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© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

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

    Bank of Mom and Dad: Lending our grown kids money for a mortgage

     We are the helping-hand generation. All the surveys say so. Even when our kids are adults, we are ready–if we can afford it–to lend them money or gift them cash, especially for what we consider the Big Things. Chief among those biggies: buying a house. A survey this past spring reports that three out of four of our grown kids who recently bought their first home needed our help to afford the down payment, closing costs or other expenses.

    For some of us, it's a guilty (should we be helping them out, still?) pleasure (we get to visit them in their nice home) that pays off. Yes, we might have struggled to do it on our own when we were young, but a whole lot of things have happened since then–including wild inflation in the cost of housing and a shakier economic foundation in the work place. Besides, many of us get a healthy return on our investments. Not necessarily in legal tender but in seeing our kids–and grandkids– living in a solid house in a stable neighborhood.

    Sometimes, though, that investment can run into trouble.If our children are married, there can be a divorce; if our child's spouse gets the house, where does that leave our gift? Or, if our child refinances and takes out $50,000 to pay for a five-star vacation or $100,000 for a BMW sports car, where does that leave our investment?

    Some of those issues were addressed in a recent NYT story that warned of cautions to take when we help grown children with the purchase of a house.

    Here are two key points from financial planners and mortgage experts:

    –The divorce contingency: If the gift or loan is specified in writing as being a gift/loan only to one's child (and not the couple), in case of a divorce, the gift should not be considered mutual property available for division. Your kid's spouse may get the house, but the gift has to be repaid. If it's a loan, a repayment plan should be in place and both divorcing partners should be obligated by it–regardless of who is living in the house.

    –The refinancing issue: If parents think their child may have over-spending issues–or that the spouse might–they can take the control-freak route. As terms of the gift or loan, they can require that their name by added to the title at closing. That gives them the right to be notified if there is an application to refinance as well as the right to approve or disapprove the refinancing–though not necessarily how their kids use that money.

     

     

     

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

    Helicopter Parenting: Is hovering over adult kids a big problem or a bad rap?

     

     Despite the anecdotal data–the stories about parents setting up job interviews for their grown kids or, worse, accompanying them to the interview; of parents calling their kid's college professor and making a case for a higher grade–we are not as overly involved as we're made out to be.

    Writing in Salon a few months back, Alfie Kohn went beyond the tales of outrageous helicoptering to see what the research says. It shows that, yes, we're in touch with our kids at a higher rate than the pre-cell phone, pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook era. But communicating–even at a "hovering" rate–isn’t the same as intervening, which, it turns out, is fairly rare (but makes great blog posts). Kohn points to the National Survey of Student Engagement, which asked some 9,000 college students about parental intervention issues. Only 13 percent of college freshmen and 8 percent of seniors said a parent had frequently intervened to help them solve problems.

    As to the workplace, Michigan State University researchers found that 77 percent of the 725 employers they surveyed “hardly ever witnessed a parent while hiring a college senior.”  But the Michigan study had this interesting aside:

    Several employers could not resist adding comments on their experiences with involved parents. One employer had advice for parents submitting resumes, “Please tell your student that you have submitted a resume to a company. We have called a student from our resume pool only to find they did not know anything about our company and were not interested in a position with us.” Another talked of a lengthy discussion with a mother on why the company could not arrange a special interview for her son who could not make the scheduled on-campus interview. Employers acknowledged that they were more likely to see mothers collecting company information and making arrangements for interviews, company visits, and other contacts with the company. Fathers usually appeared during negotiations, when the hiring decision did not favor their child.

    No one said there's a sudden moment when we go from controlling parent to advisory parent, from being in charge to letting go, but the gradual easing of the reins does eventually take place–though not necessarily the many ways of keeping in close and almost constant touch.

     

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    Why those annoying 'helicopter parents' aren't so bad after all
    MSU, U-Mich. results part of national sexual assault survey
    How to raise an adult
    Why Colleges Need Helicopter Parents

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

    Marriage Vows: How much influence do we have on their choice? “Meet the Patels” tells all.

