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Many of us who have grown children have been hit hard financially by the economic crisis. Money we thought we'd have to live comfortably on and still help out our adult children is gone. Is that changing our relationship with our adult children? Some of us may be worried about becoming dependent on them, or that they'll be dependent on us and we won't have the wherewithal to help.Or we jsut feel so bad about what's happening that we take it out on the grown kids, as one financial adviser noted recently.

Friends who used their second homes as vacation retreats for their children are having to sell those homes. May not sound like the worst crisis in the world, but it means the loss of a family gathering place and a familiar setting–one that may date back to their children's childhood–for their grandchildren to spend idle weeks of summer.

Friends who had planned to help their children buy a home are finding they don't have the cash to help out with the down payment. Or to pay off college loads. Again, it may not sound like a terrible crisis, but the loss of power–of still being the Big Daddy or Momma–are palpable. So many of us want to make life easier for our children, and this fiscal crisis is playing havoc with that plan. Maybe this is healthy–maybe some of us coddled our children. But a lot of us didn't. We just took great enjoyment from using the money we'd earned and saved over a lifetime to make our children's lives easier. And for many of us, that ability is gone.

How are you coping with fiscal losses? Is it affecting your relationship with your grown children? Or your own feelings about yourself vis a vis those children?