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

Letting Go: The best advice on how to do it–from the grownkids themselves

12/03/2012

Her tale was a wrenching one. For parents of grown children, it rang terribly true–and terribly been there, done that, if not in exact detail in the overall dimensions. Writing in the New York TImes, Susan Engel described the travails of two of her children and how difficult it was to cope with the pain they were in–how she wanted to set things right, the way she had when they were small children. And in the midst of this parenting quandary, came words of advice: from one of her children and then from a close friend.

The son called to describe a crisis he was having with his graduate studies. As Engel reports on herself, "I started
explaining how he should respond to the terrible graduate adviser. I
wanted to ask if he was taking notes on my good advice. But I didn’t
have a chance. He cut me off. “Mom,” he said, “when I tell you what’s
wrong, I don’t want you to tell me how to fix it, and I don’t want you
to tell me it’s not as bad as I think. I just want your sympathy.”

The second piece of worth-listening-to advice came from her closest friend. She described the heartbreak another son was experiencing with a long-time girlfriend and told her friend, "I don’t know whether to hope he works it out with
her, or ends it.”

Her friends advice–and something I tell myself to remember: “Don’t hope for anything.”

Just another reminder that it's their life. We are no longer in control. Nor should we try to–or can we–assume the old mantle of hands-on care.

Related articles

Do Grown Children Break Your Heart More?

When They're Grown, the Real Pain Begins

The End Game: What our grown children say–and think–about us

Grown Children and Their Families: Feeling the need to feel needed
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Money Matters: The means to help our grown children

11/27/2012

This little graph explains a lot. Despite the devastation of the recession and the lingering downturn, many of us with grown children are willing and able to lend or gift our kids money–to pay off debt, to get a start in life. Yes, our 401ks suffered in the 2008 debacle; some of our homes are underwater [literally–thank you, Hurricane Sandy] and figuratively). But evidently, our wealth has been coming back or it survived the hard times. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, we of the baby boomer generation suffered less–lost less wealth than other groups and overall–in terms of financial loss–are in much much better shape than our 20- and 30-something children.

Why
did the Great Recession hit households headed by grown kids in their late 30s and
early 40s so hard? The federal Survey of Consumer Finances suggests it gets down to housing. For most Americans, equity in their homes represents the bulk of their wealth. The collapse of housing values in the middle of the past decade sent personal
wealth into a nose dive for just about everyone, regardless of age. Overall, though, the
Consumer Finances survey found that median home equity—the fair market value of
a home less the amount of the outstanding mortgage and other liens—fell by
about a third (32%) from 2007 to 2010. And U.S. Census data released in June
found that most of the decline in median wealth between 2005 and 2010 can be
attributed to sinking home values. We who've owned our homes longer and paid off more–if not all–of our mortgages, are coming out of the Great Recession in better shape.

All of which translates into a fuller bank account and the wherewithal to be generous to our grown children, should we choose to be.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Re-Nesting: Those emerging adults may be moving out and on–and soon!

11/19/2012

He's 24. He's got a job. He's still living at home.

My friend Cathy is beyond frustrated. Her son is not helpful around the house. She's tired of asking him to take out the garbage, empty the dishwasher or run an errand–in the car she and her husband are providing.

Part of his inertia is his job history over the past four years. A graduate of a high-tier college where he got more-than-respectable grades, he's taken internships with nonprofit organizations–even worked one that involved relocating to a destitute Central American country for a year–but doesn't feel he's on a career path. The current job is not in his field and is only a one-year contract. He's applied to graduate school and hopes to go next year. So right now he's feeling immobilized–despite his parent's suggestions that he have a plan B for living arrangements: They may sell the house this summer and move closer to the dad's job.

It may not ease her frustration to know that her son is part of a recent trend: the ever-so-slow growth in household formation. It's not only frustrating for those of us with adult children living at home, it's also a drag on the economy. Each time a household is formed, it adds about $145,000 to output that year as the spending ripples through the economy, according to an estimate last year
from Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics [as reported in the New York Times].

Over the
last year, household formation has been picking up as this map from the New York Times indicates.

Source: Census Bureau, via Haver Analytics.

The pickup, the Times reports, "is probably related to job growth, which has
enabled multi-generational households to spin off into multiple new
homes."

The overall trend is good news for Cathy. Her son may be forced to move if she sells her house and will certainly move if he gets into graduate school [he's applied to schools one and two time zones away] and may even be heartened to move out by his improved chances in an improving job market.

“They can only live with their parents for
so long," Zandi noted. "There are powerful centrifugal forces in those households, on
both side. As soon as they have a chance to get out, many will take it.”

