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

Our Generation’s Gift to Our Daughers and Granddaughters

02/10/2020

Renoir: Mother and Her Children at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

We came out of college ambitions ablaze. This was the 1960s and 70s. We weren't going to be our mothers. Even though the culture and our parents told us otherwise, we went out and got interesting jobs–jobs our mother's couldn't even dream of. One of my college friends got a public relations job at Lincoln Center. Another did research for a consulting firm. I was a letter's correspondent for Time Magazine, answering reader complaints about Time's coverage of the Vietnam War or its cinema reviews.

Then we married, had children and realized how easy it had been to be trailblazers when we were young and unencumbered. When, and if, we tried to go back to work, there were no supports for us–no reasonably priced day care or after-school programs, no cultural acceptance or parental encouragement.

I had coffee the other day with my friend Sue who I've known for decades. We reminisced about how it had been in the 1960s and 70s. She talked about how, when her first child was 8 months old, she decided to take a part-time job. Although her husband was supportive, her parents and his parents were not. They drove from their homes in suburban New York to her apartment in downtown Washington D.C. to dissuade her, telling her that her baby son would suffer from her "neglect," that she was being a bad mother. "I was part of a woman's support group–we were 5 neighbors who were also stay-at-home mom," Sue recalled. "We talked through the guilt and conflicts we faced if went to work or to graduate school, and that's what saved me." She took that part-time job, had another child and went on to start her own successful management consulting business. Two of the women in her group became lawyers, another also started her own business.

When Sue's sons married, one of the brides was in medical school; the other, an investment banker. When her daughters-in-law had children there was, Sue says, no question they would continue their careers.

In my family, my daughter, like Sue's daughters-in-law, never questioned that, once she had my beautiful little Grand, she would take her hard-earned PhD and continue to become the professor and writer she wanted to be. My daughter-in-law took a different path: She had been a bank manager but now she loves being a stay-at-home mom to three children. She takes her work as seriously as my daughter takes hers.

We have come a long way, even if our daughters and granddaughter are sometimes knocked about by glass ceilings and under paid or are dismissed for being a homemaker. One proof of how far we've come: When our daughters and granddaughters hear about how it was for us, they can't believe it was ever so. But it was. We moved the needle a little bit. That's our gift to them.

READERS: What sort of experience did you have as a young mom re-entering the work world or deciding to be a stay-at-home mother. I welcome your comments here or send me an email.

Stone: Mother (mine) with her two children, 1940's
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grown Kids and Their Pets: Another family member to worry about

01/29/2020

photo credit: P. Coleman. Tao in her prime.

Our daughter's dog is in pain. She has been diagnosed with cancer. Tao–a "rescue" dog that is part black lab, part white-spotted sheep dog–is the sweetheart of the family. Indulged. Loved. Petted. Patted. Scratched (She prefers a vigorous rub behind the ears.) Walked often. Fed with various treats. She has pride of place in the family car. She walks with a jaunt to her step when she's taken to a coffee shop or on an errand. She is docile but alert when tied to a post outside the store–she bides her time with dignity. She has her favorite stops–mostly shops that offer her a doggie treat or a snuggle and a greeting by name.

Everyone loves Tao. And now it is hard to see her in pain and to see our daughter and her family wrestling with what to do. The tumor has been biopsied and tests have been run. The cancer is aggressive. It is no longer just in her leg–that rules out amputation. They are talking to the veterinary oncologist about chemotherapy. It took 3 weeks to get an appointment with the vet oncologist. What does that say about families, the deep affection they have for their pets and the depths to which those who can afford it (or barely afford it) will go to keep them alive and, hopefully, well.

It is so easy to say that we can do for our pets what we can't do for our human loved ones: We can put them down and out of unendurable pain when the time comes. But I can see that such a decision is not one my daughter and her family are willing to talk about right now. They are focused on helping Tao feel better. If she can't be cured, they are intent on keeping her out of pain, whatever the cost and for however long they can.

