Does calling an interaction bullying really help us to understand the situation and look at it from different perspectives?

Is bullying even the right term?

I imagine we are using this term to reflect what we see in bullying among children, especially given recent, necessary attention to this painful experience. Perhaps there are similarities to what we see in bullying with children, but there are also big differences. Similarities might be the aggression, the sense of ganging up on an innocent person, and the bully demonstrating power and control.

The differences might be that with bullying in children, we are talking about humans who lack growth – they are developmentally immature. In other words, they don’t know much yet about how to interact in this world. They have little life experience. With bullying in elders, these are individuals who have extensive life experience and are developmentally mature adults.

Here is another major difference. With children, we, “the adults”, are in a position to guide them regarding how they should act. This is based on the premise that children do not know better. With elders, you could argue that we, “the adults”, do not need to guide them on how to act, as they are adults too. In fact, they could have more life experience than we do. So, it is adults telling other adults how to act. It is important to note that elders likely do know what it appropriate behavior, even if they are not acting in ways that we think appropriate.

When we talk about older people as bullies it attaches a label that is used primarily with children. It has the potential to suggest that this behavior is child-like, and that the people doing it are children. Yet, they are adults.

The term bullying might not adequately capture the complexities of the actions of an elder, especially when these actions are possibly the result of a lifetime of experiences, personality, the current environment, coping mechanisms, etc.

Could the way we see bullying be reflective of a paradigm of growing older?

There is pretty clear evidence that this unfortunate paradigm does exist. In this paradigm, older people:

• Should always be nice.
• Should always “behave”, i.e. do what people tell them to do, or don’t do what we don’t want them to do.
• Need to fit into “our” way of doing things.
• Are essentially like children and need to be managed.
• Are seen as helpless.
• Are not asked for their perspective.
• Need to be protected and kept safe at all costs.

According to this paradigm, older people who are not nice, and do not behave the way we think they should, need “us” to tell “them” how to act.

Why would elders bully?

I imagine there are many reasons why elders are acting like bullies. Maybe they were always bullies. Maybe this is how they exert power and control over others because they feel powerless and are lacking control. Maybe they are living with deep emotional pain. Maybe that is how they respond to seeing others around them living with various cognitive and physical challenges, and it reflects their own fears. Maybe they are complex human beings.

Why are we so focused on bullying in elders (as opposed to other adults)?

It seems like most of our concern about bullying related to elders is with those living in long-term care (nursing homes, assisted living, continuing care retirement communities, etc.) or otherwise being served by a program like senior centers, adult day, etc. In other words, all situations in which “we”, the professional, have both a sense of responsibility for their security and well-being as well as sometimes a sense of control over their actions.

This is a unique situation when you consider that bullying happens at every age, and we are not always focused on addressing it in other situations like we are with elders. Bullying happens in the office, in PTA meetings, in book clubs. Yet we don’t often see anti-bullying programs in these situations, to manage the young-to-middle-aged adults. The difference with elders seems to be that we, the professionals, think we need to manage bullying. This leads me to a related, important question.

What is our responsibility, as professionals, to intervene in situations in which we see bullying in elders?

When do we step in? Certainly, do not want elders to be hurt by offensive, aggressive words and actions. We want to provide a sense of security. At the same time, we need to be mindful of paternalism and infantilizing elders, even if we feel they are acting immature.

What about people with dementia who are being treated terribly by their peers? What if they cannot defend themselves?

I suspect the answers to this are complex and dependent on many factors, including the level of harm done and the ability of the person being bullied to defend himself or herself. It seems like it also goes back to understanding what is actually happening in a situation, from various perspectives. Perhaps our responsibility goes beyond the specific bullying situation to our role in bigger issues like creating community, connection, and a different culture of aging and care. So…..

What are “we”, as professionals, doing to create a culture of bullying?

I know this is not easy. But we do need to think about this. Bear in mind, this is not about blaming ourselves. This is about being introspective and authentic, because we are caring people who want to do the right thing. Let’s consider…..

How do we inadvertently create a culture in which people might not value each other, or know each other, or be afraid of each other?

Do we send messages that some people are “better” than others by separating people based on their independence/dependence level or cognitive status?

