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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.

    Grandparenting: Advice on giving unsolicited advice to the newborn’s parents

     

    This is not a "don't do it" admonition. We all know–and remember well–how we got through that first year of bringing up baby: the sleepless nights, the feeding glitches, the tummy aches, the diaper rash, the teething. Our parents gave us advice–sometimes helpful, occasionally outdated, often based on a memory bathed in hazy afterglow.  They knew it all or thought they did, having weathered the sturm und drang of our first year.

    Now it's our turn. And like our parents, we may be tempted to share all our remembered knowledge and experience. Some of us do it successfully–we manage to impart advice without being intrusive or making the new parents feel like the rookies they are. But many of us bumble and come across as being critical rather than just offering a suggestion. Or we think we know better and countermand given instructions–like slipping a breast-fed baby a bottle of formula or not bothering with the car seat for a short ride.

    It's an issue that's front and center in a new New York Times parenting blog, "New Parent, Old Parent." There isn't much advice on there yet–the blog is looking for anecdotes from both the new parents and the new grandparents on what works and what doesn't in terms of unsolicited advice. (Grandparents interested in writing their memoir-ette on the topic, the blog whats to know how you "emerged with your relationships with your children
    and their spouses intact, what was the secret to raising your children
    through their own entry into parenthood?" Or conversely, your insights into what didn't work out so well.)

    Here's a thread to follow if you have something to share or want to see how others cope.

    Related articles

    Dealing With The "Parent Police"
    Living with Children: Grandparents' advice should be limited
    Grandparents: Only give advice when it?s asked for
    Monday Morning Reader: Elinor Lipman's insights on the joy of being the parent of a grown child

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

    Social Media Etiquette: Three tips to make sure your grownkids answer your Skype call

     

    photo: Palo Coleman

    We just had a delightful visit with our daughter. We got to ooh and aah over the view from her window. We took a quick tour of her apartment and sighed over the smallness of one of the bedrooms. We talked about what an attractive neighborhood she was living in and how the nervous energy in the home was rising since school just started for our Grand. The dog came over and gave us a paws-up.

    Our daughter and her family are living in Berlin for a year. We sat at our computer here in Maryland, she at laptop in Germany and we linked up via Skype. There is a very "you are there" feeling with a video call, and when a grown child lives far from you, it makes you feel as if you've just dropped in for a cup of tea. It's just that you each bought your chai from emporiums on opposite sides of the Atlantic. You can chat while one of you makes dinner or is busy straightening up the apartment. It's intimate. It's personal. Almost as good as being there, except that there's no hug at the end–just an air kiss and a few shouts of tschuss [the informal German for bye-bye].

    Technology helps cut distance down to size. There are visual clues to go along with the timber of the voice you hear on the phone. You can pick up the vibe of whether your child is happy or worried, whether things are going well or poorly.

    But what we've been learning about the visual chat–Skype or other services–is that, as Tim Gunn on The Runway would put it–we should "use it wisely." Otherwise, they may stop clicking on "video call" when you ring them up. Here are three tips for proper Skype etiquette:

    1. Don't press that video call button just because the Skype button is lit. It's the same as dropping in at their home for an unannounced visit. Popping in via Skype can be intrusive: Maybe they just got out of the shower or are in mid-Yoga workout or are having a spat with a spouse. Better to arrange times for calls or set a particular day and hour for a regular call.

    2. Don't try to talk to everyone at once. With my daughter, we've been dealing with the question of the order in which we speak to family members–the Grand first, the parents second or the other way around? Skype really isn't the same as sitting at the dining room table together–there's no way for two people to break away and have a private conversation. With our son and his family of five, it's even more difficult to impose order. With the kids vying for screen time, the visit descends into minor squabbles over whose turn is when. And if they're using the iPad, OMG: It gets passed around and upended, giving those of us at the receiving end a dizzying view of the household, the ceiling and  upside down views of faces. 

