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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.

    Parenting Adult Children: Feeling like an outsider when we visit.

    On our way home from a recent visit with Uber son–his is a family of five that lives some 350 miles away from us–Paterfamilias and I were in accord: The 2-day visit had been bittersweet.

    The sweetness was in the welcome when we arrived; in observing how grand our three Grands are, each in their own way; in seeing the closeness and strength of our son's marriage; in marveling at the way he's built his career and in our daughter-in-law's ability to build a warm home around challenging demands.

    We spent almost all of our "Blitzkrieg visit" (in one day; out the next) at indoor soccer games (a Saturday night tournament, no less) and hanging around the house. When the sun shone, we were outside with one or all of our Grands, the wee-est one riding her trike, the biggest heaving a football to his dad or Gramps and the three Grands building a snowman with the remains of an early-Spring snowfall. All of that comes under the general category heading of "Sweet."

    So what was bitter? Maybe bitter is too harsh a word. But what had us feeling a good deal less than warm and fuzzy about the visit was the feeling of being excluded–of being on the outside looking in. It was likely not intentional, just the reality of not being part of the in-group of a very tightly knit family.

            A few days after we got home, Uber son posted on his Facebook page a description of a game he and his family had just taken up: Sardines. It's a variation on the theme of hide and seek. They go down into the basement. One person turns off
    the light and hides. Everyone else tries to find him/her and when they
    do, they hide with him/her. The last person left still looking is "it" next
    time. Uber son noted happily that "My three kids ALL love it and how many things can keep an 11 year old
    and a four year old happy? All of them would choose it right now over a
    movie pretty much hands down."

    It struck me that Sardines was the perfect metaphor for what we experienced. They huddle together and we can't really find a way to be part of them.

    We are not alone in feeling this way. I know that–from friends who've experienced similar visits to their grown children and from therapists who offer advice to those parents of grown children who are feeling their way through the unhappiness of exclusion. Dr. Kathleen McCoy, a psychotherapist who blogs on midlife and beyond, noted that some parents complain that they feel they are "on a socially accepted ice floe when it comes to their adult offspring." or that they are "bit players in the lives of their adult offspring."

    McCoy suggests that we reframe the feelings of being on the side lines. "Instead of feeling
    diminished and left out, one can get in tune with the rhythm of life. We can
    reframe being a "bit player" to "having a front row seat"
    or "cheering them on."  Letting the pleasure of generativity
    flow over you as you marvel at the accomplishments of your children and grandchildren
    can be life-changing."

    She admits there
    may be times when you miss being central to your children's daily lives.
    "My Aunt Molly used
    to say that, as you age, 'you're welcome at the party, but the party isn't
    for you.' " McCoy adds, "participating in
    the party, minus the burden of being the central focus, can be even more
    satisfying."

    Intellectually I know she's right but it doesn't feel that way when we're in the moment. Her Aunt Molly's line is a zinger that reminds us of our deepest feeling: Most of us don't necessarily want to be the life of the party but we do want to be part of it. And when we feel somehow pushed away–however unintentional it may be–it's bittersweet. And a reminder that we did the same thing to our parents. So much for the pleasures (and guilt trip) of generativity.

     

    Related articles

    Parenting Adult Children: No one says it's easy–nor do they have to say why it's hard..
    About Family

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

    Parenting Grown Children: Praise, criticism and the relationship with our relations

    There it is as one of my Notes to Self, running down the left hand column of this blog: "Be enthusiastic. It beats being critical."

    Easier said than done, of course. But it raises the question of praise
    versus criticism and the role the tension between the two play in our
    relationship with our independent and grown children.

     If we're always saying something is wonderful, that someone is terrific, that this is the best of all possible worlds, then how can we be taken seriously? But if we're critical scolds, who wants to hear from us no less be around us–no matter how right we may be? (See Note to Self: "It's better to be liked than right.")

