PenPenWrites

PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Walking on Eggshells: Our children and their grooming habits

12/06/2021

Friends have returned from a two-week visit with their daughter, her husband and their twin sons. We are having a dinner debriefing on the trip–the tales about the warm weather (the daughter lives in Florida), the sunshine and the beach plus, most importantly, their daughter's hospitality and the chance to spend time with their grandsons every day. They have returned home looking refreshed and relaxed, the visit coming after 18 months of confinement in their home in the northeast where the wind chill is threateningly low.

As we drift past the positive highlights of the trip, they start joking about how they, as parents of adult children, have to keep their lips zipped and not express disapproval at some of the choices their children make. When we get down to specifics they seem almost relieved to tell us about their major zipped-lip challenge. While their middle-school grandsons marched off to school clean and neatly dressed every morning, the parents were, sigh, disturbingly ill groomed–at least from our friends' point of view. Their daughter hasn't had her hair cut since the pandemic hit; it is now down to her waist with the grey growing in above formerly dyed hair. To our friend–the mom–the hair makes the daughter look a decade older than she is and ill-kempt. The son-in-law hasn't cut his hair either, or shaved. His beard is long and straggly and his long hair is tied into a topknot but only when he's working outside.

It's partly a generational thing. Many of us aren't as comfortable with the half-shaved look or the full beard or the long, long hair. And the pandemic has readjusted the younger generation's aesthetics. Our friends, fortunately, kept to the high road during the visit: "I kept my mouth shut," one of them tells me. " I didn't say a word about it, but it was killing me."

She is exactly right. It may be killing them to say nothing, but there is nothing to be gained by alienating a child by commenting on their appearance–whether it's weight, or dress or hairstyle. We may be mortified about the way they look but better to suffer in silence and live with that than risk a fractured relationship with an adult child. Bottom line is, our children have control over their bodies–we don't.

painting: Romare Bearden
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Holiday Traditions: A change in family customs

12/01/2021

Let me not count the many ways the pandemic has changed the way we live our lives–the holidays chief among them. Last year was the outlier when the pandemic was a full-blown menace–we hope never to repeat a Zoom-only family Thanksgiving again.

This year we would have liked to return to our usual family traditions–some of us traveling by air (we the parents/grandparents) or by three-hour car ride (our daughter and her family of three) in order to pile into my son's house (family of five) for 48 hours of turkey, tofurkey and togetherness. But additional needs surfaced (an increasingly frail 92-year old cousin who doesn't live near any of us needed to be included somehow); traditions had to be adjusted.

Our family is not alone in changing holiday rites and passages. A friend who usually spent Thanksgiving with one of her nieces and their small children got squeezed out when each of the nieces went to their in-laws and the in-laws wanted to keep the gathering small.

If the first post-quarantine Thanksgiving is a precursor for the other big holidays of the season, here's what we learned about what "new approaches" worked and which didn't.

In order to accommodate everyone, our family split up: Paterfamilias and I went to our son's house for three days, including Thanksgiving day. The next day we took a train to the city where our daughter and her family had spent Thanksgiving with our cousin. We had a day-after dinner with our daughter, her family and our cousin.

On the plus side: Both dinners were festive, celebratory and full of goodwill and laughs. They were small enough (six people at each one) that we could have inclusive conversations (and those with hearing challenges could hear everyone). We the parents/grandparents were able to spend in-person quality time with each of our adult children and our grandchildren–something that's not always possible when all three families are together.

But: By splitting up, the cousins didn't get to see each other nor did our son and daughter get to spend time together. A brief FaceTime visit on Thanksgiving day helped but not much. And I sorely missed watching inter-family interactions and connections.

The other Big But: We were overly ambitious about travel, especially during a holiday weekend. In order to see everyone we wanted to see, we spent time in two cities within five days, taking one airplane flight north and two train trips south. We are fortunate that we could afford the extra train fare to buy reserved seats and avoid the hustle of boarding a sold-out train and dragging our luggage while we searched for two seats together or at least near each other. We are aging out of that difficult train ritual.

Bottom line: Our post-pandemic planning for holiday get-togethers is a work in progress. New traditions take time to evolve, but splitting up–well, I don't like it.

painting: Carl Larsson
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Holidays and Adult Children: The seven stages of Thanksgiving traditions

11/16/2021

We are on the cusp of setting a totally new tradition for our family's Thanksgiving. It's time. We are no longer young parents. Our kids are middle-aged adults; they have children who are young adults. Extended family members are growing frail and need special attention.

