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PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
Welcome to Parenting Grown Children’s new home

09/19/2025
We’re now grownchildren.org.

We had to move from our old home (our host closed its doors, or rather its digital presence) and our domain name (grownchildren.net) became problematical. (I’m working on it!) Meanwhile, the new home at WordPress and slight variation on domain name promise to be a plus.
- First bonus: There’s a subscribe button in the left hand corner, and if I can figure out how to make it work (not easy), you’ll be able to subscribe to the parenting blog. You don’t have to subscribe to read the posts if you don’t want to: just type in grownchildren.org and you’re here.
- Second: I’ll be adding another page with notes and tidbits from my almost-finished memoir, The Time and Life Rules: Six decades, three upheavals and one writer’s journey to find her place in the world of work. As the subtitle suggests, I’m writing about my career as it played out amidst the cultural and workplace barriers, hurdles and other sometimes shocking challenges women have faced since the 1960s.
- Third: I’ll also be creating a page about a project I’ve been thinking about (and gathering data on) for years called Family Punchlines. It will be kinda what it sounds like. If I’m very zen-like and apply the parenting and grandparenting karma I’ve doled out in my blog, I might be able to persuade my artistically adept children and grandchildren to illustrate the amusing musings family and friends have said over the years,
_{painting: Rebecca Lemov}
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Social Media Alert: AI’s threat to the joy of posting grandkid photos

08/22/2025

Last year I wrote a post about checking with the parents (your adult kids) before posting pix of their kids (your Grands) on a social media site. I was neither prescient nor alone in calling attention to the photo-posting issue. Debates about publishing photos online have been going on since social networks became an integral part of our daily lives. It’s a pretty one-sided debate right now: 75 percent of parents share photos of their children online. (I’m sure the grandparent stats are even higher, especially pictures of those adorable toddlers wading through puddles in bright yellow galoshes.)

Dangers have always lurked from the dark side of the web, particularly concerns that online predators could harvest personal data. I’m writing about the issue again because a recent set of AI (artificial intelligence) apps take “sharenting” (parents sharing photos of their kids online) to a higher level of concern.

Writing in the NYTimes, Brian X. Chen, a tech reporter (and a recent dad), sounds this alarm in a personal way:

Parents like me have joined the “never-post” camp because of a more recent threat: apps that can automatically generate deepfake nudes with anyone’s face using generative artificial intelligence, the technology powering popular chatbots.

In other words, AI apps generating fake nudes, amid other privacy concerns, make “sharenting” far riskier than it was just a few years ago.

The dangers are greater as kids grow from toddlers to teens. That’s a whole other and disturbing problem. Even for very young children, though, Chen suggests ways to make photo-posting safer.

Post the photos only on an account that close friends and family members are allowed to see.

Send photos to a few friends and relatives through text messages, which are encrypted.

Share photo albums of family pictures with a small group of people using online services like Apple’s iCloud and Google Photos.

I’ll end this post on the upbeat note I ended the previous one on photo-posting:

The rules do not apply to grandpups. Here’s one of mine.

art credit: David C. Driskell

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

Emptying Nests: Parenting lessons from (or for) the birds.

08/11/2025

Sending off our young adults to fend for themselves, to live independently of us–it's what all those years of toddler-through-teens parenting were about. And yet, it's hard to let go. We want to hold their hands, keep the safety net in place, be there for them should they falter. We're only human. We're parents. We're not sure the wings are ready for flight.

So what can we learn about launching children up and out of the nest from non-humans who literally have wings and live in a nest? From a photo essay on bald eagles that live amongst trees along the Nith River in Ontario, Canada, there is parenting advice to glean from the fly-away world.

It's worth linking to the story for the photos of bald eagles and their young. Meanwhile, here are some tips from the birds, as translated by photographer Paul Gains, who has spent several years following bird families along the Nith. I've edited his comments for clarity and brevity.

The issue for bald eagle parents:

Every year they cater to a new brood of young, and teach them to hunt and fly. Although eaglets are almost fully grown at three months of age — and have closely studied their parents’ behaviour — they still have to figure out the mechanics of flight. Should they leap or flap their wings first? And what constitutes a safe landing?

The risks eaglets and their parents face:

Some eaglets will assess the risk of flight, decide it’s too high and instead confine themselves on a branch for days. The adults will attempt to feed them in that position, but without a nest to catch them, meals often wind up on the ground below. It’s no wonder bald eagle mortality rates are roughly 50 per cent in their first year.