Tao was my first Grand pet and is my only Grand Pup. (I also have two Grand bunnies as well. One of them has had severe health issues.) So here I sit, hundreds of miles from the scene, feeling sad and helpless to give aid or comfort. A member of the family is in pain. Parenting grown children extends to caring and worrying about their pets as well.

photo credit: P. Coleman Tao exercising her senior rights.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

The Joy of Grandparenting: Do we need help to get it right?

01/20/2020

"We're pregnant." That's often how our grown sons or daughters let us know they and their spouses are starting a new family. Whatever the wording and from whichever child it comes, the message is a joy to our ears. We have visions of cuddly grandbabies nuzzling up to our chins or taking their first step in our living rooms. Our hearts fill with the idea that there will be a new generation with whom to share our wisdom–to say nothing of a big chunk of our genes. We'll play with them. Be silly with them. Spoil them when their parents aren't around. Oh the fun we'll have.

We can get way ahead of ourselves and right from the start. We may make plans to be there for the birth–whether or not we're invited. Or decide to meet our little heirs the day after they take their first breath. Surprise! An unexpected visit from the grandparents who live thousands of miles away.

Whoa. It's concern about actions like these that have created a groundswell of courses on grandparenting. From New York to Seattle and on to Chicago and Houston there are classes on how to not mess up the grandparenting thing. Who would think advice is needed but grandparenting can be pretty complicated.

We may know best about burping and diaper changing and feeding schedules, but we are not in charge. Moreover, we aren't the only grandparents involved. Our child is not the only new parent in the family. In short, we can easily offend and strain relationships with our son- or daughter-in-law, or their parents. We need to tiptoe on those eggshells. It's important to get it right from the get-go.

“Ask your children what they need." That's the core of the advice Sally Tannen gives at a grandparenting class she teaches in New York City." ‘How can I help you?’ is probably the best gift you can give them,” she suggests. “It will go very far toward allowing relationships to flourish if they feel supported in their role as parents.”

Another key suggestion: “They’re feeling so vulnerable as new parents that they hear everything through the lens of criticism, no matter what we say. And they push us away. They want to be the bosses of their own lives and their own kids.”

Not that we didn't know that from our own experiences when we became new parents and our parents may have offered more advice than we wanted. But sometimes our grandparenting enthusiasm runs high and we forget what it was like for us.

We want to be helpful, but grandparenting is another and very similar page in parenting grown children: We have to remember not to try to take over.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Holiday Togetherness: Bumbling through three-generation family gatherings.

01/09/2020

When we were young and in our parental prime, the big holiday dimmers were at our house. Our best friends and their children joined us; we shared the cooking. Even as the years passed and the children became adults and added spouses or significant others to the holiday, we kept to our formula. Among the many pluses of sharing the feast with friends was that it kept each family's hot spots off the table (so to speak).

The more things change, the more adjustments we have had to make. Our friends have passed away, their children are married and have Thanksgiving with their new families. Our children have put roots down in cities far from us and from each other. Our son's house has become the most convenient central meeting place for our family. When we gather we are ten–two grandparents, four parents and four Grands (plus one grand-bunny who gets an inordinate amount of attention). Without "outsiders" to keep the conversation from straying into the uber-personal, we are all at peril of making a blunder, of inadvertently stumbling into unproductive, hot-spot territory. And there's lot of time to do it. All of us are awake and together from morning 'til bedtime–gabbing in the living room, taking walks outside, helping in the kitchen, nibbling a light lunch before the Big Dinner, which we plan for 5:00 knowing that means we'll be sitting down by 6 or 6:30.

It's a lot of time together, a lot of interests and concerns to cover. Beer and wine are available to the adults. Tongues loosen–or as a drinking friend of mine likes to put it: the governor comes off.

All of which is a long way of saying we had a "governor off" moment. An awkward question was asked by an aunt of a teen-aged niece. It was a mortifying moment. The tide of conversation moved on and was forgotten by all except the teen, who escaped further notice by lavishing an inordinate amount of attention on the bunny.

