Unwashed hair. Unkempt clothes. A beer belly and then some. When our grown children don’t look their best–not even close to it–it’s upsetting. Embarrassing. Annoying. Is it a blow to the pride?–you want to show them off but here they are looking down at the heels. Is it plain old materialism?–they should be showcasing the…

Do we give till it hurts? Between my friends, their friends, friends of theirs and people who’ve clicked onto this blog, there’s a recurrent theme: How much, how often, for what and until when do we help our kids out financially. It’s all very personal, of course. But here’s a little statistical oversight from a…

Are our grown children our friends? Can they be our best friends? Not likely–there is an emotional component that bars the way. If a friend–best or otherwise–loses a job, gains too much weight, becomes ill, we’d worry about them and talk to them directly. "Are you OK?" we might ask. "Is there anything I can…

My dentist has two sons: One lives nearby; the other half way across the country in Michigan. Every Christmas, the sons and their families come to her house for the holidays. This year, when she was discussing the holidays with her Michigan son, he brought up the question of travel. He didn’t know what to…

It’s November and all thoughts turn to summer vacation. Should we be making plans for a multi-family love-in with all offspring and theirs? The first year we tried that, we bundled into one 4-bedroom condo: alpha daughter, her hub and a one year old; uber son, his wife and a 5-month and 2 year old.…

When it comes to where and when we help our children financially, pater familias and I have taken a Marxist tack: To each according to their needs. It’s never overt. An offer of a helping hand here, a fiscal boost there. We’ve never totaled up who’s gotten what or whether the "books" are even. But…

So a friend asked, When does the shlepping stop? [See below] It’s a broader question, of course: When do we stop doing all those little things for our kids that they ought to–could?–take care of themselves? It’s partly an instinct to make life easier for them–as they struggle to find a footing in the adult…

A Vermont friend’s daughter has been to college in New York, to a first job in Boston, to a stint in Africa in the Peace Corp, to a university in Michigan to get her master’s degree, to an internship in Ecuador. Now she’s back home, 30 years old, and job hunting–here and abroad. For each…

I started to make a list of tools to use to find the road to a healthy relationship with my grown children–Notes to Self. The first iteration ran to things like, keep your mouth shut, walk on eggshells, wait to be asked for advice. And then it struck me, those were rules for keeping the…