     

    image from http://s3.amazonaws.com/hires.aviary.com/k/mr6i2hifk4wxt1dp/15092920/7f182d45-e542-4b65-a8ee-e7c5e2dc4ad3.png

     We went to see Meet the Patels last night. A delightful documentary: Witty, insightful, one family's dilemma but universal in its message–especially for those of us who think (or whose parents thought it for us) we have any sway over who our children decide to marry.

    The Patels are an Indian family living well and successfully in California. The dad, who came to the U.S. to study and stayed on to make his fortune, and the mom are a well-suited, arranged-marriage couple who've been happy together for more than 30 years. They want the same happiness and sense of Indian-culture family for their son (and daughter–but it's the son's story that is the focus of the film, which was filmed by his sister).

    We who do not believe in arranged marriages–the Patel son does, or thinks he does–can sit back and laugh with the film's story teller (the son) who does not disparage his parents or make fun of them but takes us along on some of the real-life arranged dates, which includes a speed-dating event for Indian singles. We may laugh at the folly of trying to set up for marriage an American-born and very California-ized son. But the reality that underlies the movie and its message is how universal the parents are: What they want–what motivates them in what they consider to be their modernized marriage-arrangement journey–is for their children to be happy.

    Isn't this true of all of us. Or to put it another way, we are only as happy as our unhappiest child. Let joy be unconfined.

    Related articles

    'Meet the Patels' takes on tradition of arranged marriages
    Arranged marriages losing
    "Meet the Patels": In search of a Desi Bride
    How a Real-Life Rom-Com About Arranged Marriage Explores Love in America

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

    Supporting Grown Children: When to close down the helping handout

    A lot of us have sound criteria for helping our kids out financially. We know when tough love should be levied and when a helping hand is appropriate. But those decisions can get muddied, especially for those of us who are grandparents.

    The surveys suggest we're generous with our Grands, that way more than half of grandparents–around 60 percent, according to most surveys I've seen–say they provide some assistance to their children and grandchildren. Clothing, general support and education top the bill, in that order. In my own informal, anecdotal collection of what friends and friends of friends are doing, the top item is day care. A lot of us open our wallets to pay for or help out with child care on the theory that we want our children to choose the best, safest care for our Grands regardless of cost.

    But how long can or should that go on and should there be strings attached to our largesse? Friends are struggling with that issue and its complications.

    Judy and Hal's "complications" started when their daughter, a Spanish major, was in college. She spent her junior year abroad–in Chile–where she met and fell in love with a Chilean student. The romance prospered, as did her language skills. After she graduated from college, she moved to Chile and married her fellow-student who was studying engineering.

    Two years ago they moved back to the U.S., to a small apartment in the same city as her parents. She started to teach Spanish in a high school while he continued with his studies. They were managing on their own–living in an inexpensive apartment and watching their pennies. No need for parental help.

    Then everything changed. They had a baby.

    Judy and Hal offered some support: They would pay for day care, but only for five months. They set a time limit for one reason: Their son-in-law had finished his studies and they wanted to put pressure on him to get a job. That, however, was proving more difficult than expected. His English is far from fluent–not a problem in solving engineering problems–but it created difficulties in the job search. "Most of the initial interviews are on the telephone and that is a problem for him," Judy says. He does not get call-backs.

    He is increasingly discouraged and the five-month deadline is ticking to a close. For Judy and Hal the questions that raises are tricky. If they stop paying for daycare and the husband stays home to provide the care, what will that do his self-esteem, his attitude about his future in the U.S.? Will the young couple decide they would be better off in Chile and move there, taking Judy and Hal's grandchild with them?

    Both Judy and Hal work full time and are in no position to provide hands-on child care themselves. Their son-in-law's mother has come for visits from Chile for three-week stints and helps out. But the mother has other children in Chile who depend on her for help.

    Given that they can afford to pay for child care, the questions Judy and Hal are asking themselves now are whether they should walk back from their five-month deadline? If so, how and for how long should they provide the helping hand of a child-care stipend and under what circumstances? Should strings be attached–should they, in effect, demand that the son-in-law land a job, any job, even a low-paying non-career job? And if he does, and his after-tax earnings barely pay for child care, what then?

