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

Observation: Ancient poets on the evolution of our role at family get-togethers

11/13/2017

My daughter gave me a gift a while ago: a book of free-verse Tao Te Ching poems, written "for those coming into the fullness of their wisdom." For months, it sat in a messy pile on my desk, unopened. I was too busy to slow down to reflect on any fullness or to lose myself in poetry. Time and mood conspire: I found the little book–a mere 120 pages, some with delicate ink-wash drawings [see above]–on a day when I was trying to think my way through a messy passage in my life.

Among the gems I found in "The Sage's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for the Second Half of Life" by William Martin, was this sparely written poem that, for all its gentle tone, rips to the heart of where we are as parents of grown children–or, rather, where we might aspire to be as we kick off this season of family get-togethers.

Like the Full Moon on an Autumn Evening

When we were young

and feeling the need to prove ourselves,

we generated heat and energy

like the noonday sun.

But now we take time to reflect the Tao

and bathe our world in soft silent beauty

like the full moon on an Autumn evening.

An abundance of opinions will generate heat

but accomplish nothing.

You no longer have to comment

on each and every little thing.

You can observe events with a detached serenity.

When you speak,

your words are gentle, helpful, and few.

Your silence is as beautiful as the Harvest moon.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Weddings: Planning your daughter’s wedding? Remember whose Big Day it is.

10/30/2017

Several years ago, when my daughter became engaged, her future mother-in-law called me the next morning. She introduced herself, chatted a bit and then asked if I was excited about planning the wedding. I mumbled a "Hmmm," but the unspoken answer was more precise. "I will do my duty."

No kidding. Not all of us are excited about planning our child's wedding–and that doesn't even get to the point of whether or not the couple getting married want us to do it. In my case, my daughter, who was living on the West Coast, was busy working to support herself and applying to graduate schools. So it fell to me, who lived on the East coast where the wedding was going to take place, to do the ground work and pull together a basic plan–subject to the bride and groom's approval, of course.

Most parents, particularly mothers of the bride, are excited and energized about taking an active role. But that helping role is more fraught than ever. Today's weddings tend to be bigger with more guests, more dinner courses and events, to say nothing of those weddings that are weekend extravaganzas in far away places. There are many more choices and more moving parts, which means too many decisions where mother and child can have differing opinions and difficulty reining in their positions. Also, grooms play a more active role in the wedding plan than they did, say, 20 years ago–which gives negotiations an additional corner to turn.

My wedding-planning days were pre-smartphone and as I understand it, texting, email, FaceTime, Instagram bring a more immediate way to communicate about little and big details. In today's Social Media world, planning a wedding can create a higher level of inclusiveness. (Some of the emails Hillary Clinton did not want disclosed had to do with details for her daughter Chelsea's wedding.)

This feeling of heightened closeness builds on a pre-existing condition. As Deborah Tannen, the linguistic professor and author, has noted, mother-daughter relationships today "are closer than a generation or two ago. Many mothers identify as their daughters' best friend. They rely on their phones to text, Snapchat, email and speak daily. But it’s not just the mothers seeking participation. It’s the daughters, too.”

All well and good. But here's the issue about parents and a grown child's wedding: Close as we may feel to our child and they to us, and as accessible as details about menus, dresses and flowers may be, it is the bride and groom's marriage and a reflection of their commitment to each other.

Beyond consulting on the wines and the seating arrangements, we need to keep our distance and to back off when–whether or not we're footing all or some of the bill–we don't agree or approve of a decision the wedding couple make. As Deborah Tannen points out, “Close bonds always run the risk of feeling like bondage.”

If the bride and groom choose to replace formal shoes with matching sneakers to walk down the aisle, our role is to mention our point of view but ultimately to accept and add a pleasant "I do."

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

Observations: Calvin Trillin on adult children becoming their parents’ counselors

10/06/2017

Is there a tipping point where our children become our advisors–or at least the people making reasonable suggestions about how we should deal with some aspects of our lives? We aren't so old and frail that we need them to take over our check books or pay our rent. But some of us may have lost a step or two and the kids seem to notice.