All of which could help Cathy feel better about putting her house on the market–That is, if her second son, graduating from college this spring, finds a more favorable job market than his brother did. It's still too soon to "amen" to the pressures of the re-nesting stage.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Parenting Adult Children: A special anxiety reserved especially for us

11/07/2012

There's a special anxiety reserved for those of us with grown children. Since we're no longer in control of their health and safety–as we were when they were young and lived under our roof–when there are "threats" to their well being, we can only worry, fret, second guess, interfere and do assorted other things to help control our anxieties.

Even when we share our good guidance tips with them, it doesn't solve the problem. They're going to make their own decisions and they may or may not factor in anything we say.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Alpha daughter and her family–one child, one husband, one dog–were here for a weekend visit.

It was a lovely visit–lots of chit chat and talking about big and little things. But this weekend, it turns out, was the one where Superstorm Sandy was due to land late on Sunday or early Monday. I wasn't sure how involved our city would be, but between our home and Alpha Daughter's, chaos would reign. Before I went to bed Saturday night, I checked some online sites–the New York Times among them. And there it was–an announcement that Mayor Bloomberg was likely to close bridges and tunnels in and out of the city as well as the subway system. Airlines were announcing low or no cancellation fees for Sunday flights. Towns along the coast–New Jersey and Delaware beach towns–were being evacuated.

Alpha daughter and family were planning to drive home Sunday afternoon. Oy, as my grandmother might say. My son in law was still awake and working on his laptop. I laid out my concerns. He didn't seem worried. But I was all anxiety now. I sputtered on about how difficult it would to drive through or around the city. I suggested they get up early in the morning and drive straight home.

He didn't exactly poo-poo my suggestion–he's too polite for that. But he did let me know that he didn't think there was any reason to change their plan yet. My parting shot was, "Just think about it."

Maybe it's because I'm getting older or less able to control actions, but little worries tend to be bigger ones now. I was awake most of the night. Fretting,, worrying, wondering how they could get home safely. And if they didn't leave on Sunday, they were not likely to be able to get out until Wednesday. I got up and did some deep breathing, some Yoga, some meditation. I couldn't force them to get up at the crack of dawn and get going. And that's what I felt they needed to do to get home safely and within a reasonable amount of time.

Alpha daughter's an early riser. When she got up and online, she started packing her bags. The situation was even worse than it had been the night before. As the extent of the proposed evacuations became clear, they decided to take the "long" route home–and not go near New York City but head west to Pennsylvania before heading east to their home in New England.

So one anxiety down–they were leaving early–but a day of nervousness ahead: were they finding their way on the new route, was there a lot of traffic, could they get gas and food at highway stops.

We can drive ourselves crazy thinking about the things that can go wrong. Fortunately, Alpha daughter was kind to her aging mom. She or my son-in-law called every few hours to let us know how well things were going. It took them 11 hours to make what otherwise should have been a 9-hour drive but they got home safely.

Now I could turn to anxieties over personal survival if we lost heat and light–or even part of our roof–from the storm. We were, luckily, on the edge of Superstorm Sandy's fury and just got a glancing blow. Ditto for Alpha Daughter in New England. Now what else could I find to worry about? Oh yes. The election, which was still more than a week away.

Finally, today, the election is history and I can breathe deeply. For now.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

The Homecoming: Rising to the challenge of the generation gap

10/29/2012

When our kids were in the pre-teens and early teens, they started to question our wisdom. When they were old enough to go off to college, they came home with even more questions: deeper ones about our beliefs and how their thoughts now differed from ours–on politics, life style, religion, culture. It's the generation gap, and it tends to widen. They may never return to our way of thinking.

All of this is in the natural flow of things–they're becoming independent and that's what we want, isn't it? In a recent post on the subject in Psychology Today, psychologist Carl Pickhardt noted that "the generational differences should become more clearly pronounced as the young person is now more committed to seeing and living life on more independent and individual terms. In consequence, she or he can be more critical of where parents stand and what they stand for."

The question Pickhardt raises is how do we–and they–deal with these differences and still stay close. That is, how do we not let the differences rock the basic relationship, even when we're attacked for being politically incorrect, stuck in our traditional ways or otherwise "ye olde fogies."

Part of his answer starts with this observation: "The mistake parents can make when confronted by revisionist thinking… is to take offense." Rather than try to change the grown child's point of view or attack his or her ideas, he suggests that it's better to treat their ideas with respect and worthy of discussion–even if we find those ideas offensive or they run counter to our basic beliefs. By being "unwilling to change themselves but demanding change by the other, the generational difference is allowed to become a barrier to contact instead of a bridge to further knowing."

His "solution": Rather than focus on change–better to keep the discussion about ideas just that: a discussion–we as parents should focus on what needs no changing: "our commitment to stay connected as age and experience continues to grow us apart. How we live our lives, or believe about life, does not exactly have to match for our relationship to stay closely connected."