Do we boss older people around? Tell them what they need to be doing? Tell them what they should not be doing?

Do you limit people’s autonomy so that they feel they need to control situations and others with aggression?

What are some things we can do to address this?

In the spirit of person-centeredness, understanding who people are and what matters to them, it is important to consider how we can have open, honest conversations surrounding bullying. I say “surrounding bullying” because I think it is more than what the term suggests, in terms of a focus only on the aggression, hate, rudeness, incivility, etc.

Although it is important to discuss what bullying means to people and how it should be addressed, it is more than that.

It is about the standards we create and uphold on how we treat each other in a community.

Maybe there are things we can do that can re-frame this conversation so that, rather than just focus on bullying, we focus on creating community, connection, purpose, acceptance, empathy, etc.

Perhaps we can even frame this conversation in terms of well-being – how we can explore what people need and create a culture that supports these needs in a very deliberate, proactive way. If we use the Domains of Well-Being from the Eden Alternative  as an example, how do we create a culture that supports identity, growth, autonomy, security, connectedness, meaning, and joy for each and every person we are serving. Would this create a bully-free zone?

This starts with the voices of elders. As we think more about what bullying means, elders, including the bullies themselves, need to be a part of this conversation. One way we can approach this conversation is by finding commonality in our shared experiences of feeling belittled, discriminated against, unacknowledged, ignored – things that likely each of us have experienced at some point in our lives, even bullies.

We don’t have the right language to address the experience of growing older and older people themselves. Here are some recent headlines I have come across:

And…

It is interesting to me that, particularly in these examples, older people are characterized by a role that is not at all related to the point of these articles. If these articles were indeed about grandparenting, that would be appropriate. However, they are not.

How about these headlines:

The term geriatric refers to a branch of medicine that focuses on the health of people who have grown older. Neither of these headlines are related to medical situations, yet they use the term “geriatric”.

I think this is reflective of several things. One is our general discomfort of how to refer to older people. It is also indicative of a narrow view of growing older, as if the only way we can think about an older woman or an older man is as a grandma or grandpa. Or in the context of medical care. Perhaps it is also reflective of our need to categorize older people into nice little boxes. Or maybe it is reflective of how we really don’t know who older people are.

So what is the language we can use to talk about the experiences of growing older and who people are as they grow older? There have been numerous debates related to this over the years. Do we call people senior citizens? Older adults? Seniors? Elders? Retirees?

The conversations have mostly been at this somewhat superficial, yet necessary, level. However, in order to really find the right language, I think we need to deepen this conversation. Because it is not just about what words we use to describe a group of older people. It is considering what we are wanting to say about growing older. The very fact that we struggle with what to call people who have grown older is evidence of a conflict. And although I think some of this conflict is driven by wanting to be respectful to elders, and not offending people, there is something deeper that we do not really talk about all that much.

There is a tension or paradox in the language we use that reflects tension in our paradigm about the experience of growing older and how we see older people.

On one hand we want to acknowledge elders or elderhood as something special, unique, different. We want to honor elders as important members of our community, with life experiences to be valued. On the other hand we don’t want to stereotype or group people just based on their age. We don’t want to draw boxes around them so that they are separated from us, or seen as “other”. However, the very fact that we yearn to give this group of people a categorical name is evidence that we DO think of them as different than other (younger) people.

Should we think of them differently? How?

On one hand we want to acknowledge the unique experience of growing older, perhaps by specifically connecting people’s ages with what they are doing or saying. On the other hand, does it matter to distinguish age when we talk about how people are living? Does that abnormalize aging?

I wonder how these headlines above might have been different. Maybe it should simply be “Glamorous Women of Instagram, at Any Age.” We seem to be uncomfortable saying “61-year old MAN” vs “61-year old GRANDPA”. And maybe it seems important to reference a person’s age. Perhaps this is because we want to highlight an achievement and make a point about their age in attaining this achievement. But then it is as if we are saying, “Despite this woman being 65, she is fashionable! Can you believe it!” or “Despite this man being 61, he is fit! That is crazy!” We wouldn’t expect to see a headline that says, “Glamorous Teenagers of Instagram” or “Handsome 25-year-old Man Models at Milan Fashion Week”. Is that because this is considered “normal”?

