Well, more than once when I was a kid (but old enough to do most things myself, say, from age 8 to 12), I spent a week with my GREAT GRAND PARENTS. In their home. Helping my great grandmother cook, helping my great grandfather read the paper (in fact I remember him reading me the funnies when I was probably about 2 years old.

Being around older people isn't bad. I have very clear ideas about what the good life for myself as an older person might be like, and I am therefore neither lost nor afraid as I age.