    3. Don't underestimate the power of emoticons. They are there, right in the instant message section of Skype. When the talk gets to politics or news of the day, my Grand tends to wander off. One way to keep her in the visit is to type messages and attach emoticons–with an emphasis on the plural of the latter. That's right: There cannot be too many teeny tiny dancing monkeys, lit-up birthday cakes or grinning clowns at the end of a message–or as the message itself. Hard to believe, but yes, it will keep them with you for a while–and they really really do see it as a form of personal communication. 🙂

     
    Related articles

    Social Media Etiquette: Logging onto a grown child's site? Keep your footprint light.
    The Pain of Parting: A grown child will be living abroad for a year. Again.
    Skype Around the World
    Skype 10th Anniversary: a history
    Skype for iPhone adds two-way video calling
    Hooray! Skype iPhone update lets you join group voice calls

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

    Leaving a Legacy: A writer’s memoir adds a dimension to the intangibles we can leave our children.

    A few posts ago I quoted Elinor Lipman's insights in her book, I Can't Complain, on the joys of having brought up baby–that is, the delight in having your small child grow into an independent adult. But one of her essays also looks back at her mother's influence on her–the chicken soup recipe, the gardening tips.

                    

    She also writes in an essay called "I Still Think, Call Her," about how, when her mother was widowed, she moved her mother across the state to live near her in a condo of her own. The two of them went shopping together to pick out curtains, rugs and dishes. She took her mother on a variety of outings, both personal and professional–despite noting that "parents at a distance are a little more charming than they are close-up." Nonetheless, the picture she drew of her relationship with her mother had me tearing up when her mother dies in her 90s–not because I identified with her loss, but because I couldn't.

    When my mother became ill and needed more care than I could give (she lived a three-hour plane ride away), I asked her to move to live near me. And, yes, I was relieved when she said no. I didn't press her further. Ours was a difficult relationship–not particularly charming even from a distance. She said no for the usual reasons–not wanting to be a burden, I supposed, but even more a rootedness in her home: not wanting to leave the apartment she had filled with the memories and memorabilia of her days as a full-time wife, mother and homemaker.

    What strikes me now, after reading Lipman's essay, is this: I hope I can be generous enough to my children to let them help me if and when that time comes. I can see how much it meant to Lipman and see how much I lost out by not insisting that my mother move. Not that an insistence would have necessarily worked. But I didn't make sure that as she reached her 80s, as Lipman's mother did, she felt wanted and needed. It turns out, it was my loss.

    Related articles

    Monday Morning Reader: Elinor Lipman's insights on the joy of being the parent of a grown child

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

    Reader’s Report: Ray Bradbury’s insight on legacies applies to what we leave behind for our grown children.

    No, of course we don't want to think of wills, estates and what we leave behind for our children–no less the non-monetary stuff. But a legacy–from what we did with our lives to the books we read them to the birthday cards we wrote them–has meaning that carries forward, along with the memory of us and our values. 

    That said, here are some legacy-leaving words from an unexpected quarter: Ray Bradbury, writing in Fahrenheit 451. (Thank you MiddleSage for calling my attention to this.)

     

                            

    “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said.
    A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes
    made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul
    has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that
    flower you planted, you're there.

    It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from
    the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you
    take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a
    real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well
    not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

    Related articles

    Ray Bradbury: Master of American Science Fiction?
    Ray Bradbury Predictions Fulfilled (Infographic)
    #DailyBookQuote 30Jul13 : Ray Bradbury's The Martial Chronicles
    Monday Morning Reader: Elinor Lipman's insights on the joy of being the parent of a grown child
    Monday Morning Reader: A political columnist writes about the sadness of seeing his child off to college

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

    Our Millennials: Living at home is no fun for anyone, even if so many of our kids are doing it.

    My friend C is struggling. She loves her sons; she's not sorry she became a stay-at-home mom to take care of them. But now that one is three years past his college graduation and the other three months, she's ready for them to move on and out. One or both of them have been living at home for various stretches of time since the dawn of the college years. Not in the basement or on the den couch, as some headlines would have it, but in their childhood bedrooms.

    For C, if they're living at home, they owe her: They should do the chores she asks them to do (but they 'forget' to empty the dishwasher, mow the lawn, clean the car she lets them use); they should make themselves pleasant around the house (but sometimes they're downright adolescent in their behaviour toward her); and they should show more initiative on the job-hunt front (but whatever they're doing, they don't share it with her). It's an exercise in frustration. She would like to have her house back.

