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

Refilled Nests: The angst when a grown child moves back home again

10/26/2016

Her younger son was the better athlete, the more gifted musician, the smarter of her two sons. Where the older son–through trial, error and diligent study–is now on a successful career path, her younger son has failed to launch. So far. After a post-college year of living at home and delivering pizza, he went off to Europe for a one-year graduate school program. But now he's back and once again, living at home and delivering pizza. He won't take his mother's advice about job hunting–at least that is the face he shows his mother. In fact, he won't talk to her about it at all. When he applied for and won an internship at a prestigious non-profit, she hoped it would be an intellectual trigger for possible careers or a jumping off place for a more remunerative job. She was wrong. He quit after a month–he found the chores he was asked to do distasteful, low-tech and stodgy.

So now my friend C sits at lunch and says she is "finished" with him. She says she is going to leave it to her husband to deal with his son and the son's uncertain path forward.

This of course is how she sees it–her son is secretive and unwilling to share what is going on his life.

For all she knows, however, he may be diligently networking and checking out every lead he comes across–not necessarily her leads but those of his peers and mentors. Who knows what's really going on.

I am not unsympathetic to her plight and point of view. It is very hard on us moms and dads when we have to sit and watch our children struggle to find a footing in the grown-up world of careers and work. I tell C to have faith, that her son is smart and talented; she instilled good values when he was growing up. He will find his way. Her problem, I suggest, is that she sees too much.

My children are older than hers—launched by now into careers, growing families and home-ownership. But back in the day when they were recent college graduates, they headed out for points unknown–she went to California; he went to New England. They were seeking respite from the stress of competitive college courses and wondering what they would do with their lives. Their way forward was far from clear. They had their trials and many errors, some of which we learned about–from a distance. And that's the point I was trying to make to C: We didn't live through their day to day decisions, distractions and disillusion. We didn't, in fact, see too much, the way we would have had they lived at home.

When grown-up children are trying to figure out where they fit into the adult world of work and career, watching it up close and personally is anxiety provoking. Why aren't they going down this road rather than that one? Why do they make decisions that seem wrong-headed and counter productive?. And what kind of help or advice do we have that is relevant and meaningful in today's online, social media world–a world in which we may not be literate?

For C, the situation is too fraught to think much about the larger questions. She says–but doesn't quite mean–that she's "throwing up her hands" and giving up on Son #2. If only her son bunked in with friends–was out of sight and less on her mind– things would be a lot easier on her and on him. He'll get there, but the sausage-making is unnerving.

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Observation: Philip Galanes on the limits of our control over our adult children’s choices

10/18/2016

A mother is concerned that her 18-year-old, college-bound daughter is having a baby, fathered by an unstable man who is out of the picture–but his parents aren't. How should she handle the situation?

Galanes offers a specific answer to the issue at hand, but it applies in general to many of the sticky situations that involve us and our adult children.

If your daughter’s accidental pregnancy (along with her decisions to carry to term and raise the baby) were not enough to convince you that you are not in the driver’s seat here, I’m not sure what more I can say to hit you over the head with the fact. I get your worry and lurking disappointment. Children having children is heartbreaking. But that ship has sailed. Now is the time for maximizing communication and support for your daughter…..

Remember: You don’t control this new path you’re on, but with openhearted cooperation, you may all find great joy on it. There will be a baby!

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

Tech Talk: Don’t flaunt it but it’s true: We’re more tech-savvy than our kids think we are.

10/12/2016

Okay, so it was a retailer's survey , not a rigorously researched one from from academia. Still, it tells us something we've sort of known all along: We aren't tech-dummies but many of our grown kids think we are.

The bar is not exactly high. According to Best Buy's Parent-Millennial Child Tech Survey (of 1,000 parents and 1,000 grown kids), fewer than one-third of millennials think their parents are comfortable buying the right personal tech for themselves. Two-thirds of us, however, say we are. Only one-third of our kids give us credit for understanding our gear; 60 percent of us say we know how to get the most from our technology.

Almost half (47 percent) of our kids say we turn to them for tech help at least once a week. Only 17 percent of us admitted to that–although about half of us 'fess up that we bother them for tech advice roughly once a month.

There's a gender divide here. Among parents who considered their children to be the most trustworthy source of advice, 64 percent are moms and 36 percent are dads. Dad, it seems, would rather take their advice from expert reviews (60 percent) than hear it from a millennial son or daughter. When Moms turn to their kids for help, more often they call on their sons for tech help (39 percent) rather than than their daughters (28 percent).

The numbers came closer on one point: 62 percent of parents say their adult children are happy to help and 58 percent of adult children confirmed that.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Money Matters: When do our adult kids grow up financially?

10/04/2016

Some of us close the Bank of Mom and Dad when our kids graduate from college or when they finish their grad school degrees. Some of us do it even earlier–when the kids have a high school diploma in hand and leave home for college or a job. To each their own.