Would that question have come up if we had friends in the party mix? Would the conversation have remained far enough from the personal not to veer into mortifying territory? Would everyone have been more cautious about what they said? Who knows. Is it possible to have a multi-general, multi-family get together and not have an awkward moment, an "I wish I hadn't said that" minute. After all, it's the high and low moments that color our recollections, as in, Remember the year when the bunny got loose in the garage or the Thanksgiving when Grannie crashed the touch football game.

All I do know is that on the airplane flying home this year, Paterfamilias, who has occasionally been too frank or critical at our holiday dinners, leaned in and said, "Well, that was a nice Thanksgiving, wasn't it? We didn't make any blunders."

Score this year as a plus for us.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grandparenting: Getting a thanks for the gifts we give

01/02/2020

'Tis the season to receive Thank You notes. The present-giving is behind us. If we weren't present at the gift-opening moments–and that's true for those of us who live far from our children or whose children are spending their holidays elsewhere–we may be waiting for the snail-mail delivery of a much-desired handwritten Thank You note. It's a tradition that is steeped in what our culture tells us is the proper way to acknowledge the time, trouble and affection someone–that's us–has taken to buy and deliver a gift. The note brings joy.

A lovely tradition, yes. But also one that's been disrupted by–what else?–technology. Our children and grandchildren are used to using email. texting and occasionally Iinstagram or Facebook to communicate and they also use it to let us know how much they appreciate whatever it is we've done for them. It's the thought that counts.

This year we here at Grown Children central have been lucky enough to see how that thought counted. Both of our adult children were thoughtful enough to photograph or video the opening of gifts we sent–and to text the moment to us minutes later. Oh joy. In one photo, a Grand hugs our gift to her heart. In another–a video–our 11-year-old rips the wrapping off the present we sent and emits shrieks of delight. She then followed up with an email whose subject line read: THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH. Other grands texted lovely and loving thank you remarks right after opening their gifts.

It was so immediate. So pleasure-filled. Do we really need formal, handwritten notes after that?
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Holidays without the Kids: Finding ways to make the best of it.

12/23/2019

We are alone for the Holidays. Our children and grandchildren are elsewhere. This is the fallout from having children who marry spouses whose families have holiday traditions they want to honor with their presence. When our children were young, our tradition was to escape the hoopla and take the family skiing. But our children are grown now with families of their own, live in cities far from us and are creating their own ways of observing the Season.

We're not alone in this. There are lots of reasons why adult children spend their holidays with other parents or friends or doing something else. Many of us have found work-arounds. Some of our friends have time-shifted the holidays. That is, they pre-celebrated or are post-celebrating the holiday at a time and day more convenient to gathering everyone together. Good will to all.

But that still leaves the vacuum that is the day of the holiday itself. Christmas, in particular, can feel like the world has ghosted us, that everyone else is gathered around their living rooms, singing carols, opening gifts, eating Christmas dinner and thinking about peace and goodwill to man. (Well, maybe as an outsider looking in my imagination is over-firing.) But the fact remains that on Christmas day stores, restaurants, theaters, museums and other amusements have shut their doors. Shout out to movie theaters for keeping their screens lit.

What to do? Not all of us will over-compensate by crowding into Chinese restaurants. One set of friends whose children are otherwise occupied made reservations for Christmas dinner at a very chic–and fabulous–country inn. Friends of theirs–also without the company of the children from either his or her first marriages–will join them.

Other friends are leaving the country–off to Baja, Mexico to loll in the sun and enjoy water sports while their children celebrate the holidays skiing and hiking in the deep chill of New England.

And then there's always a good book, Netflix and freshly popped popcorn. Stream The Crown or Jack Ryan and, poof, before we know it, it's the day after.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Observation: Offering unsolicited advice to grown children is a no-win.

12/10/2019

When it comes to raising their children, our sons and daughters are not perfect. Or maybe they are but their spouses have too heavy or light a hand. Correcting behavior or disciplining their children is a touchy business and when we get to see it up close and personally, we may not like it. We may even think they are taking the wrong approach–either too tough or not tough enough. We worry about our grandkids' pysches.