    The stakes are high. It's not as though their daughter or son-in-law have a sense of entitlement or aren't trying to make it on their own.

    These helping hand questions are never as clear cut as we think they are–no matter what criteria we've set down. And when our grandchild's future and proximity are thrown into the mix–who can say what the right decision is. Of course, the answer ultimately isn't in our hands. It's in our children's. Our insertion of financial assistance is probably not the key factor in whatever decisions they make. It's their life, whether we choose to give it a helping handout or not.

     

    Related articles

    Grandparenting: Being careful what we say to our grownchildren about their children
    Vacations with Grown Kids and Grands: Update on easing the stress of too much togetherness

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

    Social Media Etiquette: The cell phone rules for us, our kids and our Grands

    It makes me sad when my teen-aged Grands bury their faces in their smart phones. I find it eerie when I get in an elevator or am walking down a street and everyone around me is peering into or tapping on their cell.  I'm uncomfortable when a friend takes a call on the cell while we're chatting over lunch–or just a cup of coffee.

    So much for me and my generation, stuck with our sense of the world that doesn't seem to apply to the digital age.

    Comes now a Pew study that assures me that it isn't my generation. No one is quite sure what's right, what's wrong when it comes to cell phone etiquette.  Calling their report "Manners 2.0: Key findings about etiquette in the digital age," Pew offers these observations on the social norms for what is rude and what is acceptable behavior when we gather together but still feel the call to stay connected to the wider world.

    The key finding: Across the generations, most of us see cellphone use as OK in certain public spaces, but not in more private or intimate gatherings. Here's the Pew chart on the where's of public space .

     

    Most of us–82% in the survey–view cellphones as harmful and distracting to group dynamics, but a growing number (and this probably applies to the younger generations) say cellphones are used more often to make social gatherings more social, not less. Here's the data on that finding: 89% of cellphone owners say they used their phone during their most recent social gathering with friends, though they also said they were more likely to use their cellphone in a manner tied to the social gathering than in an antisocial way.

    So, does taking selfies or photos at group gathering count as using the cellphone? Sort of. Pew's survey reports that people who used cellphones at private gatherings used them to post a picture or video of the gathering (45%), share something that happened in the group (41%), get information they thought would be interesting to the group (38%), or connect with other people known to the group (31%).

    Another chart from Pew spelling out some of those findings.

    As to a generation gap, it's there but you can almost see the convergence from here: 98% of young adults used their cellphone for one reason or another during their most recent get-together with others; 69% of those over 65 did. Almost all age groups, however, frowned on usage in quiet or more intimate settings.

     Full report available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/26/americans-views-on-mobile-etiquette/

     

    Related articles

    Manners 2.0: Key findings about etiquette in the digital age
    Smartphone growth creating etiquette challenges
    Pew Study: We're Basically on Our Phones All the Time

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

    Refilled Nests: Why are so many grown kids heading home? Goldman Sachs has answers

    It isn't all logarithms and higher-math analysis at Goldman Sachs. The investment firm's researchers have their soft side. Two economists there looked into the question of, as they framed it, "What's Keeping the Kids at Their Parents' Homes?"

    Statistically speaking, they are there in greater numbers than they were post-recession. Between 2010 and this past spring, the share of young adults living in their parents' homes increased from 24 percent to 26, according to a Pew study–even though the economy improved during that time.

    So what gives? Here's the Goldman Sachs take:

    About one-third of the "excess kids" living with their parents is due to the "current labor force status 'composition effect.' " (According to Goldman:the aggregate share of kids that would be living with their parents if the current distribution of labor market outcomes were the same as in 2007. )

    What accounts for the other two-thirds? Partly it's that "the effect of unemployment shocks on the share of young people living with their parents dissipates slowly." (Translation: It takes a while to regain faith in the future.)

    But three other factors might also be playing a role:

    1–Rising student debt and poor credit scores

    2–The median age at first marriage has been increasing at a faster than usual rate since 2007

    3–Rent-to-income ratios are at historic highs, especially for young people.

    According to GS economists, "the future trajectory of these three factors is less clear, suggesting that the share of 18-34 year-olds living at home might not fully return to pre-recession rates."