I, who usually embrace change, don't like the changes that are coming our way. Yet, when I look back and see how our family's Thanksgiving holiday traditions have morphed, I take comfort in life's cyclical pattern. Like other families, ours has no stasis; the balanced becomes unbalanced.

We move through our Thanksgiving customs as we move through life–in stages. My family and I have moved through seven of them. Other family's particulars are inevitably different from mine, but for all of us, there are make-overs and take-overs over the years.

Stage 1: Loosey Goosey: Our children are very young. We have moved to a city 4-hours away from where we grew up and where our parents live. We keep the holiday simple and small–as small as the little townhouse we are renting. Two pre-school children less than two years apart in age focus our minds on day-to-day needs rather than elaborate holiday meals.

Stage 2: Friends and Family: When we move to a bigger house and our children are in the prime of their primary school years, we have Thanksgiving dinners with another family. We share the cooking and meal planning, scanning our memory banks to remember which surprising new dish from the previous year our families liked and which should never ever be repeated. Thanksgiving dinner is always at our house: They have dogs; we have allergies.

Stage 3: New Attachments: Our kids leave for college, start independent lives and put down roots in other cities. They form romantic attachments, some of whom appear at Thanksgiving dinner. Attachments became spouses and now Thanksgiving is more than a meal. It is a weekend during which the refrigerator has to be stocked not just for a turkey dinner but for three meals a day and additional guests. The house expands to accommodate bigger beds and pillows as well as more seats at the dining room table.

Stage 4: New Beginnings: Grandchildren transform our Thanksgiving get-togethers into a wild weekend at our house. Blow-up beds and portable cribs accommodate sleeping babies and toddlers. Those in charge of the kitchen have to keep straight our grandchildren's sipping and eating patterns and what their parents permit them to have and what is verbotten–for one family but not necessarily the other. There are multiple trips to airports to pick up and drop off a son and his family and a daughter and hers. By Sunday, we are as flat on our backs as the now-deflated blow-up beds.

Stage 5: Passing the Baton: Our children's families grow bigger. It makes more sense for the two of us–the parents/grandparents–to travel to them than to have eight children/grandchildren moving through airports and highways to arrive at our house for Thanksgiving. Our son and daughter-in-law who have the largest family and house take on the mantel of hosting Thanksgiving. Our routine now is: We arrive two days in advance to help–and to avoid the height of airport congestion. We assist in the kitchen, run errands and set tables but we are no longer in charge.

Stage 6: Zoom. The pandemic is a game changer. No one is going anywhere. No hugs. No sneaks into the kitchen to pre-taste a side dish. No idle chit-chat. We make do with Zoom. Our son emcees the family get-together with photos from the past and a fun quiz about what's happening in those photos, i.e. why have the parents (that's us) let their 10-year-old daughter wear a sweater advertising Joe Camel? Fun stuff. But after an hour, we click off and the goodwill of being together online dissipates. Is Zoom or a hybrid mode going to be the future for family get-togethers?

Stage 7: Frailties: We are negotiating Thanksgiving in a post-pandemic world. It is also a world in which time has been marching on. Grandchildren are taking a gap year abroad. Elderly relatives who live alone in other cities are growing increasingly frail and in need of attention, especially during the holidays. We, the parents/grandparents, are not as spry as we once were. We will make the trip north this year but our three families will split up in order to accommodate the elderly cousin who is alone. It's not just the cousin who's feeling his age. Our children have already raised the question of whether they should come to us. We could, they suggest, rely on store-prepared turkeys and sides instead of cooking a meal for ten or more.

We are on the cusp of something completely different–and not completely welcome.

painting: Norman Rockwell
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Observation: Philip Galanes on our role as parents.

11/09/2021

When our children were young we were on the frontlines: Hyper-vigilant when it came to keeping them safe and confrontational when we feared others posed a threat. Even as our children grow into young adults, we have our super-protective swords at the ready.

But it's time to back off. At least that's what Philip Galanes in his Social Qs column advised a distraught mother. The column's headline and deck spells out her dilemma:

My Ex Risked Our Daughter’s Health for … a Photo Op?

A reader asks for permission to scold her former husband (and his current wife).

Galanes did not go down the scold road. (The dad behaved badly: He took his asthmatic daughter on a vigorous hiking vacation without telling her that's where they were going; the daughter became ill.) What Galanes advised the mom applies not only to her situation but is a reminder to all of us:

Your role is to prepare your daughter for the world, not to fight her battles for her.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Empty Nest: Letting Go of our college kids.