In "Final Cut," a recent New Yorker piece by Calvin Trillin, Trillin reminisces about the years he, his wife, two daughters and various friends made ultra-amateurish, home movies together–writing scripts that were variations on the same story as the year before, casting the kids and friends against type, hauling out the same old props. All this took place at Trillin's summer home in Nova Scotia. But the more some things stayed the same–the house and its barn, the story line, the props–the more they changed, including the relationship between widowed parent (Trillin) and his now-grown children.

How do we deal with that ever-so-slight shift in our relationship with our grown children, a tiny tilt wherein they begin to act as our advisors and protectors as well.

Here's Trillin's take:

Driving through Maine this July toward the Nova Scotia ferry–past our favorite clam shack, past the outlets where we used to top up the girls' school wardrobes on the way back to New York in the fall–I was mindful of the fact that I wouldn't be making precisely that trip again. I had reached the age at which one's children begin sentences with the phrase "You are no longer allowed…"

…I’m grateful for my daughters’ concern, of course, and I’m grateful that they turned out to be the sort of people who remain good-humored about being referred to by me as “the nursing staff.” After some protracted negotiations with the nursing staff this spring, it was agreed that this would be the last time that I made the long drive from New York to Nova Scotia by myself, instead of taking a plane to Halifax and renting a car. "

Sometimes our kids come up with valued advice, just as we did when we were their parents. It's up to us to see if there's wisdom in their words–and admit when they're right.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Empty Nesters: Who loses more sleep over the kids now?

09/27/2017

We worried about them when they were toddlers; we had anxious moments when they started school; our hearts were thumping when they were learning to drive. Most of us thought we would sleep a deeper, sounder sleep when our kids became adults.

Researchers have come up with some interesting findings in that regard. Dads may lose more sleep over the adult kids than moms.

The study, which ran online in January in the Gerontologist, looked at data from interviews with 186 married couples who had two to three adult children. The underlying premise was that sleep problems in older adults are associated not only with a variety of negative physical and mental health problems but with relationship issues with their grown children. To compile comparable measures, researchers asked parents how often they provided different types of support to their grown kids. The list included almost every interaction we might have with our children–from talking about daily events to offering emotional support, practical help, advice and financial assistance. They also asked the parents to assess their sleeping.

The findings conclude that relationships with adult children have different associations for sleep quality among middle-aged husbands and wives. Overall, though, when it comes to worrying over supports for grown children, dad's are the bigger nail biters than moms–as measured by quality of sleep.

Here's what the study says:

…husbands’ more frequent support provided to their adult child was associated with less sleep, which validates the findings that support may be an indicator of caregiving (suggesting burden) rather than an indicator of a parent/child connection for fathers. When husbands provide more frequent support to adult children, it is often more need based than mothers, that is, it is in relation to life problems experienced by the adult child…. Thus, support may be more taxing for fathers making it more difficult for husbands to get a sufficient amount of sleep as a result of the time and energy demands related to giving such support.

The researchers see their study as a way of fine tuning sleep therapy for parents of grown children. We may see it as confirmation of what we already know: The kids may be grown–they may have kids of their own–but being their parent never ends. We are, as the old saying goes, only as happy as our unhappiest kid. Even if that kid is forty.

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

Observation: Trust your adult kids to make the right love-life decisions

09/18/2017

Steve Almond Cheryl Strayed

Steve Almond and Cheryl Strayed, authors of books and books that have been turned into movies, are co-advisers on a love and life podcast/column, Dear Sugars.

A recent call for their help came from a mom who worried that her daughter wanted marriage and children while the boyfriend of five years was making decisions that moved the young couple away from that goal. Was the relationship one-sided? Were her daughter's wishes being subsumed by the boyfriend? The mom's question: "Should I share my concerns with my daughter or stay out of it. What are the boundaries with adult children?"

Here are two nuggets from their fuller discussion that hold for any parent of grown children.

Cheryl: The best thing you can do is to stop seeing yourself as someone who should intervene in your daughter’s romantic life, but rather as the person who will support her and be there for her when she needs a sounding board as she navigates this relationship.

Steve: It’s important to remember that your daughter is an adult. You have to trust her capacity to make wise decisions, and to survive her less wise ones. Just as crucially, you have to trust yourself and the work you’ve already done as a mom in helping your daughter develop the wherewithal to stand up for herself.

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

Leaving a Legacy: Sharing our values and history with our grown kids and grandkids.