It's an important issue to tackle when it first rears its head. As those of us whose children have moved beyond the post-adolescent years have experienced, pretty soon it won't just be ideas picked up in and honed by college debate. They'll marry and come under the sway of another family's ideas. They'll start to raise children and have child-rearing philosophies that are very different from ours–as ours were from our parents.

Here's Pickhardt's parting shot–and one worth hanging onto: "As your adult child grows older and further differentiation between you occurs, your tolerance for these changes must grow as well if your relationship is to lovingly carry on."
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

The End Game: What our grown children say–and think–about us

10/23/2012

I was reading an interview with Janai Brugger in the New York Times. Brugger is the 28-year-old singer who entered the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions and won. Then won Placido Domingo's Operalia competition. And then was offered the ultimate and most amazing of prize: an offer to debut at the Met in Puccini's "Turandot" on October 30.

What a whirlwind of wins. Of course it was built on hard work. She started voice lessons in high school–at the urging of her mother. Her preference was musical theater but classical music was good training for any direction her career took. Meanwhile, her opera-obsessed mother had been taking her to see Aida, Madama Butterfly and all the other grand and lesser operas since she was a small child. But evidently she didn't push opera on her child whose career evolved in that direction serendipitously–if I read the interview right.

Why am I writing about this in a blog about parenting adult children? Because at the end of the interview, Brugger was asked how her mom felt about the sudden turn of wonderful events in her child's life–not just the competition wins but the turn toward opera. And Brugger's answer struck me as the definition of the end game: of what we, as parents, would like our children to say–and more importantly, to feel–about us as parents.

Here's Brugger's comment on her mother's reaction to her sudden fame. Reader alert: I almost teared up at the last line–hoping my children feel that way about paterfamilias and me.

"My mom is like a kid in a candy store. She has to know every detail. How was rehearsal? What happened? Who did you meet? And she knows more about these things than I do. So it's great that we can share that. She'd be proud of me for anything, but this is extra special.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grown Children and Their Families: Feeling the need to feel needed

10/18/2012

I have a case of parent/grandparent envy. My friend Jo has her work cut out for her in the next few weeks.

Her daughter (the mother of Jo's twin grandsons who have just started kindergarten) has to leave on a business trip. She'll be gone for three weeks–a first for the young family. Jo already has plans to entertain the twins on the weekend–she's thought of lots of fun things to do with them that will take their minds off their mother's absence. Even though her daughter and son-in-law live almost an hour drive away, she plans to perk up the twins' weekdays with several drop-by visits late in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, Jo's son and daughter-in-law are expecting their third child. Last week, her DIL was put on bed rest–her blood pressure has been soaring. The baby is due in six weeks and the third-time mother-to-be now spends her days lying on the living room couch, laptop on her belly, telecommuting to and from her job. The two older kids–both in middle school–need to be picked up from various activities. Jo and Larry–grandma and grandpop–will help out there. Jo also has been cooking meals and delivering them.

When Jo and Larry, who both retired a few months ago, laid out the coming weeks, I felt a twinge of envy. Not about the additional time they'll get to spend with the grandkids–though that's a nice benefit. It's more about the feeling of being needed.

Of course, my children don't live close by–both live in other cities that are a long drive or a one-hour+ plane ride away. And I'm still working, albeit with very flexible hours and the ability to grab my laptop and work anywhere. When my children have had emergencies [a daughter-in-law in the hospital] or a known need [my daughter and son-in-law both traveling for work at the same time], I've managed to get there to help out, happy to do so.But if there were needs like Jo and Larry's grown children have, it would be hard for me to do all the nice little things–bring over dinner; cheer up the twins–without making it a big trip, an expensive one, too.

When we parents live far away from our grown children, our children find other ways to cope. Friends pitch in. Their help may not come with the loving care ours does, but it fills the need and our children help their friends out in return. It's what Paterfamilias and I did when we moved away from our families.

There are times when being so far away from my children leaves me with an empty feeling. There is something profoundly comforting to feel needed by your grown children and to be able to do something about it.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Parenting Adult Children: We no longer get to make their important decisions

10/12/2012

When our children were young and living in our house, we made decisions about their lives–where they would go to school, how they would dress, whether they would be allowed to drive our car. As parents of adult children, that's no longer our terrain, and that can be painful when our children make decisions that run deeply counter to what we would do.

It can be especially hard to take when the decisions involve our grandchildren. A friend told me about a man in her memoir-writing class. He talked about how his daughter's only child, now 13, was gifted in math and science. To the grandfather, his granddaughter's mind worked in the same way his did and he enjoyed working out problems with her. When she applied to and was accepted at a competitive school for math and science, he was thrilled–his beliefs in her potential were confirmed and he could see the school as a launching pad for a brilliant career.