    GS concludes that this is not bad news if you're a home builder. There's a big bulge of adults living at home that will move out and into homes of their own–in a little while. Extending that logic: If you're a parent with a basement full of returnees, the end is in sight–but not right away.

    Related articles

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

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

    Observations: The parental trauma of dropping kids off at college

    Whether it's our oldest, youngest, only or other beloved offspring, it's a wrenching experience to drop our kids off at college. Most of us have vented our angst to friends, expressed our feelings of loss to our journals, blogged about it, sent out a tweet or two. One parent has found yet another platform to put his feelings out there: His email "out of office" message.

    After the usual blather about who to contact if you absolutely need to reach someone in his office, Michael Merschel, book critic for the Dallas Morning News, left this message about his absence (as reported by Emily Gould in the New York Times):

    "I want you to imagine a middle-aged man who fell in love with a beautiful baby girl almost 18 years ago, and now he is driving her to a gigantic college in a distant city filled with all kinds of people who do the things people do at college…and he has to leave her there. And drive home alone. In the dark. In a minivan."

    Says it all, doesn't it.

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

    Paying Attention: A grandparent’s treasure to use or lose

     

    My friend Ann and I are having coffee, catching up on the state of our semi-retirements, vacations and grandchildren. Hers live near her; she sees them all the time. Mine are far away; vacations with them and their families are my only chance to see them up close and personally for more than a day or two.

    I mention a big change in our family vacation dynamic. Last year when we were all in Vermont at our usual vacation retreat, our then-13-year-old grandson would pop by our condo at odd times. He'd walk or bike over, plop down, talk soccer or baseball with his BaPa, do a crossword puzzle with me and finish off the peaches in the bowl on the kitchen counter. This year, he was 14. He dropped by our condo only on request–a text message, say, to ask him to bring us something from his parent's condo. He'd chat when he arrived but he didn't linger or even look around for peaches. When we stopped by his condo, we were barely acknowledged. Instead, he'd have his iPhone in hand, thumbs tapping away while, presumably, he stayed in touch with friends.

    Don't take it personally, Ann says. She, too, has a 14-year old grandson. His grandfather (Ann's husband) has been driving his grandson to soccer practice for eight years now–to fields all over the county and some beyond. They'd  talk soccer (the grandson is a gifted player) in the car, tell each other jokes and sometimes muse about math homework (grandpa tutors him to make sure he keeps up). That was then. Now that he's 14, his thumbs do the talking. He's much less communicado even when the texting stops. If they're giving a fellow player a ride, grandpa is not usually included in the conversation.

    Ann finds her grandson similarly withdrawn from her. Like mine, he's a nice child and polite. She doesn't take the behavior personally. She assumes it mirrors her son's behavior when he was young and living in her house. "I should have paid more attention," she says. What she means is that when her kids were growing up, her life was so full–what with being a wife and mother, pursuing a career, keeping house, driving kids to various activities. For most of us, our kids grow up so fast we don't necessarily notice all the little changes along the way. Our kids evolve–there's no Aha! moment; we just absorb the way they are at any given moment. Whereas, as grandparents, we have the time to step back and take notice and note. 

    In our family, since we see our grandchildren for a weekend every few months or, on vacation, for a week, it's no wonder that we're on super-alert: paying attention to everything at every minute. Changes don't slowly evolve; suddenly they are here and now.

     In a recent column financial planner Carl Richards asked, What Is Our Attention Really Worth? He'd been thinking, he wrote, that attention is a currency that we choose how to spend "just like we spend our time, energy and money. Unlike money, however, there’s no way to store attention for later use. It’s a bit like time in that way; we use it or lose it."

    His point is that we can spend time on something–or someone– and still not pay attention to it or them. Attention "might be the most in-demand asset we have to offer….So given the value of our attention, shouldn’t we pay more attention to how we spend it?…We think of certain things as being free, but if it requires our attention, we’re paying a price of sorts."