     Notes: “Living at home” refers to an adult who is the child or stepchild of the head of the household, regardless of the adult’s marital status. Source: Pew Research Center tabulations of March Current Population Survey  Integrated Public Use Micro Sample.Pew Research Center Notes:
    “Living at home” refers to an adult who is the child or stepchild of
    the head of the household, regardless of the adult’s marital status.
    Source: Pew Research Center tabulations of March Current Population
    Survey  Integrated Public Use Micro Sample.

    Does it help C to know she is not alone in dealing with young adults as
    dependents, that her sons are part of a trend that starting picking up
    steam in 2007 when the recession began? That year, 32 percent of people
    18 to 31 years old (the generation nicknamed the millennials) were
    living in their parents' homes [children in college are considered
    'living at home']; last year, 36 percent did, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

    C says she knows lots of kids her son's ages are living at home. That brings no comfort. The issue is the strain on their relationship. When her youngest son moved back after graduating from college this past May, he heaped all his junk in his old bedroom, did nothing to sort through the piles and informed her, "I don't want to live at home." But independence awaits success on the job front. It can't come soon enough for either one of them–or for those heaps on the floor.

    Related articles

    Money Matters:Our grown kids' financial struggles are tougher than ours were at their age.
    Refilled Nests: It isn't just economics that drives our grown kids back to home base.
    Boomerang Children: A strategy for emptying the nest
    One Third of Millennials – 21.6 Million of Them – Still Live With Mom and Dad
    A Rising Share of Young Adults Live in Their Parents' Home

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

    Refilled Nests: It isn’t just economics that drives our grown kids back to home base.

                    The Great Recession took a terrible toll on the generation known as millennials–on our kids who were just coming out of college. Many of them landed up at home, sleeping in the twin beds of their childhood until they could find a traction in a career job and move on to independence. At least that is the assumption behind the numbers that sketch out the dimensions of the trend toward home.

                A Pew Research Center
    study, released this summer, found that 36 percent of those aged 18 to 31 lived at home in 2012–the highest number in four
    decades. A poll from Twentysomething Inc. found that, among college seniors who graduated last May, 85 percent said they planned to move back home after graduation. That's up from 67 percent in 2006–even though the job market has improved for college graduates.

    But now comes an article in the New York Times' Motherlode column that posits that economics isn't the only thing driving our emerging adults back to the nest. Kids today, suggests author RANDYE HODER, are closer to us–in tastes and emotionally–than we were to our parents. They want to be with us. It feels safe and supportive.

    Here's how she spells out her thesis:

    Many parents of millennials — we boomers — grew up in the 1960s and
    ’70s, when the “generation gap,” reflected in politics, culture, fashion
    and music, was the norm. Today, there is no such gap, or at least it’s a
    lot narrower than it was. In many cases, millennials and their parents
    share similar tastes in fashion and music (O.K., maybe not hip-hop), and
    our politics are often aligned.

    My daughter and I shop together and sometimes share clothing. My
    husband has gone to concerts with both of our children, and I’ve worked
    on political campaigns with them. We share book recommendations, hike
    together and all enjoy going to the gym. The truth is, our kids seem to
    like hanging out with us, and we enjoy hanging out with them. We help to
    make them feel safe in a turbulent world; they keep us connected and
    make us feel alive and young.

    Of course, technology plays a role, too. Even when they do leave, we
    are never out of one another’s daily lives. ….

    There is no doubt that this tough job market makes living at home a
    practical, if not necessary, choice for many millennials (something I’ve addressed before).
    But being home is also undoubtedly made easier because millennials and
    their parents are close in a way that all of us should learn to embrace
    and celebrate.

     

     

     

    Related articles

    Boomerang Children: A strategy for emptying the nest
    Money Matters:Our grown kids' financial struggles are tougher than ours were at their age.
    8 Best of the Empty Nest
    A Rising Share of Young Adults Live in Their Parents' Home – The Baby Boomers' Boomies!
    How Long is Too Long for Boomerang Kids to Live with Their Parents?

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

    Grandparenting: iPad and poetry–born to be together.