09/08/2017

Here is my legacy mantra. I hereby leave my grown kids and grand kids a legacy in three parts: Material goods. A sense of my values and life experiences. Clean closets.

I've blogged at length about the clean closet thing–it came to a head when we downsized for a move from our rambling suburban house to a storage-challenged urban apartment. When spirits flagged over the sorting and dumping, I reminded myself that this was part of my gift to my kids: They wouldn't have to clear 50 years of memorabilia that had been stuffed onto shelves and into bins and file cabinets.

Now I'm working on the middle part: values and my life experiences. What kick-started me was a recent event–seemingly minor–in our family's life. This Spring, Paterfamilias forwarded a link to his grandkids of excerpts from an interview between PF and an historian from the Library of Congress. The historian was putting together a history of how Congress worked–how legislation was actually passed, what compromises were made, how power was leveraged.

PF had worked for California Congressman John Moss and several congressional committees in the 1970s and 1980s–the fruitful years when Congress passed enduring legislation that has impacted our lives in a good way. (Like product safety, car safety, investor safety) The interview was about the legislative process but the historian also delved into PF's childhood–he even had a news clip from PF's radio appearance as a pre-teen whiz kid. Now, excerpts from the interview were being posted on the Library's website and that's the link PF sent his two grown children and their teenage kids– in the hope that they would read it, if not now at least some day.

So, in effect, without lifting a pen or his typing fingers, without making a recording or pasting photos in a scrapbook, PF has his legacy: a document about his life's work and how that work reflects his values. The teen grands didn't say much about it, beyond a promise to read it. Someday.

Then in June, he mentioned his work for the Congress to one of those teens who was wrapping up a semester on 20th century American history. She asked some relevant questions but that was as far as things went. She was, after all, 14 years old and we all know how difficult it is to keep a teen's attention, to wean them from Instagram, texting and game-playing on their phones. But then, weeks later, when she was on the West Coast for the summer with her parents and not much to do, she read the interview and started texting PF about subjects the piqued her interest. What did he know about Ronald Reagan and the air controllers strike? He called her to discuss. Then came another text: What did he know about gerrymandering? Another chat appointment.

This was an unexpected connection. It is not easy to set up lines of communication with our teen grands. They are moving away from the home as the center of their universe–pushing back their parents and looking for independence. To have one of his Grands turn to him as an expert–as a reliable source–was thrilling.

It was also a reminder of how much impact our past can have on our Grands. But they have to know about it–in some form or other that they can digest at their own pace. I'm picking up my pen.

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Vacationing with Grown Kids: The comforts and discomforts of togetherness

08/30/2017

There is something heartwarmingly inclusive about vacationing with grown kids and their kids, especially when they don't live near you. After weeks or months between weekend visits, Poof! you are an immediate part of their family life. It is family life at its best–on vacation and free from the scheduling pressures of soccer practice, math homework and piano lessons, to say nothing of parental work schedules, obligations and deadlines.

For the past several summers, our family has met up in Vermont, cooled by the mountain air and refreshed by the green countryside. This year our daughter and her family couldn't make it (they spent the summer on the West Coast), and Paterfamilias faced personal vacation difficulties. A back problem was affecting his usual mobility. We would not bring our bicycles, as we usually did. The tennis racquets were lugged along but the reality of their use was iffy. Hiking would clearly be a challenge. Without these usual activities, what, we asked each other, would we do in Vermont?

We learned to do nothing and enjoy it. With condos rented in the same complex, the grand kids and our grown kids to say nothing of PF and myself could wander back and forth to visit each other. We wandered down to the swimming pool to watch them swim and splash around ourselves, we watched them play fast and furious games of soccer tennis on the resort's tennis courts and we wander down to the mountain brook to skim rocks and cool our feet in the cold water. We played board games and did crossword puzzles at their place; they brought their books to read at ours. PF and I felt bathed in the warmth of familial affection, of being incorporated into the day-to-day functioning of our son's family.