11/02/2021

Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and for some parents, that means more than turkey: The freshman they dropped off at college just a few months ago will be returning home for a few days. Probably for the first time since they left in September. My experience with this happened years ago and yet I still remember the poignancy of that "first Thanksgiving." How stunning and joyful it was to be reunited with our eldest child and to have her sleeping in her room on the third floor again. I also remember how excited she was to be off to visit her friends. A reminder, if we needed one, of how our adult children are moving away from us.

More recently, Kelly Corrigan wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times of the emotional experience of dropping off her daughter at college and of her excruciating awareness of the split path. Corrigan tells us that before she drove her child to campus she (and all other parents of incoming freshmen at her daughter's college) received an email from the campus psychologist. The message: limit contact with your child, including texts; this is a time for your child to "individuate and separate."

In grappling with this dictum–and coming to terms with her sudden awareness that she doesn't "own" her child–Corrigan writes that even though shegave birth to her child and she could trace many of her daughter's features to parents and grandparents, "I didn't have any ownership over her. Wherever she came out of and whomever she looked like and however much she needed from me, she didn't belong to me."

Corrigan turns to psychologists to square this realization. Here is what she says she learned from Ariel Trost about "letting go":

“If we can let go of this notion of ownership and see us as our own and them as their own, it can create a space to marvel,” she said. “Ownership is not closeness.”

Borrowing from Buddhism, Dr. Trost suggested aiming for a compassionate detachment. Not detachment from our children but from the outcome of who they are becoming. “We are working toward a place where we can enjoy each other,” she said.

painting: The Ferryman, Ivan Canu
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grown Children and Their Romantic Partners: Are we allowed to express an opinion?

10/25/2021

As our young adult children move through their twenties and onward, chances are they've had at least one romantic relationship. And chances are that we the parents have met at least one of those romantic partners. I look back at those years when my children were part of the dating scene (it was a while ago; my children now have children who have romantic partners) and remember that not everyone they dated (am I dating myself by using that word?) was my cup of tea. I found most of them wanting in one way or another.

At a time when our children are ranging far from home and tribe to make friends and meet possible mates, it's not surprising that they came home with people we weren't comfortable with, disliked or found inappropriate. When that person looms as a possible life partner, is it okay for us to share our misgivings with our child? When we don't like their choice, is it okay to say something?

The quick answer–and almost every advice column I checked backs me up on this–is no. The only exception is if the relationship is abusive–physically or emotionally.

But what if we see trouble ahead for a variety of reasons–the person seems adrift or is too young or too old for our child.

Here's what Amy Dickinson had to say to a mom whose daughter was in a serious relationship with a man 17 years her senior. "I am wondering," the mom wrote, "whether I'm negligent as her mother by not pointing out the possible challenges, should this relationship continue."

Amy's answer is one for all of us:

Unless there are mitigating circumstances, which you don't mention (he is married, was married, has children or a previous unhealthy history with relationships), you must trust that your daughter will make her own way, as we all must.

A child's job is to grow up. A parent's job is to let them.

A friend of mine found an indirect way to make his concerns known. He not only disliked the man her daughter was seeing, he also found him inappropriate. He and his wife made it a point to encourage their daughter to bring him to all family events; they invited the couple out to dinner often. "We wanted her to see how poorly he fit in with that part of her life that was her family," my friend says. It worked. The daughter broke up with that partner.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Post Pandemic Planning: Let the Thanksgiving negotiations begin

10/18/2021

I have a moment of hesitation every time I step up to do something I used to do before the pandemic: Fly on an airplane; ride the subway; eat in a restaurant; have a dinner party with several friends.

Now Thanksgiving is on the horizon, and with it inter-family negotiations over what it will be like this year. Last year, our family "feast" was virtual. We had fun via zoom with my son and his family and my daughter and hers. We posted old photos and held a family quiz over captions for the photos. We laughed a lot and everyone participated. (Here's my post on how we and other families did Zoomsgivings.)

Now we are free to move about the country and be together in person. I feel that momentary qualm of hesitation. Yet even Doctor Fauci says it's okay. The deeper issue for our family is, will we return to Thanksgiving the way it was before we had to quarantine? How will we adjust to new family circumstances and year-old issues that couldn't get worked out last year? Since our grown children live traveling distance away from us and from eachother, who's going to brave the highways or the congested airports? Will we have to create a brave, new "Build Back Better" holiday?

Discussions and adjustments are underway. The heart wants to go back to the way things were for the past decade or so, but can we? Our families, like most, are in flux. One granddaughter is in Italy–she won't make it home for Thanksgiving. A 92-year-old cousin, who had not been part of our Thanksgiving revelries, lives alone and has grown frail. He's in need of a holiday pick-me-up, but he doesn't live near any of us. How do we bring holiday company to him? Do we, as my daughter put it, "abandon tradition." Logistics are such that we may have to split up who goes where and change the day of the week that we celebrate the holiday and with whom.