    So there should be a balance somewhere between the two. A recent post on the Harvard Business School blog has not only found the ratio but put some numbers on it: 5:1. That is, to bring out the best in a business work team, the most effective balance is five instances of praise or positive feedback to one negative comment. Here it is in chart form (a favorite means of HBS communication):

           

    The blog's authors also addresses research on what the praise-criticism ratio
    looks like in successful marriages versus unsuccessful
    [separation and divorce] ones.The balance is about the same: roughly 5:1. So, if that ratio works in the work place and in marriage, why not in our relationships with our grown children.

    Here's some of the thinking the praise-to-criticism blogger offers in the post: 

     –"Negative feedback is
    important when we're heading over a cliff to warn us that we'd really better
    stop doing something horrible or start doing something we're not doing right
    away    . But even the most well-intentioned criticism can rupture
    relationships and undermine self-confidence and initiative. It can change
    behavior, certainly, but it doesn't cause people to put forth their best efforts.

    –"[In] John Gottman's analysis of wedded
    couples' likelihood of getting divorced or remaining married     …once again,
    the single biggest determinant is the ratio of positive to negative comments
    the partners make to one another." For those who ended up
    divorced, the ratio went upside down to something like three positive comments
    for every four negative ones.

    –The key in negative feedback is to "keep the opposing viewpoint rational,
    objective, and calm — and above all not to engage in any personal attack (under
    the disingenuous guise of being "constructive").

    I read that last line and remember my mother always using a variation on the "I want to be constructive" theme before prefacing a critique, be it of my housekeeping or my children. I am so sensitive to it–just seeing the printed word makes the hair on my neck stand at mock attention–that I can only assume (hope) I don't visit that particular approach to negative commentary on those I care about–or work with. I'm just putting it out there as another Note to Self–beware the tides of constructive commentary when we go negative, as sometimes we must. That's what the ratio says!

     

    Related articles

    Parenting Adult Children: No one says it's easy–nor do they have to say why it's hard..
    The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio – Bloomberg
    The Ideal Praise-to-Criticism Ratio
    Do I Trust You Anymore?

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

    Vacationing with Adult Children: The mini-agonies of togetherness

    "Why do we do it?" This is the question I pose my walking buddy. Why do we invite, look forward to, and lay elaborate plans to have our grown children–and their children–join us for a vacation? I'm asking her because she, like me, admits to having pre-trip anxiety.

    Some of those anxieties revolve around the relationship between our children. Like me, her son and daughter do not live near each other. They see each other at various family events–and only occasionally plan a visit to each other's homes. Her daughter, she says, doesn't have much in commonwith her sister-in-law; ditto son and son-in-law. Though there's good will between the two young families, there isn't a strong bond pulling the families together. The reasons for that can become all-too-clear when everyone's on vacation in a big house on a small lake in an aging town in Vermont.

     

    My friend talks about one regular sore point. Her daughter is not a morning person. That is, mornings don't mean a march out to the mountain for a vigorous hike. They mean an extra hour or so at the breakfast table, flipping through magazines, having a second cup of coffee, letting the kids amuse themselves. Her husband takes himself off to the golf course.

    Her son and hjis wife are early risers who see the morning as the best time to get out into the fresh air and hike, row the boat around the lake, play tennis and ride bikes with their kids.

    My friend says she can feel the tension between the two families–feelings not exactly of disdain but of, well, mutual non-admiration. She can feel her daughter feeling guilty but unrepentent about lingering over coffee and wondering why her brother and family are in such a hurry in the morning. It's vacation, isn't it?

    She can also sense her daughter-in-law's disregard for her daughter's morning routine. There's so much to do, so much energy to expend–time is awasting. How could anyone sit around when the air is so fresh and the outdoor activity so inviting? Shouldn't her niece and nephew be paddling a canoe or playing tennis or doing something invigorating outside?