Regardless of whether the bank is open or not, at what age should we expect our kids to be financial grown ups? A new research survey in the United Kingdom asked parents that question. The answer was pretty surprising.

According to the Sainsbury's Bank survey, UK parents pegged financial independence–that is, the age at which the parents can stop having to help their kids out financially–at 29. That's well past the college grad age. The mums seemed to be a softer touch than the dads. Women expected to support their children until they are 30; men saw the cutoff as 27.

Many of the parents reported taking out loans to help out their kids, half the loans being for their child's education or to pay for the wedding. Other reasons for loans: medical expenses, cars and help with household expenses. The average value across all loans stood at the U.S. equivalence of $14,000.

Survey analysts pointed out a reality behind the expenses that would seem to hold true here: While it is becoming more common for adult children to pay for their own wedding, the cost has gotten so high that help is needed. Ditto with college and grad school costs.

Parents in the U.K. aren't just doling out cash. A quarter of adult children aged 20 to 34 are bunking in with their parents, up from 21 percent twenty years ago. Given that shift, it's not surprising the rate of home ownership by 25-29 year-olds dipped from 55 percent in 1996 to 30 percent in 2016; for 30-to-34 years-olds, the change is even more startling, given that this is an age at which married cojuples expand their family size. Home ownership, however, is down from 68 percent twenty years ago to 46 percent today.

Here's what the author of the bank's Family Finance Report had to say about the changing times in the U.K.:"Today's parents are the first to face the perfect storm of expensive university fees, sky-high property prices and near unaffordable rents in cities, none of which they had to deal with themselves at their children's age. Add in the increased difficulties that even graduates have to get a job and it's clear the situation is far tougher for today's twenty-somethings than it was when they were born."

These are, of course, first world country concerns–we should be happy to have them. But they also suggest that, though we as parents are stepping in to help, there's a lot of financial unease and discontent among our 20-somethings and their older siblings.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grandparenting: The rewards of getting to know the Grands, one by one

09/26/2016

My friend Gail babysits three daytimes a week for her son's five children. It's been her non-paying job, off and on, for the past 12 years. She's there when the oldest children leave for school and on hand until her daughter-in-law comes home at 3:00.

You would think she knows those children well. That's why it was a surprise when she told me how she and Ralph–her husband and the grandpop–babysat together one evening when the parents had to go to back-to-school night. She put the three younger children to bed by 8:30 but the two older ones–two boys, ages 10 and 12–stayed up for another hour and chatted with her and Ralph. They talked about everything and nothing. It was the first time, Gail says, that she got to know them as individuals not, as she put it, "as part of a herd."

Her words fell on fertile ground. When Paterfamilias and I visit Uber son and his family of three children, we try to pick off one of them for a chat, another one for a walk or one for a drive to Starbucks. But they are all still very much within the magnetic pull of the family dynamic–in effect, the herd.

As it did for Gail. that changed for us. This summer, Uber son's older daughter–the middle child who is 13–flew to Washington by herself to visit us for two days. Split from the herd, she was no longer the big sister helping her little sister, or mom's chief assistant, or the younger sister competing with an older brother. She was her own person–an early teen heading for young adulthood and a person whose interests were our top and only priority.

She has a talent and appreciation for art, so we headed to the National Gallery and spent the day audio-touring some of the greatest paintings in the world. We didn't have to shorten the gallery visit for a younger sister's attention span. During our lunch break, we didn't have to cater to anyone else's conversational priorities–we could talk about the paintings we saw, the history we learned and the artists we liked. When she said she would also like to see Ford's Theater where Lincoln was shot, we didn't have to poll anyone else to see if we should go. Off we went. Ditto for the kind of restaurant we would go to for dinner. That night, when a huge thunderstorm broke over the city, we stood out on our 14th floor terrace for half an hour to watch the lightening explode all around the night sky. She spent time trying to capture a flash of lightening on her iPhone but the roars of light struck too quickly and from unexpected directions. It was nature's fireworks and she didn't have to think about how anyone else in the family was reacting.

The next morning we flew home with her. Within seconds she was back in the orbit of her family and her usual roles of big-sister, mom-helper, brother competitor. But that didn't change the fact that we had forged a new and different bond with our granddaughter. We had been rewarded with a glimpse of the future Maia: the serious student with a mind for history, an eye for art and a love of thunderstorms–the one who is part of a loving family herd, but is also an independent thinker and her very own person.

The Grands grow up so quickly. The roles we play with and for them are ever-changing. The visit made us realize we're moving from cuddlers to guides–trusted adults on whom they can test their future dreams and ideas.