Support during the learning curve:

An eaglet can spend weeks perched on a branch after struggling to gain sufficient elevation to get back into the nest. The adult male may bring a fish and then feed her beak to beak. Or drop a freshly caught fish by the river’s edge. It takes a few attempts but the eaglet manages to retrieve it. This is a hunting lesson provided by an expert fisher.

Practicing tough love:

Young bald eagles fly nervously across the river and often crash spectacularly into some tree branches, snapping them with an audible crunch. Bumps and bruises are an important part of an eaglet’s maturation, getting them ready to leave their parents’ nest. Despite a few horrific tree collisions, an eaglet gains confidence — and ability — in flight each day.

Over the coming weeks, the eagle parents will practice tough love, spending less time at the nest so the young are forced to explore their surroundings. It’s a proven parenting method, implemented by a couple that has successfully raised dozens of eaglets.

Lessons beyond flight control:

Adult eagles in this area have become tolerant of human disturbances like trains, planes, noisy bonfire parties and fireworks, not to mention birders and photographers lined up along the riverbank. It’s a skill their young need to learn to survive.

photo: Peter K. Burian (in Wikipedia)
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Leaving a Legacy: Clean out those closets. Our kids don’t want to be stuck doing it.

07/29/2025

I've written, possibly too often, about how cleaned-out closets are part of our legacy to our children and other assorted heirs. That is, whether they're in basements, attics or closets, the collections of items we no longer use and we know our kids don't want should be dealt with by us. We should chuck those papers that haven't been–and haven't needed to be–touched in years. I doubt our kids want their drawings from third grade or the story they wrote in middle school. (Check with them if you aren't sure, but don't be surprised at the rolled-eyes answer.)

It is a point of pride that I am joined in this crusade by Social Q's Philip Galanes. He makes the point more elegantly than I and looks at the issue in part by trying to figure out what's keeping us from moving our detritus out.

His column is in answer to a 40-year-old son whose father has asked him to speak to his stepmother about paring down her belongings which verge on the overwhelming. The father has already spoken to his wife, to no avail. Here are the key points Galanes makes about how widespread the issue is and what's keeping the stepmother from taking action.

The reluctance is prevalent:

"I receive many letters from readers who bemoan the chore of clearing out their parents’ cluttered homes after they die. So, I sympathize with this issue: Your father wants his affairs in better order, and you may be anxious about a cleanup that will fall into your lap."

There may be emotional reasons behind the inaction.

"Is she attached to these things? Does her mortality make her anxious? Does the task seem overwhelming to her?"

A little support (and a plan) could go a long way:

"Now, you might suggest to your father that he offer to sit with your stepmother while she sorts her things. She may appreciate the support. Or they could create a budget for helpers to clean when the time comes."

As Galanes suggests, there's a need to understand what's holding us back. Here's a Washington Post paragraph worth of ideas about a basic cause: decision fatigue.

“Decluttering is tiring not because of the physical effort, but because of the mental load. Every item forces a decision: Do I keep this? Will I need it? Does it still serve me? What if I regret tossing it?” This is known as decision fatigue, and it’s the reason decluttering efforts are often abandoned or avoided entirely.

A last word from me: As a proud survivor of a major downsizing (moving from a relatively big house to a smallish apartment), I was surprised at how many "throw away" and "give away" decisions were easy: doubles of photos taken years ago; old issues of magazines; paper files for articles written years ago when I was a freelancer. These were no brainers to toss away. Once I started, momentum took over. The harder decisions became easier. I managed to whittle us down to apartment-size living.

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

Traveling Abroad: Seeing a tiny bit of the world with a young adult grandchild.

07/15/2025

My granddaughter and I are back from our 8-day trip to Oslo and Reykjvik and the delightfully cool temperatures of Northern Europe. Each of us came home in one piece, but we did not reach the U.S. on the same day as planned. Our trip, which was otherwise marked by few glitches and an easiness with each other, ended on the very traumatizing note of a canceled flight (hers). I abandoned her at the Reykjvik airport at 7:00 a night with nothing but Icelandic Airlines to take care of finding her a hotel room and rebooking a flight (for her and some 200 other passengers) for the next day. The anxiety is terrible when you run off to make your flight home, the airport is about to shut down for the night, and your 20-something grandchild is alone with other stranded passengers. I reminded myself: She's an adult; she'll manage. She did. But I didn't calm down til my phone pinged with a text from her that she was in a hotel and her mom had booked her an early morning flight home.