    It's not a big thing. It's a little nagging worry that my friend has that her daughter might feel resentful; that her son may look down at his sister's "laziness;" that the two of them are never going to be buddies. By extension, does that also mean they won't lean on each other in times of emotional stress? The week together only emphasizes the differences, even as it builds family traditions and mutual experiences. 

    As she sits and watches it, my friend feels her inner aggravation rising–even though there's no one to be angry at or disillusioned with. It's just the reality of the family dynamic. Not bad. Just not all that she could wish it could be. I have a different set of specifics but a similar dynamic. I second the emotion.

    Related articles

    Parenting Adult Children: A special anxiety reserved especially for us
    Holiday Togetherness: Tales of three Thanksgivings before Christmas is upon us
    How To Save On Family Vacations
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  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Grandparenting: Finding a place in the busy lives of our grown children and their children

    What has the grandparenting life come to? We had to make an appointment to telephone Happy Birthday wishes to a 10-year-old grandchild. Okay, it wasn't like a business apppointment but we did have to txt and e-chat to find a moment when the phone would be answerable and the appropriate child available to hear good wishes sent her way.

                                      There is a back story. Of course there is.Our grandchildren have aged out of toddler-hood and preschool–those were the days when we sent balloon bouquets to great huzzahs of excitement on their part. They are now primary and middle-schoolers. There are soccer practices, piano lessons, gymnastic classes, play dates, homework and who knows what else. In the case of Uber son, whose family lives in a city far from ours, those activities–and the coordination of said lessons, practices and playdates–are multiplied times three children and would take an excel sheet to map and execute if my daughter-in-law didn't manage it all in her head.

    The busyness is understandable. Therefore, so is setting a time when there's a break in the child's day and she or he can come to the phone. It's when we finally get through–appointment kept!–that we find  the conversation not very satisfying. It is the end of a long day. The Grand is tired. She has a date with her dad to read a book together before bedtime. She's very polite but we can sense how–well, what a drag this call might be. It was so much easier when air-blow ups of Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty were an option.

     

    So why do we persist with the telephone call? I have been thinking a lot about this. First off, we love our grandchildren. We want to remind them that, though in our case we don't live nearby, we are another set of adults who care deeply about them, that they are very special to us and very special. In short, it's a reminder that we are there for them.

    But there's another part: I think we do it to remind our grown children, whose lives are even busier than their children's are (and certainly than ours are, now that the child rearing is done and our careers are winding down), that we are part of the family–the part that shares the deep and constant love for the most precious aspect of their lives, their children.

    That's as good a reason as any to make the appointment, if that's what it takes to send the message.

    Related articles

    Grandparenting: A home run with the Grands and the Grown Kids
    Grateful for Grandparents!
    Hello Grandma Google and Grandpa YouTube

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

    Emerging Adults: Another view of that hard-to-find-a-job issue

    Almost every parent of a recent college grad (or of a kid now in college) I talk to is worried: It's been so hard for recent college grads–recent being the past five years–to find career jobs. The parents I am talking to have kids who've attended good colleges and
    who graduated in the requisite four years with respectable or better
    grades. There have been lots of internships–some paid, though at a very low rate–but those only last a year and few of them have led to future employment. Some of the college grads have taken waitering, receptionist or babysitting jobs to earn money, but the struggle to find a foothold in the type of job for which they were educated has been elusive–not non-existent but few and far between. A recent New York Times article's headline said it all: It Takes a B.A. to Find a Job as a File Clerk.

    So it's tough out there–for the young adults and their parents as well. (We also suffer who sit, watch and wait.) But the New York Times Economix blog has another take on the situation–with lots of graphs and charts to give worried parents some insights into the job potential for their college-educated kids and the ultimate value of that college degree.

    Here are some of the high points.