    For most of us, we spend our attention on our Grands when our Grands are available, and on their various steps in growing up–much more than we were able to when they were youngsters and we saw them every day and they were at the heart of our busy, everyday lives. We now have what is euphemistically called "perspective" and the golden opportunity of time to pay attention–and share our insights about (not criticisms of!) our Grands with their parents (our grown kids).  The parents seem to enjoy hearing how their kids are or are not like they were when they were that age–even if we couldn't pay much attention back then and if, by necessity, our observations are in a pre-texting context.

     

    Related articles

    Grandparenting: Being careful what we say to our grownchildren about their children
    Vacations with Grown Kids and Grands: Update on easing the stress of too much togetherness
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  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Vacations with the Family: Finding the entertainment sweet spot for all the generations

     

    We've been spending summer vacations in Vermont with our grown children and their families for about ten years now. Every year seems to have a theme or a high point that defines the vacation. One year it was the magic show our Grands put on for us and their parents–not just the show itself but the hours they spent practicing their tricks and helping each other. And then there was the year of the farm stand peach pies. We couldn't eat enough of them.

    This year was marked by binge watching–in three nights–all five hours of a DVD. Who would admit to binge watching on vacation? Sounds awful. Besides, what would keep a 14-year-old boy, one seven and two 12-year old girls intrigued–plus the parents and grandparents –and asking all day when the viewing of the next episodes would begin?

     We watched the PBS version of Pride and Prejudice–the one with Colin Firth as a dreamy Mr Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as the spirited Elizabeth Bennet. We had to take occasional breaks in the action–wee pauses to explain some details, such as what an entailed estate entailed and for those among us who were romance-challenged, why some of the characters did or did not pine for others. But everyone loved the tale of the Bennet sisters, their sensible father, their hysterical mother and the balls and dancing of the era, plus the lushness of the scenes–horses riding across meadows, characters walking through wooded estates or into town on rutted roads. We were all intrigued with the way life was lived some 200 years ago–at least as re-created by the producers of the program.

    The evening binges led to daytime discussions–on the lot of women at that time and now, on the importance of live music and muscianship, how mail was delivered, on how people traveled to visit friends and relatives in other towns and cities, the role of servants.

    And then we followed it up with peach pie–some traditions live on from one vacation to the next.

     

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    The Difficult Hero by Marilyn Brant
    P&P: Behind the Scenes – Darcy Prepares for the Netherfield Ball
    P&P: Behind the Scenes – After the Bennet Sisters Depart Netherfield
    Vacations with Grown Kids and Grands: Update on easing the stress of too much togetherness

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

    Grandparenting: The double joys and sorrows of being part of our grown children’s lives

    I had written a condolence note to a co-worker. One of her Grands–a 3 month old twin–had died suddenly in his mother's arm. There is not much we can say to relieve the unbearable heaviness of such a loss except to say the family is in our thoughts and prayers.  I wrote quickly–not caring so much what I said as making sure I sent my sentiments when comfort was most needed.

    In her note back to me–a note of thanks for taking the time to think of and pray for her family–she made a comment that mirrored my own thoughts. "As parents and grandparents I know you understand the anguish of our loss. We grieve for ourselves, but even more for our children, [the baby's] parents."

    I understand. A few years ago I flew to Boston to be at the hospital bedside of a grandchild who had been hit by a car when out walking with her mother, my daughter. She had a concussion and fractured pelvis, and in those first 24 hours neither our family nor the team of doctors treating her knew had bad the concussion was nor what the long-term repercussions would be.

    We were lucky. Two years later, my granddaughter–my daughter's child–is thriving with seemingly no major after-effects from the accident. But I remember the double pain I felt that day–for my granddaughter who at that moment was in unknown danger and for my daughter, who saw her child hit by a car and who had thought–for one dreadful moment–that her child was dead.

    My co-worker's note was also, in its way, a reminder that there are, thankfully, two sides to that double feeling. The joys a grandchild brings are also experienced twice–in the wonder of whatever the child did or said that delights us and in the pleasure we see in the faces of the parents–our children.

    We double down no matter what.

    Related articles

    Parenting Grown Children: We are at our peril when we give advice they didn't ask for
    Vacations with Grown Kids and Grands: Update on easing the stress of too much togetherness
    Grandparenting: Being careful what we say to our grownchildren about their children