by T McGiver

Created on: January 07, 2009   Last Updated: June 25, 2009

We don't usually ask ourselves whether our children should visit grandparents who have disabilities that accompany old age. They are, after all, family, and it is often a great comfort to them in their last days to be accepted as they are.

Why, then, is it so common for us to wonder about having children visit grandparents with Alzheimer's Disease (AD)? In just about all cases, seeing grandchildren boosts the morale of grandparents considerably - no mean feat when they may be worried about their health or uncomfortable in their surroundings.

What motivates our concern? Is it the well-being of the child? of the grandparent? Or our own comfort and convenience?

If AD is involved, when it comes to grandchildren visiting their grandparents, are we right to be more concerned than with other conditions?

WHAT MAKES ALZHEIMER'S DIFFERENT

Alzheimer's Disease is a form of incurable, degenerative dementia with long-term memory loss, language breakdown, confusion, irritability, aggression, mood swings, and general withdrawal. Rightly or wrongly, it has become the very embodiment of the suffering that may await us in old age.

Most of us, of course, will not be affected. But some of us will be diagnosed in our 50s. And one sex is hit harder: around 70% of AD patients are women.

But it's not only the uncertainty about when and whom it strikes that makes it so fearsome. AD patients also lose the ability to control their lives in fundamental ways. Their speech, thought, reasoning, emotions, and memory erode to the point that they no longer seem to be the people we once knew. As they lose their autonomy, they eventually become almost entirely dependent on family or institutional care-givers.

Seeing the deterioration in the faculties of a parent afflicted with AD can make us anxious about what lies ahead for us. If it's anxiety-producing for us adults, doesn't that also mean that it's too disturbing to put a child through?

CHILDREN: VULNERABLE, YES, BUT ALSO ADAPTABLE

Children, after all, understand much less about life than we adults do. They are, we assume, too vulnerable and naive to be exposed to the suffering that occurs in AD patients at a time of life so far away from their own. Won't knowing that life sometimes comes to an end in unpleasant ways make children less buoyant and optimistic about their own lives?

If we reflect on the assumptions about the fragility of children that underlie these questions, we may realize that we're forgetting about that almost

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