    According to a recent report
    published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the job prospects of new
    college graduates,  the
    graduates of the class of 2011 had an unemployment rate of 14 percent as of October 2011. But
    that number refers to joblessness just a few months after graduation.
    The unemployment rate drops sharply for all recent college graduates in their 20s. It is especially sharp when
    compared with the jobless rate for all high school graduates in the same
    age group.

    Sources: October School Enrollment Supplement, Current Population Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics; Thomas Luke Spreen. Sources: October School Enrollment Supplement, Current Population Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics; Thomas Luke Spreen.

    The next chart looks at comparable numbers for
    the employment-population ratio, or the share of people within each
    population who have a job (as opposed to being unemployed or not looking
    for work at all).

    Sources: October School Enrollment Supplement, Current Population Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics; Thomas Luke Spreen. Sources: October School Enrollment Supplement, Current Population Survey, Bureau of Labor Statistics; Thomas Luke Spreen.

    So, while many of our college-educated kids are getting jobs well below their education-skill level, they are at least finding work, unlike their less-educated peers.

    "As the economy continues to improve," Catherine Rampell, the NYTimes economic reporter who penned the piece, writes, "those recent college graduates
    will be better situated to find promotions to jobs that do use their
    higher skills and pay better wages."

    From her mouth to the Corporate-God-Who-Hires ear.

    Related articles

    Emerging Adults: When is it time to cut the cord on financial support?
    College Costs: Are your kids getting your money's worth if you help pay the bill?
    Money Matters: There's still a positive ROI in a kid's college education
    Recent college graduates in the U.S. labor force: data from the Current Population Survey
    Rick Haglund: Why is a college education worth it? 3 words: lifetime earning power

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

    Emerging Adults: What to do with the anger when our kids make us mad

    When my friend Cathy got angry at her renested post-college son–for sins like not emptying the dishwasher; not taking the job search seriously–she kicked down his bedroom door. Not that she meant to. She was just kicking his closed door to make a point
    and Boom, her foot went right through it. It's a moment her son may 
    remember–not, at this point in time, in a good way, tho it likely will be a funny anecdote some time down the line.

                                                       

    We may have thought that all the anger-inducing struggles with our adolescent kids were a thing of the past–now that they are adults. But they can still press our emotional buttons and make us really, really angry. Especially when they move back home for a while and fail to behave like the independent adults we thought they'd become.

    Not that there's anything wrong with getting angry at them. Anger has an important function. It's part of our "affective awareness system," that is, psychologist Carl Pickhardt points out, it lets us "identify when something significant is happening in our internal or extermal world of experience, something that feels like it deserves our attention."

    So anger isn't the issue. It's the lashing out that's a problem–with especially long-term consequences now that our children are grown and no longer dependents under our control. As Pickhardt points out, "in the heat of the moment it
    can obscure loving feelings causing unloving words or actions to occur."

    Pickhardt recommends that we–as well as our grown kids–learn to, in effect, take a "time out" to cool down, and then talk
    further "when we can choose our words thoughtfully, and
    not emotionally.”

    He  lists characteristics of people who are anger prone to the point of popping off in an unhelpful way:

    –They are highly judgmental and need to be right.

    –They feel strongly entitled and expect to get their way.

    –They take events personally that are not personally meant.

    –They use fresh offenses to revive memories of old grievances.

    –They attack what’s wrong with anger by blaming others when problems arise.

    These apply to both our kids and to us. For us, at this stage of parenting, there's a lot more at stake than there was when our kids were younger. My friend Cathy certainly expected to get her own way when her son was living under her roof again. And, of course, she didn't mean that tap on his door to be a surprising invasion of his privacy. But that little kick probably had a lot of lash-out fueling its power.
    Related articles

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    Emerging Adults: When is it time to cut the cord on financial support?
    anger
    Anger Management

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

    Emerging Adults: When is it time to cut the cord on financial support?

     These have been rough economic times and they aren't over yet. Young adults (recent college grads in particular) are having a much harder time than we did in latching onto a career job–harder even than their older brothers and sisters. There are  economic stats and charts ad nausea that support the discouraging outlook.

