Why Children Need Elders, Not Just Adults

What My Grandmother’s Strudel Taught Me About Raising Human Beings

“Amir! Stop eating the Turkish Delight before the strudel goes into the oven!”

I heard those words every Friday when we visited my grandmother.

My grandmother would be standing in her kitchen, flour dusting her apron like fresh snow, gently stretching impossibly thin pastry across the kitchen table.

The apples were always tart.

The cinnamon was always generous.

The raisins were always soaked.

And hidden amongst the apples…

Tiny cubes of Turkish Delight.

I have never met anyone else who made strudel that way.

As it baked, the Turkish Delight would slowly melt into little pockets of rose-scented sweetness that surprised you just when you thought you knew what the next bite would taste like.

People often asked my grandmother for her recipe.

She would smile.

“A little of this…”

“A little of that…”

“There… now it looks right.”

No scales.

No measuring cups.

No timers.

Just hands that had made hundreds, perhaps thousands, of strudels.

The recipe never lived on paper.

It lived inside her.

I wish now that I had written it down.

Instead, I simply ate the evidence.

But if the kitchen was my favourite room…

The old wooden drawers came a close second.

Every visit, without fail, I would quietly sneak over and begin opening drawer after drawer.

Inside were hundreds of black-and-white photographs.

Some had curled corners.

Some had little tears.

Some had names scribbled on the back in handwriting that looked almost as old as the people in the pictures.

I would sit on the floor surrounded by little piles of photographs.

“Who’s this?”

“Where was this taken?”

“Why is everyone wearing hats?”

“What happened to this house?”

“And why does Uncle Moshe look so serious?”

My grandmother never rushed me.

Never said she was too busy.

Every photograph became a doorway.

Every answer became another story.

Every story led to another question.

Without realising it, I wasn’t just learning family history.

I was discovering where I came from.

Who I belonged to.

Who I might become.

Looking back now…

I realise my grandmother wasn’t simply my grandmother.

She was one of my elders.

And somewhere along the way, our modern world quietly forgot just how important elders are.

Adults and Elders Are Not the Same Thing

We often use the words interchangeably.

They aren’t.

An adult is simply someone who has survived long enough to collect a few birthdays.

An elder is something else entirely.

An elder has transformed years into wisdom.

Not every older person becomes an elder.

And some surprisingly young people already are.

An elder is recognised not by wrinkles…

…but by generosity.

Not by age…

…but by perspective.

Not by how loudly they speak…

…but by how deeply people listen when they do.

Adults often know things.

Elders understand people.

Adults can tell you how to build a house.

Elders know how to build a home.

Adults can teach children to win.

Elders teach them what is worth winning.

Adults answer questions.

Elders awaken better ones.

We Didn’t Evolve to Be Raised by Two Exhausted Parents

For almost all of human history, children grew up surrounded by a village.

Grandparents.

Great-grandparents.

Neighbours.

Storytellers.

Healers.

Hunters.

Gardeners.

Craftspeople.

The old woman who knew which plants healed a cough.

The old man who remembered the last great drought.

The aunt who could calm every crying baby.

The uncle who fixed everything with string, optimism, and an old pocketknife.

Children absorbed wisdom almost by accident.

Nobody sat them down for a PowerPoint presentation titled “Life Lessons, Chapter 4.”

They simply watched.

They listened.

They copied.

They belonged.

Anthropologists believe this intergenerational way of living helped humans survive and flourish. Elders preserved practical knowledge, cultural traditions, stories, and social wisdom that younger generations simply hadn’t had time to acquire.

Today…

Many children spend almost all of their waking lives surrounded by people under forty.

Parents are working.

Teachers are rushing to finish the curriculum.

Everyone is looking at the clock.

Everyone is busy.

Children have never had more adults around them.

Yet perhaps they have never had fewer elders.

Elders Slow Time

One of the greatest gifts my grandmother gave me wasn’t her strudel.

It was her pace.

Nothing seemed urgent.

Tea wasn’t made in paper cups.

Stories weren’t interrupted by notifications.

Walks weren’t measured in steps.

Silence wasn’t awkward.

Children don’t just need people who move fast enough to keep up with modern life.

They need people who move slowly enough to notice it.

Sometimes the greatest lesson an elder teaches is that not everything valuable can be rushed.

Bread rises slowly.

Friendships deepen slowly.

Trees grow slowly.

Trust grows slowly.

Children grow slowly.

Thankfully.

Stories Are How Wisdom Travels

Facts fill the mind.

Stories shape the heart.

Ask most adults what they learnt in school thirty years ago, and many struggle to remember.

Ask them about a story their grandfather told them.

Suddenly every detail returns.

Stories are the oldest classroom humanity has ever known.

Long before books…

Long before schools…

Long before the internet…

There were elders sitting around fires saying,

“Let me tell you what happened…”

Stories don’t simply transfer information.

They transfer identity.

They quietly whisper:

“This is who we are.”

“This is where you belong.”

“This is how our family gets back up after falling.”

The Beautiful Opportunity We Still Have

Maybe your children don’t have grandparents nearby.

Maybe they never knew them.

Maybe life has been complicated.

The good news is this.

Grandparents are not the only elders.

Some children find their elders in an aunt.

A neighbour.

A music teacher.

A football coach.

A librarian who always recommends exactly the right book.

A family friend.

A volunteer.

Or perhaps…

A Kids Yoga teacher.

At Rainbow Yoga, we often say that we don’t teach through lectures.

We teach through stories.

Through movement.

Through play.

Through shared experiences.

Through communal wisdom.

Because children rarely remember what we explained.

They remember how we made them feel, what they discovered together, and the moments that quietly changed how they saw themselves and the world. 

When we create those experiences, we step into one of humanity’s oldest and most beautiful roles.

We become elders.

Not because we know every yoga pose.

Not because our hair has turned grey.

But because we choose to share wisdom with love.

Perhaps It’s Time to Open the Drawers Again

Maybe somewhere in your parents’ house…

Or your grandparents’ attic…

There is an old drawer.

Inside are photographs nobody has looked at for years.

Recipes nobody has written down.

Letters nobody has read.

Stories nobody has asked about.

Open the drawer.

Make a cup of tea.

Ask the questions.

Listen a little longer than feels necessary.

Write the recipe down.

Record the story.

Laugh.

Cry.

Ask another question.

This is even more than mindfulness; it is family.

One day those voices will become your own.

And perhaps one day, a curious little child will sit on your kitchen floor, holding an old photograph, asking,

“Who’s this?”

When that day comes…

Don’t rush.

Tell the whole story… Possibly with some fantastic embellishments to make it even more memorable, because that’s what elders do.

After all, that is how wisdom has travelled from one generation to the next for tens of thousands of years.

One story.

One kitchen.

One elder.

One child.

And occasionally…

One unforgettable slice of strudel with little pockets of Turkish Delight hidden inside.