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Observations: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the feel of an empty-nested house

09/19/2016

Well, it's not Anne herself but Anne as channeled by Melanie Benjamin in her novel "The Aviator's Wife," which is told in the first-person voice of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Benjamin read through Lindbergh's diaries and personal papers as part of her research for the book, so these comments on how her child-emptied house in Darien, Connecticut felt to the mother of five grown children presumably mirror the Aviator's Wife's feelings:

"It's the quiet that you notice, first, when the children begin to leave.

And not just the practical fact that the record player is unplugged, the radio turned off. Nor simply the lack of some instrument being practiced behind closed door. Not merely the silent phone, the absence of stampeding feet up and down stairs, the slamming of doors, the constant rush of water in the bathroom.

It's more than that–less than that, too. It's a hum, a vibration that leaves when they leave. For all of a sudden the very air in the house is slower, duller; gentler against your eardrum. "

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Bank of Mom and Dad: Should the helping hand be a loan or a gift?

09/13/2016

Some of us have taken a tough love stand: Once they're adults, our kids are on their own: The Bank of Mom and Dad is closed.

Others take a more nuanced approach: A helping hand is there, depending on what it's for.

For those of us in that camp, the question is: Should that help be in the form of a loan or a gift.

The loan would appear to be the less risky way to go. The money will hopefully be repaid and we haven't, as one financial adviser put it, " dampened their drive to become financially independent."

Call Paterfamilias and me "Mommy and Daddy Indulgence," but we see the risks of loans as higher than those of a gift.

The loan risks? They won't be able to pay it back and there will be bad blood between the banker (Mom and Dad) and the borrower (the adult progeny). A Carnegie Mellon survey published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, looked into the terms and consequences of loans between and among friends and family and found that "people’s tendency to confuse what is in their own interest with what is fair is a major source of disagreements between people.” Put another way, ill will develops between lender and borrower. Relationships suffer.

More specifically, the survey of some 900 participants found that overdue personal loans had wide-ranging negative consequences, such as loss of closeness and loss of trust. Lenders felt that the delinquent borrowers were going out of their way to avoid them.

Bottom line: If the idea of gifting the money runs counter to your instincts and beliefs, then march your child over to the bank and co-sign a loan. The bank is in the business of collecting on debt. If your child misses a payment or two, let the bank hound them. And if your child defaults on the loan? Well, you're out of pocket, just as you would be if you made a gift.

This scenario only works if you can afford to lose the money. If you can't, you probably shouldn't be making a direct loan, co-signing a bank loan or gifting the money.

There's a pithy proverb that fills this bill, courtesy of the Bard on Avon:

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Parenting Grown Children: Are the bride’s parents still on the hook for the wedding?

09/06/2016

When it comes to wedding costs, those of us who are parents of the bride can only be thankful that dowries are no longer an acceptable mode of exchange. But what about paying for the wedding? Tradition has it that the bride's family is on the hook for it. But is that how millennials see it? Has there been a rethinking of who pays for what?

I bring this up because I recently saw a Survey Monkey poll run by a 20-something over at FiveThirtyEight. (He likes to run surveys about what he calls questions about how to be an adult). More than 1,000 single and married folks from millennials to 60+ answered the Survey Monkey questions, which asked about a variety of financial and etiquette wedding issues. Chief among them: who should pay for the shindig?

Before I read the results, I leaned on my own carefully acquired anecdotal evidence: It will vary with the age of the bridge and groom: the older they are (upwards of their mid-30s as opposed to in their 20s) the more likely the bride and groom will pay for or share the costs for the wedding they want. The survey answers were more varied than that.

According to the 20-something who analyzed the Monkey results:

Three responses rose to the top: 25 percent of respondents said the bride’s family, 26 percent said the couple, and 26 percent said that the groom’s family, the bride’s family, and the couple should split evenly. The remainder were split over various permutations of those three groups, with most saying either both families splitting it or the bride’s family and the couple splitting it. For what it’s worth, among the 18-to-29 cohort –you know, the ones often getting married — about half thought it should be some permutation of the parents’ problem to pay, with 35 percent saying the bride’s family should cover it.

Bottom line: The more things change the more they stay the same. There’s still a broad belief that the bride’s family should pay for the main event. To put some survey numbers on it:

Stripping out the permutations, 70 percent said the bride’s family should be at least somewhat on the hook for paying for the wedding, 60 percent said the couple should chip in, and 41 percent said the groom’s family should.

Here are the survey permutations for those interested in details–and to see how answers varied by age of respondent. And yes, my anecdotal evidence is within the margin of error.