    All of which brings up the question: Should we help support our struggling young adults and if so, for how long?

                                                      
      

    The question is discussed in a recent column by Carl Pickhardt who writes about adolescence but often about the upper end of a still-turbulent age–the 18 to 23 year olds. Here are some his observations about extending their financial dependence on us:

    –Some of us may "enjoy parenting and don’t want to
    quit or don’t know when to quit or believe a period of older adolescent
    struggle is no time to quit or that a good parent never quits or they
    have an older son or daughter who doesn’t want them to quit."

    –"Just
    as parenthood doesn’t come with a set of directions for how to get
    started, there is no fixed schedule for financial letting go. Thus many
    parents continue their parenting by offering extended help, often of the
    financial kind, until a firm hold on young adult independence is
    finally gained."

    –"What age should young people be expected to live
    dependently at home before leaving and beginning their actual
    independence? There is so much cultural variation. In the United States,
    we seem to have a common parental expectation that after high school
    graduation age, young people should be ready to move off more on their
    own. …The
    point is: there is no universally fixed schedule for when the departure
    from home and the undertaking of full financial independence should
    begin."

    –"In one sense, the young
    person who claims the inability to “afford” to live independently on the
    little money they can make may not exactly be speaking the truth which
    is that they can’t live as comfortably as when living with parents. In
    fact, electing comfort they may be missing out on learning some pretty
    powerful survival skills such as doing without, scraping by on less,
    prioritizing fundamental needs, buying cheap, sticking to a budget,
    making ends meet, living within one’s modest means, and maybe working
    more than one job to get from one week to the next to support a fragile
    independence. So if your son or daughter is up to the hardship, don’t
    automatically jump in and try to spare them the challenge."

    –"You want parental help to foster self-help,
    not discourage it. This is why the helping contract must be
    conditional: 'Before we help you, we need to see efforts (actions, not
    words) of self-help from you first; and once we start helping you, we
    need to see evidence that you are gathering more power of
    independence as you grow.'”

    –"[P]arenting
    is a lasting commitment — to be there for your children whatever their
    age, not only in constant love, but in times of need. Life is an
    unpredictable journey, what Thomas Wolf called “the groping accident of
    life,” where happenstance for good and ill plays a huge role in the
    challenges that arise and must be met. It is a source of security to
    know that membership in family is life-long."

    To end this post on a more mundane note, here's a chart reflecting a study by Pew Research Center on the change since 2005 of the percent of us who are helping to support our young adults.

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

    Understanding Social Media: Questions of etiquette

    Gotta face the truth: We will never understand–or accept–all the subtleties of social media. There is a generation gap. Not that we don't have Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts. StumbleUpon, anyone?

     

    The gap comes in the way we use those sites and the way our adult children–and their children–do. I'm not talking about the teen-like behavior of letting it all hang out there on the ether–the stupid pranks played on friends, the rowdy behavior at beer parties, the unfortunate experiments with illegal substances, all the stuff we know shouldn't be up there for future employers (or even us) to read. Stuff we may even warn our emerging adults or grandchildren about.

    What I'm talking about are subtle offenses as we stay in touch via the Internet. To judge by the advice columns, a lot of us get really upset over our adult children or their children sending us an email thank you note instead of penning one on paper. Personally, I think we just have to get over it and be glad we got any acknowledgement at all. What's the big difference between pen/paper and a txt message or an email–or even a Facebook acknowledgement? A thanks is a thanks.

    But breaches of etiquette can be trickier than a thank you note. A recent writer to Philip Galanes  Social qs in the New York Times wrote about a young man in his early 20s who posted his father's death on his Facebook page and announced it via Twitter to his friends and followers. The young man's mother–who was the father's ex wife–was appalled. So, how serious a breach of etiquette was it?