We need to get over it. When it comes to general advice, our kids rarely want to hear from us if they haven't asked. Child-raising advice doubles the ante. We can't win by butting in or making suggestions later.

Philip Galanes of Social Q's may or may not have to live with the zipped-shut mouth within his own family but he gives similar council more elegantly and with more practicality than I do. Here's his answer to a woman whose daughter-in-law yelled at and, from the grandmother's perspective, belittled her 17-year-old son during a family meal. After the event, the woman offered her daughter-in-law what she described as "some advice you can take or leave.” Result: daughter- in- law will no longer take her calls.

After advising the writer to "Keep apologizing at regular intervals and hope for the best," Galanes offers this suggestion. It applies to all of us who have the urge to intervene when we see our grown children discipline their children and are sure we know a better way. (We may, but we've already had our shot.)

…If one person is treating another badly, the immediate need is comforting the victim, not asserting dominance over the aggressor. Better to have taken your grandson to a skateboard shop (or anyplace he likes), spoken to him kindly and let him vent. That may have done him some good and given you more context for understanding his difficulties with his mother, rather than starting a war with her that you can never win.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
Emerging Adults: Big adjustments ahead as teenage kids morph into independent adults.

12/03/2019
He's a psychologist who specializes in adolescence but Carl Pickhardt also has a lot to say about the next stage: young adults (roughly twenty-somethings) and their natural and inevitable independence from us, their loving and occasionally controlling parents. In a recent newsletter, he laid out the basic changes in our relationship with our grown-up young 'uns. This period of development, he notes, is a time when our children have gained "functional independence and a sense of identity." That is, our newly minted adults should be able to tell themselves, "I’m on my own and I know who I am.”

In the real world, young adults have their struggles coming to terms with this sense of independence and self awareness, but so do we. Let me quote Pickhardt on the range of losses we may feel as the transition takes place:
- Demotion: parents lose positional superiority. Interpersonal standing is now equitized. “I can’t pull rank of ruling authority anymore.”
- Distance: parents lose central importance. Parents become more peripheral to young adult life. “I’m more of an outsider now.”
- Disappointment: parental expectations are unmet. Old dreams do not match the emerging reality. “He didn’t turn out all the ways I anticipated.”
- Disapproval: parents don't like some daily decisions being made. In the young person’s place, they would choose differently. “We don’t agree with her priorities.”
- Diversity: parents lose some old sense of similarity. The adult child life is increasingly unfamiliar. “Her lifestyle is so different from ours.”
- Despondency: parents lose accustomed contact. Primary intimacy and importance are found elsewhere. “I miss the old closeness we used to share.”
- Deprivation: parents lose current information. They feel more out of touch with what is happening. “I'm not regularly told what is going on.”
- Directness: parents lose spontaneity of communication. There is more talking carefully. “I’m more diplomatic about what I say and how I say it.
How to adjust–while doing no harm. Pickhardt has a warning on how important it is that our children make the transition.

Proceeding as though your adult child will stay as family-centered as the adolescent usually doesn’t work too well. Instead, by emphasizing certain parental roles, more closeness can often grow. A few suggestions follow.
- Parents can become cheerleaders – celebrating accomplishments.
- Parents can become supporters – providing listening.
- Parents can become motivators – encouraging effort.
- Parents can become followers – expressing interest
- Parents can become mentors – advising when asked.
- Parents can become companions – providing welcome company.
- Parents can become independents – leading separate lives.
- Parents can become informants – sharing home and family news.
- Parents can become helpers – being on family call.
- Parents can become requestors — asking for assistance.
It's the future we have been building towards–that day when our children will be independent, sentient beings who'll mature into adults who can, let us all hope, live productive lives and rise to the occasion of caring for us in our dotage.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Holidays with Grown Children: The good, better and stress of family togetherness

11/25/2019

Why say it again. Here's a re-run from a year or two ago about the sweetness and the challenges of a "one big happy family" Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is a family get-together favorite–for the most part.

