Care home residents give their best life advice to young people for 2025
Care home residents have shared their pearls of wisdom with younger generations, including advice such as “keep smiling”, "love your family" and "appreciate life".
Staff at Belleaire House asked residents to reflect on their life experiences and share the advice they would give to young people today as they move into 2025.
Writing their answers on a whiteboard, the suggestions covered off topics including starting a family, travelling, with many offering tips on living life to the fullest.
Some residents, like 90-year-old Esther, advised young people to focus on their career encouraging them to "pick a job you're interested in'.
Meanwhile, 90-year-old, Joyce, recommended the younger generation "stick in with education."
Others at the care home in Greenock, Scotland focused on family life, with Morag, 86, advising to "settle down with family".
Isabel, 78, wanted young people to learn to "appreciate life", while Margaret, 80, suggested they "go travelling the world" and 90-year-old Ernie urged his younger counterparts to "live life to your fullest."
While there were many messages to be kind, be good to people and live an honest life, Bill, 84, had an alternative suggestion claiming the secret to happiness was actually to "play golf".
Amongst other little seeds of advice Terry, 69, urged younger people to remember they "can be all and everything you want to be," while 88-year-old Alice and 78-year-old Lena provided a simple tip everyone can put into practice immediately – "smile more".
Commenting on the touching initiative Tracy Docherty, general manager at Belleaire House said: "This was such a great activity to undertake as we approach the end of the year, and it generated a fun and lively discussion amongst both residents and colleagues.
"Our residents have a wealth of knowledge and life experience between them, and it was fantastic to see them recognise that, with one of our residents proudly announcing that they were ‘living history’."
While Docherty says they were grateful to the residents for providing some excellent pieces of advice, she did say some were a little too cheeky to record.
"The residents' words of wisdom are very much appreciated - though some of them were too ‘risqué’ to capture, which gave us all a giggle!
"I know I’ll be keeping their words in mind as we move into 2025," she added.
Relationship advice from care home residents
This isn't the first time we have turned to the older generation for life advice. Earlier this year residents of another care home offered their relationship tips to their younger counterparts.
From 80-year-olds with decades of marriage behind them to a 102-year-old with one simple message for lasting love, the residents provided some excellent nuggets of advice on love and romance (...some more surprising than others).
Back in 2022 research revealed the top pieces of advice older generations would pass down to younger adults, which included being kind and starting to save from a young age. The study, by OnePoll for Care UK, ranked some of the pearls of wisdom adults under 40 have been given by their elders – with always trusting your gut feeling, and not being in too much of a rush to grow up, also ranking among the top 10.
Almost all the younger adults polled (89%) revealed they have put advice they have received into action in their everyday life – with over a third (35%) saying they found it very useful.
Almost nine in 10 (88%) are grateful for what they’ve been told by their elders, and over half (56%) say they always rely on them for advice, regardless of how old they are. Mum evidently does know best, as that is who people go to the most for advice (41%) – followed by dads (34%) and friends (32%).
The top areas people seek advice in include finance (35%), health (24%), and car issues (23%).
Read more about ageing:
A care home hosted a Strictly event to raise £2K to fight loneliness. It made £14K (3-min read)
105-year-old says long-life secret is exercise she still does every day (Surrey Live, 4-min read)
8 ways to boost longevity and reduce ‘inflamm-ageing’, according to a doctor (Yahoo Life UK, 4-min read)