	SHARE OF RESPONDENTS BY AGE
WHO PAYS?	TOTAL	18-29	30-44	45-59	60+
The couple	26%	22%	22%	31%	29%
Three-way split (groom & bride’s families, couple)	26	19	31	30	24
The bride’s family	25	35	18	22	24
The groom’s family and the bride’s family	12	12	15	10	11
The bride’s family and the couple	7	10	6	5	9
The groom’s family	2	1	6	2	1
The groom’s family and the couple	0	0	2	0	0

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Observation: Ruth Nemzoff on life and longing in our relationships with our adult children

08/25/2016

In an interview with Vision about her book, Ruth Nemzoff, talked about what we yearn for in our relationships with our adult children and about the pressures we are under to ease out of their lives.

The ideal relationship between parent and grown child: "My book is written for parents who basically have good relationships with their adult children. What they yearn for is more intimacy. They don’t want to live their children’s lives; they don’t want to be involved in every petty decision—or even every major decision. But they would like to at least feel a part of it. They don’t want to read in the newspaper that their child got a job promotion. Or perhaps the adult child might say, “Hi, I was offered this new job; these are the pros, these are the cons, this is what I’ve decided.” The parents would love it if their child asked, “What’s your opinion? I’m not necessarily going to follow it, but input would be valuable.” That would be the ideal."

Letting go: The task is not to let go but to constantly use incremental learning to bring them to new ways of staying connected. …. As we get older, how do we live perfectly independent lives yet remain able to share the joys and the sorrows—the frustrations of life? For example, if your child gets a promotion, you all might want to celebrate together. Or if your child experiences a failure, it’s nice to have people who care that you failed. Most of the world just goes on, right? They don’t care whether I wrote my article today or not. But it’s wonderful to have a child who says, “How’s the article going, Mom?”

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Leaving a Legacy: Letting your Grands know what matters to you

08/16/2016

Every family vacation has its theme, inside joke or something that becomes a means to remember the time spent together. On one Vermont vacation, we couldn't eat enough country-made peach pies. They were the treat–every evening and some afternoons. One year our Grands put on a magic show that was, well, magic and memorable, down to the finale of all them running around the lawns of our condo with sparklers. Last year was the year of Pride and Prejudice –the full BBC version. We would watch an hour or two every night–everyone rushed through dinner to take their seats in front of the TV for the next episode or two–and that included the 7 year old, the teenagers and the adults.

This year, unlike our previous family vacations in Vermont, our daughter and her family were not with us. Sigh. They had obligations elsewhere so this was the family summer vacation with just one set of adult kids and Grands.

It was also the vacation I fell into a pattern of reading the New York Times on the porch of my condo every morning and then wandering over to Uber son's unit armed with a scintillating article to share. The idea of a news bite from PenPen did not necessarily bring cheers from my Grands, ages 8, 13 and 15. I could almost hear groans. But once I read key parts or summarized the issue, they sat up and took notice–well, they paid some attention.

One day the story was about the attempt to do unto This Land is Your Land, Woody Guthrie's anthem, what had been done to Happy Birthday. That is, lift the copy right and make the song available to anyone who wanted to use it. My Grands of course knew the song–they sang a line or two before we got back to the facts–and even the 8-year-old knew what "copyright" was (her dad has written several books. Must have been a word that came up from time to time.)

Another story that drew interest: A recent dig in Hungary where anthropologists were hoping to unearth the "heart of gold" of Suleiman the Magnificent, an Ottoman warrior and leader, that was buried in a small village in Hungary when he died on the eve of battle. What's not intriguing about a dig into the past–a 16th century battlefield bunker–and a story about a warrior leaving his heart buried in a casket of gold?

Another day it was the news report that French President Francois Hollande had spent $10,000 a month on haircuts. Shocking to all (hashtag #CoiffeurGate) and lots of jokes by my Grands on hairstylist spending–especially by une homme with not that much hair on his head.

Bottom line: It didn't matter if my arrival with news story in hand became a running joke. Actually, it never dawned on me that my Grands wouldn't enjoy my news clips–nor did I care if they didn't. They could always walk away or return to whatever it was they were doing. It was more important to me that the news stories led to lively conversations–about why Arlo Guthries' heirs wouldn't want to give away the copyright (It wasn't the money; they didn't want politicians with whom they disagreed to use the song for their own purposes.) and why copyrights are important to artists. We also theorized about Turkish Suleiman the Magnificent and what he was doing so far afield in Hungary and why his entourage left the great warrior's heart behind.

The vacation of the New York Times stories might not have been as tasty as the peach pie vacation or addictive as Pride and Prejudice but it was a reminder–to me at any rate–that Grands like being part of a grown-up discussion. It is also reminder that we leave a legacy with our Grands, not just in the material things that may come their way but in little discussions, bits of advice, sharing of memories.

Who knows if my Grands will remember the summer of news story discussions or look to newspapers like the New York Times for the wide range of stories they have to tell. But they might. The daily news briefings this summer undoubtedly meant more to me than to my Grands. Newspapers are my passion. How else would we begin to understand other cultures. I can only hope they picked up a little of my enthusiasm and stay curious.

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