It's easy because there are no gifts, decorations or other "extras" to drive everyone to hyperventilate.

It's fun because it's a gathering of several generations of family under one roof–plus the occasional "orphan" or two, which usually brightens the conversation.

It's simple because the meal is pre-ordained. In our family, we've settled into a routine of who will do what–especially the vegan variations. (Shout out to Whole Foods for its very edible vegan fruit pies and pumpkin pie.)

That said, Thanksgiving isn't all that stress free, especially for the parents of the grown children and the grandparents of their children. When the holiday means three to four days at the home of one of one's grown children–when the mantle of hosting has passed to the next generation–there can be a lot of uncomfortable "down time."

We who provide extra helping hands in the kitchen (the stuffing/dressing is my domain) do not feel it as much as those not drawn to kitchen duties. This was especially true this year when one of the Grands in whose home Thanksgiving now takes place turned 16 and was the very proud possessor of a brand-new driver's license. He was Volunteer #1 for any and all errands and store pick-ups. That meant Paterfamilias, who usually broke up the "down" time by running errands, was out of a job. Not fired so much as by-passed.

"Down" time aside, when our grown children and their spouses get together–our children don't live near each other or us–there is a lot of reconnecting. We see each of our grown children and their children several times during the year, but our grown children have fewer face-to-faces with each other. Long and short of it: We're a bit of a fifth wheel at the reunion. It is so wonderful to have both our children and all our grands together under one roof for at least 24 hours, but it is also a battle to feel relevant and be heard.

We should remember–though it's hard to reconcile ourselves to–Lao Tze's philosophic advice:

Your silence is as beautiful as the Harvest moon.

In another bit of poetic advice ("for the second half of life"), Lao Tze says this (as re-interpreted by William Martin in The Sage's Tao Te Ching):

Whatever your losses,

hope and happiness can be yours.

Act each day with compassion

for yourself and others.

Let each inhalation bring you peace

and each exhalation dispel your fears.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Parenting Adult Children: Are we doing more for our grown kids than they want us to do?

11/13/2019

oil on canvas, R. Lemov

We love to do things to help out our adult children. It may be little things like packing up lots of leftovers to send home after Sunday dinner. Or sharing access to our Netflix account. Or babysitting so new parents can enjoy a date night.

Little things mean a lot. But sometimes we step over the line. When my mother flew up from Florida for her semi-annual two-week visits, I would go off to work and she would give my kitchen a top-to-toe scrub, including re-organizing my pantry and re-arranging my plants. I resented it. This was not help I asked for or wanted.

Maybe that's why I reacted viscerally to a recent commentary cum question from a Social Qs reader about a mother-in-law who seemed to have lost her sense of boundaries.

Returning home from a trip during which my in-laws stayed with our kids, I discovered my mother-in-law had replaced our kitchen chairs with a set she bought at a neighbor’s garage sale. Who does that? …. I am appalled that someone would change my furniture without permission. BTW: I hate the chairs. What should I do when she comes over and sees that mine are back?–Anonymous

Here's some of what the Social Q guru Philip Galanes had to say, first about the chairs and then about the crossing of lines by "helpful" parents:

It is the greatest disappointment of my week that I can’t show our readers a picture of these chairs, for the sake of anonymity. (They are wantonly hideous!) Sadly, though, there is a bigger issue here: boundary-busting by your mother-in-law.

You don’t mention any history of inconsiderate behavior on her part….It also seems unlikely that she’d be respectful for years, then — wham! — new chairs appear without your blessing.

Acknowledge the germ of generosity here. Say to your mother-in-law: “Thanks for watching the kids and for your gift. I don’t care for the chairs, though. I like to choose my own furniture. Would you like them?”

Just a little reminder that we can be helpful on little things (if they don't like the left-overs, they can toss them out on the way home. No harm done.). But they are in charge of their homes and hearths. Note to Self: It's their life.