By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

You might have seen a little orange buggy rolling up and done the sidewalk outside Ascencion Living Via Christi Village in Hays.

This pedal-powered Berg E-Gran Tour cart is the newest means Learning Cross Child Care Center has of connecting elderly residents at the Village with the child care center’s kids.

The child care center and preschool bought the buggy with a $5,000 grant from the Heartland Community Foundation.

Four people can ride in the buggy a one time — one staff person, one elderly resident and two children in the front. The staff person pedals, which helps energize a small motor in the back. The senior’s pedals have no resistance, so it is a very gentle workout.

Brett Schmidt, Learning Cross owner and director, said the kids and seniors alike have loved the buggy.

Tony Brummer, Village resident, said the rides are the highlight of his days. It also gives Brummer a chance to share stories with the kids. Brummer, a former farmer, has been caring for a large sunflower in the Village’s courtyard and has been using the short outings as a time to talk about the sunflower and gardening.

Schmidt said he hopes to integrate more learning opportunities in these times in the buggy by getting the elders to share stories or pictures with the children during their rides. They may also share prayer time on the buggy in the future.

“Once they are on the buggy, they are a captive audience — the kids are,” Schmidt said. “The residents are free to talk about whatever.”

The kids love the rides so much, the center uses the buggy rides as one of the rewards for good behavior.

Music and Memory

The organization also received a grant from Heartland Community Foundation to purchase a Music and Memory program about a year ago. The program is geared toward residents who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. Each resident in the program receives an MP3 player programmed with music popular from the younger eras of their lives.

“It is kind of like a hardwire back to your memories,” Schmidt said. “So as you listen to a song, music is the last part of your brain that will go with those memories tied with it. You get a long way back to a memory. You get 10 to 15 minutes of kind of the person is back. You can have conversations with them.”

The program can help people with anxiety and depression. Some people experience fewer behavior issues when they engage with music and a as result their physicians can reduce their medication.

One of the residents was becoming very agitated and when she was introduced to the music, she became very calm, Schmidt said. The music makes her smile.

Grandfriends and Via buddies

Learning Cross, an Christian intergenerational child care center, has been at Via Christ Village for four years. Schmidt, a former kindergarten teacher, gleaned the idea for the child care and preschool from a similar program in Coffeyville. He said he could see the benefits to both children and their elders through the two groups interacting.

Every year, families with children at Learning Cross adopt elders at the Village as a “grandfriends.” The families share holiday gifts and drop-by visits throughout the year.

All the children at the child care center participate weekly in activities with both assisted living and long-term care residents. This includes church services and exercise.

“For the children, they learn empathetical responses, and learning sympathy and they are part of a larger community. They are part of a larger community they get to help with,” Schmidt said. “They get to go and do what we call ‘smile power.’ They go and smile and wave. They have created hug power, singing power — anytime they can get someone to smile — that is what their goal is.

“That has been awesome seeing that grow just out of the kids. That was not something out of my program that I developed.”

The residents often call the preschoolers their “grandkids” or their “Via buddies.”

“The residents, when you see the kids come up, you just see a magical moment. A new spark forms or a spark that was there comes back to life. …

“Some of them want the hugs, and some of them will just sit out and watch them, especially in the courtyard when we play out there. Windows open up and shades open up and they just sit in their rocking chairs and just listen to the kids play.”

Many older Americans today live far away from their families, and they fall victim to the three plagues of aging — boredom, loss of purpose and depression. However, Schmidt said he believes the presence of the children helps with all three of those issues.

“We give them a purpose. The grandfriends basically become grandparents again to these kids. They get to tell them stories. They get to play with them. They get to watch them. But also the depression piece, having that life — basically we are injecting life back into the building with the kids. We run down the hallways sometimes. There are always laughs. There are sometimes cries, but it is real life that we get to bring back. It is a magical, symbiotic relationship.”

Sandy Dinkel has worked at the Village for more than 20 years. She said the presence of the children has resulted in a calmer atmosphere that feels less institutional.

“It feels more home-like,” Dinkel, admissions director, said, “You have the kids going through. You’ve got more spiritual activities and the kids involved in the spiritual activities. That is a big, big thing.”

‘I am so blessed’

The “grandfriends” leave a lasting impression even when they are gone. One young girl became particularly attached to one of the Village resident. She often wanted to sit on the resident’s lap, but that resident recently passed away.

“The little girl we told her she is not going to be here anymore. She is in heaven with God. She said, ‘I am so blessed that I got to be with her when she was here.’

“That is what we want to teach is the positive. She was able to affect this lady’s life that much. She was a happy grandfriend that just loved everybody. She didn’t care what was going on. All your worries, everything melted away, when she gave you a hug. That is what we are trying to develop, letting them give back. That girl will remember that for the rest of her life.”

Schmidt said the partnership is wonderful. The children can play in the courtyard and in the a adjoining playground when the weather is nice, and they have many long corridors to walk in when the weather is inclement. Schmidt said they once tracked the children’s activity and found they walked a mile a day even when they were indoors.

The children have play-based learning and preschool. They learn phonics, and most can read before they begin kindergarten. Social/emotional learning is a foundation of the program, Schmidt said.

“We try to get the kids to express their emotions, identify their emotions,” he said. “It is the key to get to high-order thinking, so when they go into school — kindergarten, first grade, second grader, they are learning how to learn from us not what to learn. No matter the environment they are in, we are hoping they will be successful in any classroom.”

The program had seven children when it started. It will have 24 children in the fall and has a wait list until 2022.

“I would say this has been a God journey,” Schmidt said. “It started out so small. I can’t still believe the success we’ve had.”