The good news is: We're both back in our respective homes in our respective cities–me on time; she, a day late. But she made it through the ordeal of the delay and even thrived.

How to sum up our trip together, one in which I made all the airplane and hotel reservations and she figured out how to see and do whatever it was we wanted to see and do in each city.

A compensatory division of labor kept everything on an even keel. I, who in theory was there to take care of my grandchild, arrived in Amsterdam (our meeting spot; she had just finished a two-week course at the University of Amsterdam) with a GI episode already underway. By the time we landed in Oslo two days later, I had come down with a nasty head cold. She didn't exactly have to take care of me but she was very accommodating and uncomplaining about the limits my not feeling well put on us.

We both like traipsing around cities and our 5-day stay in Oslo was perfect for that. She knew what she wanted to do (visit bookstores, go shopping; she found plenty of both) and helped me find the sites I was interested in–Henrik Ibsen's home, the new opera house and the old church.

Our hotel was in the theater district which was also the heart of Oslo's sites, shopping and its sprawling parks, green spaces and forested trails. I would make reservations for, say, a two-hour cruise to see the fjords, and she would figure out where the pier was and how to walk there. Oslo felt very safe, which meant that she could take long walks on her own in the evening, and so could I. We could also take our books, sit in a park and read by daylight that lasted until 11:00 at night. Those were ways we were able to give each other privacy and space. And that was all we needed to get along–besides her ability to download boarding passes quickly and put mine in my Apple wallet without rolling her eyes.

We had a special moment at the Domkirke (the old church), one that for me marked the deep joy and wonder of traveling with this granddaughter. The church, like so many major buildings in Oslo, was understated–no gilt-laden religious statutes or lavish stained glass windows. Instead, it exuded a simple warmth and comfort. Neither she nor I are religious but we found peace sitting in the silent church, lighting a candle for Mike (her grandfather and my husband, who died last year) and being there in the quiet of the moment, holding hands. Who better to be with for that than her?
I've been home for a week and I still miss her companionship. She says she's already picking out where we should travel next summer.

painting: Travel Jetty by Eugene Boudin

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

Traveling Abroad: Setting up a trip with a 20-something grandchild.

06/25/2025

Lucky You! Or so my friends tell me when I tell them my 22-year-old granddaughter has suggested we see a little of the world together. Sounds like a delightful summer travel proposition, and it is. And yet, and yet. Not so easy.

If I were traveling with a friend, we might pick a group tour to take us where we wanted to go or sign up for a cruise or for some other organized means of getting from A to B to Z. We would have all transportation, hotels and sightseeing taken care of and someone in charge should there be mishaps.

But a 20-something is not the right fit for an organized tour. Fellow travelers are likely to be much older than she is. Where's the fun or excitement for her in that?

All of which means the trip is DIY. We start our planning: She and I agree on some basics. We'll meet in Amsterdam where she'll be finishing a study course at a university there. Then we'll head north. I've always wanted to go to Scandinavia and my former travelmate (my recently deceased husband) feared being cold and would never consider Sweden or Norway–even in the summer! She and I settle on Oslo and Reykjavik. Destination determination is the easy part.

We will split the rest of the chores. She will research things to do, see, sip and eat once we get to Oslo and Reykjavik. She is of a generation whose fingers fly over their cellphone keypad. It will take her seconds to come up with a coffee shop near our hotel and the scenic walking route to the sculpture garden. She'll figure out the train or bus schedule for a day trip. Since I have the credit card, I will book flights and hotels.

Therein lies the rub. Booking everything is a week of anxiety, stress and confusion. Finding hotels with the right set up for sleeping arrangements, in a central part of the city, at an affordable price–and without the dreaded little line of red type: "Book now. Only 2 rooms left at this price."

At last, I have booked our flights from Amsterdam to Oslo to Reykjavik plus the flights to each of our home airports and the hotels along the way. To quote Thomas Jefferson (in Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton"): "What'd I miss?" Are all bases covered? Hotels and flights are still sending me alerts to buy coverage to cover mishaps. All of which feeds into my initial misgivings about traipsing around Europe without a guided tour. To say nothing of worries about infirmities of age–will I sleep OK when it's daylight all night? Will my GI system rebel against the changes to my diet? Will we find quiet places in the cities to sit and people-watch? Should we book day trips in advance? Ah, Oh and Oy.