    The Jabberwock, Sheldon Silverstein. Ogden
    Nash. These were some of the highlights of a spur-of-the-moment poetry evening
    with a 10-year-old Grand.

    Our poetry spree was kicked off when Paterfamilias
    tried to remember the words of that most rhythmic of sport ditties, Casey at
    the Bat    .

           

     We had been talking to our Grand about her experiences on the soccer field
    and added some commentary about expectations on the field of play. PF
    remembered only a few of his favorite lines from the tale of how Casey, mighty
    Casey advanced to the bat–he and the team's fans secure in the knowledge that he would get a hit and win the
    game for the Mudville Nine that day. That was
    enough to send our son-in-law to his iPad, where he called up Ernest Thayer’s
    poem. PF read through the whole work, which ends with these jolting lines, “Oh somewhere
    in this favored land the sun is shining bright;/The band is playing somewhere and
    somewhere hearts are light, and somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children
    shout;/But there is no job in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out.”

    Our Grand then grabbed her book of Shel Silverstein poems
    and treated us to a reading of one of her favorites, Sick, in which a little
    girl who doesn’t want to go to school lists her complaints, “I have the measles
    and the mumps,/a gash, a rash and purple bumps.” And, like Thayer,
    Silverstein ends with a kicker: “What’s that? What’s that you say?/You say
    today is…Saturday?/G’bye I’m going out to play.”

    We talked a little bit about surprise endings–how the poet raised our expectations then turned them on their head.

    Could I top those works? I was not going to reach for my Wordsworth and his daffodils. I told the tale of how, when I had the job of answering Letters to the Editor for Time Magazine, a reader had written to query a Time writer's use of the description of a knife as having "a vorpal blade." That was how I learned of Lewis Carroll's delicious use of nonsense words. I wanted to share all the nonsense (the slithy tove; the frumious Bandersnatch], but I could only remember a line or two. iPad to the rescue. When the poem's narrator meets the dreaded Jabberwock, he is armed with his ever-effective vorpal blade: "'One two, One two and through and through/the vorpal blade went snicker-snack."

    We talked a little bit about how Carroll didn't use a surprise ending, just a nonsense-word driven juxtaposition of vorpal-blade carnage with the a peaceful image: "'Twas brilling and the slithy toves/did gyre and gimble in the wabe…"

    I didn't need the iPad to help me out with Ogden Nash's brief little couplet: "The cow is of the bovine ilk/one end is moo, the other milk." No surprise. No juxtaposition. Just silly fun.

    So our poetry evening went on. We introduced our Grand to some more of our favorites–with a little memory boost from the iPad–and she let us in on hers. Light and nonsense-y though the poems were, it was a memorable evening. And it gave us a chance to talk about some of the "arts" of great writing–without making it a lecture or a heavy evening.  And it gave us a chance to share light lines that still pack some thought-provoking ideas, and to make the trip down a cultural lane a fun game of "can you top this?'

     

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

    Monday Morning Reader: A political columnist writes about the sadness of seeing his child off to college

    Sigh. The time is nigh. High schools graduates–the adolescents we put up with lo these many high school years–are now college freshman. That means they're Emerging Adults and more to the point, they are moving out from under our roof–and our control. They are taking a giant step toward independence from us. Which means they're leaving us behind.

    That's what Michael Gerson writes about in a Washington Post column. He share his insights into the parental mind (his) and reminds us of some comments from professionals.

    Here's some of what he has to say about the trauma he experienced and reminiscences his mind traveled on the day he dropped off his oldest son at college:

    ….Eighteen years is not enough. A crib is bought. Christmas trees get
    picked out. There is the park and lullabies and a little help with
    homework. The days pass uncounted, until they end. The adjustment is
    traumatic. My son is on the quiet side — observant, thoughtful, a
    practitioner of companionable silence. I’m learning how empty the quiet
    can be.

    I know this is hard on him as well. He will be homesick,
    as I was (intensely) as a freshman. An education expert once told me
    that among the greatest fears of college students is they won’t have a
    room at home to return to. They want to keep a beachhead in their former
    life.