Therein lies the heart of this particular tale. It's so easy for that bubble of warmth to pop–and not because of anything we did or said (though there is always the potential for that). This time it was a disagreement between our son and daughter-in-law over whether their 16-year-old son and his friend, who had come to Vermont for a two-day visit, should be allowed to jump from the top of a waterfall into a rock encased, fresh-water swimming hole. (See above)

We were not in attendance–we were sitting it out at our condo because of PF's back limitations. But we had hiked down to this particular spot in past years and had been there when three teen-age boys climbed the rocks and jumped off that waterfall into the dark, pooled water. It was heart-stopping to watch–and pretty scary for the boys, too. It seemed to be a rite of passage of some kind.

This year, when the two 16-year-olds–our Grand and his friend–wanted to jump, our DIL was against it, arguing that not only was it risky for her son but she was responsible for returning the friend to his parents unharmed. Our son was on the "rite of passage" side. The boys jumped. All returned home safely but our DIL was deeply angry at her son's father.

We stayed out of the dispute–because we weren't there and because we shouldn't butt in, but the family discord cast its pall.

For us as parents, there is nothing pleasant about bearing witness to an argument between your child and his or her spouse, especially a dispute that runs deep, has right and wrong on both sides and stakes that are higher than they appear. It drained the warmth out of the last day of our vacation together.

It was also a reminder of how parenting teens is such a rocky experience. It brought back memories of tensions between PF and me during our kids' adolescence. The details and subject matter of the fights are hazy but I recall clearly the desperation of the moments: I felt like we were fighting over the future of our children.

I also remember this: When our kids went off to college and the house was eerily empty, the fighting stopped. Our kids were launched. PF and I no longer had anything to argue about.

Our son and his family are home now and back to their routines. The Grands–two teens and a 9-year-old–are heading back to school. Soccer practice is in play, so are parental deadlines. I haven't asked but I am sure my son and DIL have moved on from the waterfall fight. I feel I should tell them that there will be more and possibly worse battles to come–and then the kids will be grown up and parental angst will melt into pleasure.

Ours did.

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

Emptying Nests: A tip for moving boomerang kids out of your house

08/21/2017

Let's call it the Canadian solution. The problem: Our adult kids living in our homes.

If you've followed the U.S. Census news, you know the phenomenon is more widespread today than forty years ago. Back then, one in five adults ages 18 to 34 were living at home. Today, it's one out of three.

For some of us, having the grown kids putting down roots in their childhood bedrooms is pure pleasure. If they're saving money to get married, buy a house, start a business–or they're keeping vosts down low until the right career job comes along–we feel good about making the future more financially sound for them. Some adult kids are at home because it suits both parents and child. A couple we met on our recent group tour of Morocco admitted, in somewhat embarrassed tones that they enjoy having their 30-something son and his girlfriend live with them. When the parents travel, the younger couple water the plants, feed the cat and walk the dog; when the parents are in town, they are included whenever the younger couple's friends drop by. She's an artist, he's a poet and having the next generation around keeps them in touch with the changing culture.

For many of us, though, the pleasure is mixed with pain. We may be embarrassed that our kids are still at home. Or we may be concerned that our 20-or 30-something kids have failed to launch, or their habits may be out of sync with our life style. Or we feel it's time for our kids to live independently: we don't want to deny them the space to learn the life-management skills of paying the rent and balancing their budget.

Pleasure or pain, if we want to encourage our grown children to find a new place to call home, Canadian parents have a sure-fire method. Pay them to move on.

How widespread is this approach in Canada? A commercial bank's survey of 1,000+ parents found that three out of four Canadian parents with a child age 18 or over would or have offered their child money to move out of the house. How much? About half put the figure at $24,000. (In U.S. dollars that's a few thousand under $20,000.) Those with household incomes of more than $100,000 said they give $40,000, with as many as 25 per cent offering more than $50,000.

You could sum up the concept as, "Here's the money, I love you, now please move out." The survey did not mention how successful the payoff was.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Helping Hands: Being there for our grown kids

08/10/2017

The kids may be grown up, have kids of their own, be launched in their careers and be living lives independent of us–just as we brought them up to do.

And then something happens–an emergency, a minor accident or temporary difficulty–and suddenly our parental services are in demand. Well, demand may be too strong a word. Let's say. there's an opportunity for us to be helpful without being intrusive or making them feel they've regressed into childhood.

