The retirements years aren’t exactly all fun. Senior citizens may be young at heart, but their minds and bodies may not readily agree. And for their care giving adult children, each day brings new challenges because of their parents’ decreased levels of ability and unfamiliar behaviour.

Health care specialists credit genetics as the primary factor in establishing the relationship between aging and life span. Having a healthy lifestyle and environmental conditions also play an important part in hale and hearty aging.

So if you don’t have a family history of any major health condition, stopped smoking for good, and religiously eat an apple a day, chances are you’ll live to a ripe old age. But this doesn’t exactly mean that you won’t feel the effects of aging.

Moving about, for example, becomes more difficult and trying as emerging joint problems cause pain and discomfort, like arthritis, which health care professionals regard as the primary cause of reduced activity of the elderly.

At about this same period, the heart begins to work harder as its wall muscles thicken and become less elastic. Also, the arteries become stiffer, which further complicates blood flow.

At these changes progress, the need for assisted living becomes a bleak reality for most parents. Oftentimes, they will not admit to needing any help, or easily own up to …

This is when your baby declares himself a powerful communicator. Up until now, your baby’s smiles have been strictly internal reactions to things he finds engaging, but no longer. Now, he wants to engage you to share positive emotions with people around him.

The fun begins when your baby starts to smile in reaction to a pleasing or surprisingly delightful external event, expressive faces, soothing voices, clapping hands, a favorite toy.

This externally motivated smile is partly due to your baby’s ability to establish longer eye contact and attend to visual and auditory stimuli. The frequency of these smiles increases as your baby becomes more attentive to the rest of the world.

And though this smile is simply a reaction to sensory experiences – not yet a social response-there is much you can do to encourage it.