On one hand we want to celebrate elderhood. On the other hand, we want to see people not for their age but for who they are as individuals.

There is a paradox in this, a tension that I think is really important to consider and talk about. How do we strike a balance in which we are honoring people for their life experience, and considering their unique place in our life span, but also acknowledging they are not just their age. How do we celebrate older people for who they are as secondary to their age, not despite their age?

Perhaps we need to get to a point in which we don’t need to be surprised that an older person is glamorous or strong. Certainly it is important to show positive examples of growing older, and I do think this is part of what will change the culture of growing older. Yet, I also think we need to be careful and thoughtful about not suggesting that there is an archetype to growing older. You don’t need to be glamorous or strong to be great. But good for you if you are! It really is a perplexing challenge.

When we relegate people to categories based on their age alone, whether we call it “seniors” or “elders” or “older adults”, there is the danger of attributing qualities to them as a group, rather than as individuals. Whether those qualities are negative or positive. Even when we call people “elders” (which is regarded positively as a respectful term), this might evoke an image – perhaps an attribution to this group that they are all similarly wise or sage. I do believe that elders are wise, because of their life experiences, and that growing older has the potential to transform your view of yourself, others, and the world. However, this likely looks different for each person. Their life experiences serve them in different, unique ways. There are elders who are perhaps “wiser” than others, even though we might ascribe this quality universally to all elders as a category. In this case it is a positive quality, but it does make you think about how categorization is serving us, and the implications for generalizing a group of people based on age alone.

Certainly, we do this with other age groups, but I think it is different. We might generalize about teenagers or millennials, for example. But with older people it seems so much deeper, and we really struggle to see people as individuals outside of these group identities, these boxes into which we put them.

It is not just about our insufficient language for the experience of growing older or people who are growing older. We also don’t have the language for how we support each other as we grow older. I mean the products, services – the system of “care”. Much of the language we use is at worst ageist, paternalistic, and medical. At best, it simply does not adequately characterize a way of supporting people as they grow older (or grow with dementia) that is enabling rather than disabling, dignified, and well…normal. None of this language is adequate to encapsulate unique, diverse human beings who are not necessarily different because they are older, but because they are multidimensional individuals whose dimensions are even more developed through life experience. Who are living life, like we are all trying to do.

We have developed an entire “system” of supports and services for older people whose membership to this group is based on age alone. There really has been very little attention to the individuality of people as they grow older.

How can we differently present and describe supports and services for people as they grow older? Especially in a way that walks this fine line of honoring life experience and membership in a unique stage of life, while acknowledging individuality and normalcy. That does not simplify people into categories like “grandma” or “geriatric”.

Here is a small example that came into my head. I was driving back from the grocery store and I saw a private bus whose passengers were all elders. It was the type of bus that is used by a senior center or care community. As I watched them I thought about how it must be so weird to be on this bus that seemingly advertises that you are all 1) old and 2) not “able” to drive. This bus is so reflective of a categorization of people based on age that suggests all these people are the same. In a way the bus is emblematic of your “dependence”. And yet, how untrue that is. That bus could be bringing everyone somewhere very fun. These individuals could be returning from a civic project in which they volunteered their time. They might have been working on the community garden. Or, helping people register to vote. The reasons for people being on this bus are infinite. But we might just see a bus of old people.

You might be thinking, what about school buses? School buses carry a group of people of the same age. Yet, there is a totally different connotation than a bus of older people. Other than seeing the people on a school bus as students, I don’t think we make assumptions about them as a whole.

So, how could we present this bus of older people in a different way? Could we use a little bit of humor in how we think about and frame these things? What if the bus had signage that said, “On this bus there is __ years of life experience. So be careful!” Or, “The people on this bus raised __ children, served in __ wars, and have been there, seen that.” Or, “Here is some advice from riders of this bus, “Slow down. Pay Attention. Be nice.” Something authentic, and maybe fun, that could change this tragic discourse of “geriatric people” on a bus to seeing them as multi-dimensional human beings. Just like us. Yet different.