A few years ago the "something" in our family was a frightening car accident: my daughter's child, my Grand was hit by a car and ambulanced to Children's Hospital with a concussion and broken pelvis. It was a high anxiety, frightening moment until we knew that she would be all right. Being an hour away by airplane, I flew up–ostensibly to help out, though there was little I could actually do. By the time my daughter and family got home from a two-day stay in the hospital, friends and neighbors had started a chain of casserole deliveries, offers to walk the dog and do anything else they could possibly do. Months later, when I had enough perspective to post about the event, I noted how useless I felt. My daughter wrote to assure me that it meant a lot to her that I was there.

I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when "something happened" again. It was not as life- or health-threatening– as the first something but challenging nonetheless: My daughter hurt her back (Ashtanga yoga. grrrr!). She ended up with an extruded disc or two, a lot of pain and a numb left leg that occasionally collapsed. Ordinarily, this would not call for a mom to fly to a daughter's side–there is a helpful husband, many friends and neighbors, and doctors and physical therapists. But there was this hitch: She and her family were about to decamp for a summer in California, swapping their home in New England with a friend who has a home in the East Bay area near San Francisco. There was a limit to how long the cross country trip could be delayed–the California family would be en route shortly. My daughter and Grand were scheduled to fly to San Francisco and make their way to the house while my son-in-law with the dog in the back seat and a trunk full of luggage drove across the country.

A fine plan when my daughter knew not of back pain. Now she was temporarily incapacitated and hurting. Although the worst of the acute phase seemed to be receding, I suggested I could fly to San Francisco with my daughter and Grand, help them settle into the house and take care of some basics until my son-in-law got there.

Offer made. Offer accepted. Which is why I woke up on a Tuesday morning a few weeks ago with a view of the Bay Bridge to my left, the Golden Gate on my right and mountains shrouded in cloud straight ahead on the far side of the bay. Outside, nasturtiums grew wildly, spewing their yellow and orange pops of color up hills, along sidewalks and out of cracks in driveways.

I also saw that my daughter, injured though she was, was capable of managing on her own. She logged onto her laptop and ordered dinner delivered. If it had been necessary, she could have done the same with groceries. None of whatever it took to move in required my presence.

So what was I doing there? Was I on the wrong side of useful? Maybe, but, once again, being there is helpful in a less tangible, reassuring way. No matter how old our children are–no matter how grown up and independent they become–there still is room for parental presence and the reassurance of emotional support. I may not have had to take care of basics, but I got my reward anyway: Three days of quality time with my daughter and my Grand. Three generations of our family's women helping each other out.

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Parenting Grown Children: We are at our peril when we give advice they didn't ask for

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

Observation: Connie Schultz on the magic and importance of grandparenting

08/04/2017

As if we needed reminding: We can't help ourselves when it comes to falling in love with our Grands. So here's Connie Schultz to express it for us and remind us why we are important to them and to their parents, whether or not they are genetically our direct descendants. (Schultz's beloved first grandchild –"The relationship between a child and a grandparent is the closest I've ever come to experiencing magic."– is the son of her stepson. Well, let her tell it and why it's relevant to our role as grandparents:

My grandson and I are not what you might assume us to be. I did not meet his daddy until his daddy was 6, through marriage. I was raising his father full time by the time he was 8. Ten years after my divorce, he walked me down the aisle to marry the man who is the love of my life.

If you were ever misguided enough to tell me that our beginnings mean he is not my son, our conversation would be brief, and I dare say you would not enjoy it. He is my son, and he has given me this miracle of a grandson.

That is only the beginning of this crazy tale of this family of ours. My husband and I brought two children each into our marriage, and we now have five grandchildren, period. Challenge this at your peril.

Why am I telling you all of this, you might wonder.

Well, it's summer, which is that time of year when so many grandparents long to see the children they love no matter what. No matter who is divorcing. No matter who brought them into the world. No matter who is angry with whom.

Children should not bear the burden of unfinished grudges. This is especially true now, when the briefest snippet of overheard news via TV or radio can make a child believe the world has lost its collective mind.

I'm not saying grandparents are perfect or that we're even someone you'd choose for neighbors. But we are in this for your children. For so many of us, the moment we become grandparents, in whatever way that happens, something changes in us.

Your children become the center of our universe. Shouldn't they know that? Shouldn't all children, everywhere, get to feel that way at least once in their lives?