It's a delicate situation. So many moving parts, so many possibilities and so many sensitive feelings. We have to take care. We could so easily end up with a family misunderstanding or rift. But there's no turning back to yesterday–make that, the year before the year before.

“The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on…" Or so Omar Khayyam reminds us.

I'm hoping that our moving fingers will write a plan for a Thanksgiving we'll all enjoy, where everyone can participate one way or another and where we'll find lots to laugh about. Let the hesitancy end; let the diplomacy begin.

painting: Norman Rockwell
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Legacy Planning: Update on dividing up the non-monetary stuff

10/11/2021

Last week I posted Philip Galanes advice to a mother whose daughters (two out of three) coveted the pearl necklaces the mother no longer wore. His suggestion: Ask the daughters if they wanted heirloom pearl necklaces–or other items in her jewelry box–as a way of dividing up the mother's estate.

Since that post, Galanes has heard from another reader who says she's been asking her daughters for years if they want various family heirlooms and all she gets is, "I don't care." What to do, the second reader wants to know.

Galanes' answer is a reminder to many of us who have been rightsizing, downsizing or just facing the frustration of trying to place family treasures with the next generation.

Unless you have reason to believe your children are not being forthcoming (it can feel creepy to say "I want that after you're dead!), take them at their word.

painting:Paul Cezanne
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Legacy Planning: How to apportion the non-monetary stuff

10/05/2021

Our treasured goods may be stuffed in boxes under our beds, sitting in clear view on our coffee tables or hanging prominently on our walls. Aside from whether or not our kids will want the stuff, the question is how to apportion the bits and pieces that we've accumulated over our lifetimes and, for some of us, the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents as well. Not just the stuff that has monetary value but the sentimental stuff as well.

If we leave it to chance–that is with, say, a reminder to our children and heirs to share fairly–we won't be around to suffer through a fight over the needlepoint cat pillow or the diamond earrings Poppy gave Nanny. But we shouldn't rest easy over the idea of missing the battle. We don't want our family falling apart just because we're not there physically anymore.

I've written here about how some friends have tackled the issue: making lists of who should get what, of holding "auctions" in the here and now for who gets what later and of tacking labels onto the bottoms of furniture and pictures. Into this morass comes the ever-sensible Philip Galanes and his Social Qs column. He addresses a query on this issue from a reader whose three daughters are squabbling over her two pearl necklaces that she no longer wears. The youngest has asked to borrow a single-strand necklace to wear occasionally; the oldest feels the mother has unfairly given the necklace away to her younger sister. The middle daughter could care less. There is also a triple strand necklace that no one seems interested in. The mother's plea to Galanes: "Help."

His kernals of wisdom, one of which points to the legacy the pearls represent:

Ask the daughters "if they’d like an heirloom pearl necklace. If all three say yes, remake the triple strand into two necklaces. If your middle daughter remains indifferent to pearls, give her first choice on another piece of jewelry to be claimed after you die.

Then let the girls take turns choosing from the remaining items in your jewelry box and keep a list. It may sound macabre, but letting heirs pick from personal property can be a sensible way to allocate it, in advance and without conflict.

painting: Cezanne. Peppermint Bottle
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Parenting Memories: Stolen moments with our grown children, and they with theirs.

09/28/2021

My daughter is aglow. We are on a FaceTime call but I can see the happiness radiating from her face. Her daughter, who started college this year, came home for a day. They took a drive into the country, went on a short hike, stopped to book shop, had lunch out. They talked about everything and nothing. No pressure, no agenda. Just a stolen day together.

How I remember–and still feel–the joy of spending a day or even a few hours alone with a grown child. Usually, when I see my grown children they come encumbered. In their young adult years, it was with friends or by papers to write or places to go. As the years flew by there were spouses and children. To have a grown child to myself for a few hours is a treasure that's hard to describe: A special warmth, a comfort, a feeling that all's right with the world–or will be. It's not a mom thing. Their dad guards his moments alone with his children as well.

To hear my daughter last night–and a few weeks ago my son–bask in the glow of spending time with a child who no longer lives under their roof is to relive those companionable and spontaneous moments. The cycle of life is repetitious and reassuring. With so much in the world collapsing around us–our weather cycles, public discourse, ability to compromise–this is one small thing to feel good about: Our grown children will treasure these moments with their children as much as we did and still do with them.

photo: Maia Lemov