    But with due respect to my son’s feelings, I have the
    worse of it. I know something he doesn’t — not quite a secret, but
    incomprehensible to the young. He is experiencing the adjustments that
    come with beginnings. His life is starting for real. I have begun the
    long letting go. Put another way: He has a wonderful future in which my
    part naturally diminishes. I have no possible future that is better
    without him close….

    …The end of childhood, of course, can be the start of adult relationships
    between parents and children that are rewarding in their own way. I’m
    anxious to befriend my grown sons. But that hasn’t stopped the random,
    useless tears. I was cautioned by a high-powered Washington foreign
    policy expert that he had been emotionally debilitated for weeks after
    dropping off his daughter at college for the first time. So I feel
    entitled to a period of brooding.

     

    Related articles

    Monday Morning Reader: Elinor Lipman's insights on the joy of being the parent of a grown child
    Gerson: Beginning the long letting go

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

    Vacationing Together: Little things make a lot of difference. So do the grandkids.

            A note from a friend who survived a recent vacation with her adult son and his young family. She hits the everyday challenges that take a toll, but not necessarily a big toll–if we keep the little things in perspective:

    I love your blog about
    shared vacations; big bells ringing. My thoughts turn to some
    issues we experienced e.g. differences in daily schedules. We
    rise at 8, have a leisurely breakfast, read the paper,  and get
    going late morning; they rise at 6 or 7, have a quick breakfast
    and are eager to be out with the kids by 9.

    We are happy to play
    and interact with the kids but do enjoy some time for adult talk; 
    they are not sure this is doable as the kids constantly interrupt
    and grab their attention.

    We think the kids ought to be able to
    play by themselves without constant adult supervision; they are
    sure that is not the case. You know the rest.

    Yes. We've been there. Experienced that—the love of late rising, that doesn't quite take into account a young family's schedule or the hours at which young grandchildren are "fresh." The yearning for adult talk–not just for adult-talk's sake (though there is some of that) but to catch up on what our adult children are thinking, how they're reacting to the problems of the world, issues in their city, challenges in their children's schools. Then there's the observation of their parenting style, which may not be–probably is not–the same as ours was. Too much/not enough supervision; not enough/too much discipline. It is not easy to watch and yet when we vacation together, that's what we end up doing. So long as we keep those observations to ourselves–and keep ourselves busy with our own amusements–we may come out of multi-generation family vacations with our family relationships in tact. 

     

    Related articles

    Family Vacations: Grownchildren may find too much togetherness a trial
    Get a head start on summer fun

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

    Monday Morning Reader: Elinor Lipman’s insights on the joy of being the parent of a grown child

    On occasional Monday mornings I post excerpts from other writers–of nonfiction as well as fiction–that offer insights into the always-challenging and often-joyous business of parenting adult children. Today's is from novelist Elinor Lipman and her book of brief and mostly light-hearted essays, I Can't Complain: (All Too) Personal Essays.

           

    As Lipman herself says, the descriptive word "nice" follows her. Based on her writings, so does a certain upbeatness. One of her favorite–if not her absolute favorite–authors is humorist Max Shulman (Dobie Gillis, anyone?). She quotes him as having said about his ability to write humor, "life was bitter and I was not." As any of us who read her novels knows, that line fits her as well. I Can't Complain is a series of short and shorter memoir-style essays about family and life.

    Here is her commentary on her grownchild–her son was 23 when she wrote this about the difference between parenting young children and parenting the grown up version.

    "One of the great joys of the grown-up child is seeing how the essential him or her was always there. Baby versions of likes and dislikes, talents, interests, and personality traits come home to roost in fascinating ways. ….I'm not pointing out in grandparently fashion that time flies, that your little ones grow up in the blink of an eye, so cherish every moment. You've heard them. This is me saying you have a lot to look forward to–not just the tuition-free, post-orthodontic, babysitterless side of parenthood, but the company it keeps: your grown-up child. My friends with small children have asked me, "What's it like when they no longer crawl into your lap? When the hugging and kissing get shrugged away? Don't you miss the baby?

    Yes we do….But then the big boy calls, and the rosy glow changes direction to the here and now. Lovely surprises await you, too. A big strapping guy! A witty friend! A voter! A tech-support hotline! An adviser, a guide, a conscience.

    A pride and joy."

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