    Galanes agreed that Facebook and Twitter are "too chilly for sharing tragedies with
    our nearest and dearest. Not to mention that these posts would be
    sandwiched between gags by Jimmy Fallon and clips of Honey Boo Boo." Social media, he suggests, is better suited to spreading the word to
    workaday pals.

    That said, Galanes faces reality. "It’s only natural that he would
    turn to his comfort zone in a time of grief. For you and me and others
    north of 32, that would almost certainly involve a telephone. But for your son, who probably picks up the phone to speak rarely, if
    ever, his impulse would be to text and tweet and post his sad news on
    Facebook. There is little use in bemoaning our changing times. I just
    hope we all find what we need in our dark hours."

    Just to put the "changing times" in perspective. A recent Pew survey on the use of social media in political life, found 60 percent of American adults use either
    social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter; 66 percent of those social media users–or 39 percent of all American adults–have used social media to post their
    thoughts about civic and political issues, react to others' postings,
    press friends to act on issues and vote, follow candidates, ‘like' and
    link to others' content, and belong to groups formed on social
    networking sites.

    That being the case, is it any wonder that young adults who grew up on Twitter and Facebook would use it not just for civic statements but to express other near-to-their-heart sentiments and a thanks to their parents or gramps.

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

    Parenting Adult Children: No one says it’s easy–nor do they have to say why it’s hard..

    A friend I haven't seen in a while has moved back to my city. Her daughter and family live here. So she and her husband have a built in welcoming committee. At least, that is how we outsiders whose children live elsewhere see it.

    As she and I are talking–we are trying to make plans to have lunch–I suggest we meet onThursday or Friday of the next week.

    She is hesitant. She and her daughter are planning to have lunch on one
    of those days, but the daughter hasn't let her know which one yet. "It's
    a difficult situation," my friend says. My answer: "Let me know which
    one your daughter doesn't want and we'll have lunch on that day."

    I don't need to know the specifics about "difficult." I just know we are all on eggshells and in touchy situations when we deal day-to-day with our grown children. We want to do things together–have lunch with a daughter, invite a son over for dinner–but some of us are wary of intruding on their time and in their lives. And they seem to be equally wary about being intruded upon.

    Whatever difficulty my friend and her daughter are having, I figure I can at least be willing to help. We may have to be flexible when it comes to our grown children–adaptable in finding graceful ways to accommodate their needs–but when it comes to friends we can just be flexible, as in plain old flexible.

    Related articles

    Parenting Adult Children: Backing off when we don't like their choice of romantic partner
    Supporting Adult Children: The line between "Yes" and "Not Anymore"
    Food for Thought: A lesson from adolescence that carries over to grown children

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

    Grandparenting: A home run with the Grands and the Grown Kids

    "Only connect." That's the guiding principle of E. M Forster's Howard's End. And it applies to our lives as they revolve in and around our grown children and their progeny. We're always looking for that special way to connect–to say something meaningful or just amusing that hopefully they'll remember us by or think of us fondly by.

    All of which is a long way around saying that in that regard, I Hit a Home Run. At least I think I did. Both my grown children and their families live in cities impacted by the mountain of snow that fell in early February. [Does that storm have a name yet? If so, I missed it.] In any case, when a friend sent a series of snow humor cartoons my way, I clipped two that I thought would inspire the young "build stuff in the snow" set and sent them to my Grands via their parents' email.

    This was one

    This was the other

    I got the ultimate compliment, given the limits of email correspondence: I quote my daughter-in-law's message in full: "Kids got a kick out of this." Short but sweet. In my mind's ear, I can hear them chuckling over the clips.

    Warms the heart. Makes all that downloading and dragging of images (some of the images were not appropriate for the younger set)–and the pleasure you anticipate the Grands will get–worth the effort.

    In case you're wondering what sort of snow humor would not be quite right for toddlers and pre-teens, here's one I'm still giggling over.

     

     

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