I leave in two days. I'll let you know how it goes en route or when I get back. Stay tuned for Lessons Learned.

painting: Travelling Companions, Augustus Egg
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Observation: Grandparenting advice in two words

06/11/2025

This two-word bit of advice is a reminder that we walk around on eggshells when it comes to doling out advice to our grown children. Writing in Grand Magazine, Karen L. Rancourt zeroes in on grandparents and the urge to let our grown children (who are now parents themselves) know that there's a better, best or our way of caring for a baby, toddler or even a teen. After all, we've been there, done that. Why not share the benefits of our vast experience?

Not so fast. Rancourt lets us know that such counsel is not a positive path forward. Her advice, no matter the parenting issue at hand, is succinct and easy to remember: "Zip It."

Here's her fuller explanation

Why should you zip it? Because, as a grandparent, you are not in the driver’s seat anymore. You are a passenger ‘riding along’ at the pleasure of the parents. When you were raising your own children, you made the rules. Now your job is to enforce the rules set down by your grown children regarding your grandchildren, whether you agree with them or not. To use a common idiom, ‘There’s a new sheriff in town,’ and it isn’t you.

painting: Femme au café, Picasso
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Wedding Celebrations: Is it good news that Gen Z kids are thinking small and DIY?

06/04/2025

I bumped into an old work friend, someone I shared office space with some 30 years ago when we were both reporters at a start-up magazine. He moved on to other media jobs, we lost touch except for an occasional Facebook sighting. That's how I knew his daughter had gotten engaged. When we turned the "bumped into" into a "let's have coffee," I got more details on the wedding.

He and his wife love their daughter's fiancé; they like his parents as well. The only minor flaw in the upcoming nuptials was that the bride's mother was disappointed that her daughter and her fiancé were planning their wedding celebration by themselves. Mother and daughter have a loving relationship so that was not the reason for exclusion. Rather, the young couple were part of a Gen Z trend: small, DIY weddings.

According to an Axios posting about wedding trends, ballrooms are out, "micro weddings" are in. Axios had stats to support the observation:

The average guest count nationwide was 131 in 2024, down from 184 in 2006.

Celebrations with 50 guests or fewer made up 18 percent of nuptials last year, compared to 10 percent in 2013.

There are both charming and practical reasons behind the trend:

Charming: Couples say small weddings in cozy settings let them spend more time with loved ones.

Practical: They're a lot less expensive. Micro weddings run up a tab that's about half the cost of traditional weddings.

More highlights from the Axios newsletter:

The trend is growing: Vegas-style chapels and businesses offering curated micro weddings and elopements have opened in Boston; Dallas; Portland, Oregon, Richmond, Virginia, and elsewhere.

Intimate doesn't mean boring. City hall ceremonies have their own trending aesthetic. Pinterest searches for terms like "city hall elopement" and "courthouse wedding dress ideas" have been surging among Gen Zers.

Then there's this dose of reality:

Many brides and grooms-to-be are bracing for pricier nuptials as tariffs could hike the $33,000 cost of an average U.S. wedding, according to The Knot, a planning and registry site.

As to my friends, I raise a celebratory glass of bubbly to them, to a bright future for the bride and groom and to the young couple's current and practical sensibilities.

painting: Tarsila do Amarel, Brazil wedding
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Wedding Blues: Who’s walking the bride down the aisle?

05/13/2025

Restructured families–divorced parents and step-parents–aren't easy for our grown kids to navigate, especially when their weddings roll around. Traditions and protocols that involve multiple parents and their participation in the ceremony can be a minefield of hurt feelings.

As young couples revise their approach to traditional wedding ceremonies, one ritual that has been inflicting pain is that of walking the bride down the aisle. Who's gonna do it? Should it be done at all? A few posts ago, we looked into the case of how a father felt when his daughter told him that neither he nor anyone else would be escorting her down the aisle. No man-to-man handoff of the bride. That was the bride's point: She was not chattel to be given away.

Now we have an instance where the dad is hurt because his daughter has asked her stepdad to walk her down the aisle. Like the dad in the previous post, he is threatening not to attend the wedding. He writes to the NYTimes Ask the Therapist that he and the bride's mother have been divorced for 36 years but during that time he has been "an active and present dad, and we have a good relationship." Nonetheless, the father writes, in addition to giving the bride away "I’m assuming he will also be the one to have a father-daughter dance. This has crushed me. I didn’t say anything to her other than, “Oh, OK.” But I was devastated."

Psychotherapist Lori Gottleib acknowledges the depth of his wound:

These traditional fatherly roles — walking the bride down the aisle, sharing a dance — can carry enormous emotional significance for some people. Perhaps for you, having your daughter’s stepfather perform these rituals feels like an erasure of your parental identity and all the years you’ve invested in being present for your daughter, as well as a referendum on your daughter’s love for you compared with her love for her stepfather.

Gottleib reminds the dad that there’s another way to look at this.

Given that your daughter wants her stepfather’s involvement in her wedding, it sounds like he has been a warm and meaningful presence in her life. Could you step back, and appreciate him not as a rival or replacement in your daughter’s life, but as a positive addition for her? Can you see both your fatherly roles as a collaborative investment in her life rather than as a competition?

Her main piece of advice is no surprise: The dad should not go AWOL for the wedding.

Skipping your daughter’s wedding would transform your hurt feelings into a story that only you are telling, one of not being wanted, or important to her, and rewrite the narrative of your relationship in ways you don’t intend.

One final piece of Gottleib wisdom to the dad and by extension to any of us who've faced situations where our grown children have inflicted pain on us, however unintentional:

The truest measure of your parenting is in the consistent presence you’ve maintained throughout her life. Don’t let one reactive decision erase that legacy. The wedding day will pass, but your decision to attend despite your hurt feelings will speak volumes about your character and your willingness to be the father your daughter needs. And that, I guarantee, is what she’ll remember long after the cake has been cut and the last dance danced.

Painting: Wedding March, Theodore Robinson
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Sibling Rivalry: When you’re caught in the middle of their spats

05/02/2025

When it comes to growing up together, our kids are often jealous of and competitive with each other. There are power struggles between sisters and brothers. And sometimes our kids just don't like each other. Literature and real life are full of it. As parents, we wish it weren't so, especially when the dislikes between our adult children slop over into our empty-nest lives. All we want is peace and love, but, ah well, sometimes it is not to be.

How responsible are we to bring peace between, say, two adult sisters bearing grudges that date back to their kindergarten years? Should we be helping a son and daughter forgive and forget hurtful insults said in anger when they were in their teens?

Joshua Coleman, a psychologist who treats, writes and speaks regularly about family estrangement–parent to child, child to child, grandkid to, well, anyone who crosses their path–has some answers. (So does Sheila Heen, whose suggestions I wrote about in a previous post and whose book on the topic is Difficult Conversations.)

In a Washington Post column, Coleman addressed a patient's plea for help. Her adult daughters, who had always had a fraught relationship, were refusing to be at the same party the mother was planning for her 75th birthday. The younger daughter said that if the mother didn't tell the older daughter not to come, it would prove the mother's preference for the older daughter. If the mother moved forward with the party, one of the daughters was going to feel hurt and ill-favored.

Coleman had some thoughts. Here they are, edited for brevity.

There are limits on what we can do:

Parents have limited ability to influence or improve relationships between their adult children. As children grow, they develop their own personalities, make their own choices and follow paths that can pull them in different directions. Even in emotionally attuned families, siblings can drift apart — or in some cases, grow actively hostile.

Dispositions differ:

Sometimes what we experience as difficult behavior in others is tied to underlying and partly inherited dispositions. Research on the Big Five personality traits — particularly neuroticism — can offer insight. For example, people high in the trait of neuroticism tend to be more emotionally reactive, more prone to anxiety, and more likely to dwell on perceived slights or injustices, which may be the case with one of your daughters.

When one sibling is easier to parent, that difference alone can unintentionally reinforce feelings of exclusion or comparison in the more sensitive sibling.

Aim for fairness

Research on differential treatment in siblings shows that when children perceive favoritism — real or imagined — it can have long-term effects on their mental health, and can also damage their relationships with each other well into adulthood.

The perception of unequal treatment can be just as impactful as actual differences in the parent’s behavior. From that perspective, a parent can reasonably believe they treated their children equally, while a child can credibly feel that they didn’t receive the same kind of care or attention, based on how they interpret and experience the world.

Show empathy

A parent may not have done anything they consider unfair, and yet a child’s experience of being hurt is real. It’s more constructive to show empathy — not for the facts of the situation, but for the emotions behind them.

Actively listen and respond

Show that you care about their experiences in the family. Then gently pivot to a proposed solution of the conflict.

“You’re both invited to my birthday party, and I want nothing more than to have you there. But if it’s too upsetting to be in the same room, I understand — and maybe we can find another time or way to celebrate together.”

painting: Bonnard