His daughter saw things differently. She thought it was more important for her daughter to continue at the religious school she had been attending since kindergarten. There was no argument the grandfather could present to his daughter that would persuade her that the math-science school was a golden opportunity, that religion could be taught at home–how much more of it did she need after eight years of it?–and that it was foolhardy to throw away this chance of a superior education.

And yet, there it was. No was no. He was helpless to change the course of his grandchild's schooling–he who had always put a premium on education and seen it as the way he, as an immigrant, had been able to make his way in the world.

It's a tale of frustration. Maybe the writer's workshop will be cathartic, help him work through his feelings by writing about the offending events. One thing that can't be reworked, however, is that he doesn't have the standing to make the choice. And that's what can be so anxiety provoking about being a grandparent. We may see our children making a mistake in the way they are bringing up our grandchildren, but they are the parents and all we can do is hope to be kept in the loop of what's happening. If the stake's are high enough–and the grandfather in this case thought they were–we can double down on persuasion and reason. But in the end, we have to limit the amount of conflict we take on.

A few days after I heard this story, I came across a metlife survey that asked grandparents about the values they hoped to pass down to their children and grandchildren. Not too many surprises here: most of us–88 percent–want to pass along honesty, then came good behavior (82%), self-sufficiency (70%), higher
education (69%), and good health habits (68%). We may have more input in these values than we do in day-to-day decisions. So maybe we're not as helpless as we think.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Vacation Time: Finding the formula for a stress-free family vacation

10/08/2012

Midway through our family vacation in Vermont, the Grands put on a magic show. As dusk fell, we adults–Paterfamilias and I, Uber son and wife, Alpha daughter and husband–sat inside and nursed our wines and hot teas. The Grands were outside on the lawn plotting and putting together a grand extravaganza for us.

As darkness fell, we were called outside.

The opening act–courtesy of my son-in-law–had the four kids (11,10,9 and 4) running around with tiny sparklers flaring, their whoops of excitement filling the night air. Then came the main event, with each Grand parading before us with his or her trick. They had, for props, a magic set that one Grand had gotten for her birthday. While we had been sipping our drinks, they had worked together to teach each other the tricks and practice them. They coached the four-year-old on the "disappearing ball" trick and supported each other in ways large and small for the more complicated tricks. When a trick didn't work the first time out, they re-grouped, talked it over, re-read instructions and came back for a second try.

The cool Vermont night, well-lit by a starry sky, was the perfect stage. This was our Norman Rockwell moment. I can report–and not just because I'm the grammie–that the Magic Show was brilliant and heart warming–not for the sleights of hand or "amazing" tricks, but for the way the Grands worked together and helped each other without adult interference.

And it mirrored the way this, our ninth family vacation together in Stowe, went this year. No flare ups, no mis-communications, no hard feelings, no sour moments.

It hasn't always been so. Over the years, we've tinkered with the right formula to make the vacations refreshing and full of good family will. We've made our mistakes: rented condos that were too small for three families or too far from the swimming holes, mountain brooks, bike-riding paths and wild raspberry bushes. Three years ago, we finally got the physical configuration right–two condos in a community that is walking distance to everything. But families being families, we've also had to tinker with the right combination of togetherness. Two weeks–too much. Friends who have second homes they own or rent for an extended period have long advised serial visits–one family and its grandchildren at a time, with a weekend overlap to give the inter-family Grands time to run wild together.

But even with the seemingly right combinations in place, our vacations were still marred by something or other. And then this year, it wasn't.

Did we get the formula right? The amount of time we spent with each family and they spent with us and with eachother and in the right size houses near the favorite frog ponds and walking trails? Yes, but we had those things in place last year and the year before and we still had our sour moments.

What made the difference? Here's my theory: our grown children. This year both of them were at a good place in their careers. They were still under pressure, still had the stresses and tensions inherent in being in the prime of their work lives. But both made decisions this year about their careers that helped alleviate some of that strain. And the easing of that tension permeated up to us and down to the Grands and made eveyone happier,more adaptable and less remote.

When our grown children were growing up and we took them on vacation [in, yes, Vermont], the success of those trips depended on how well or ill we were feeling about our work lives–whether a black cloud from the office followed us up the mountain and onto the hiking trails. But the center has shifted. It's now those children, grown up with children of their own, who set the tone for the vacation. And it isn't anything we can control by how big or small, convenient or inconvenient our vacation house is. The magic of a great vacation is in their hands now.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Lending Money: The family fund that offers a helping hand and a living legacy

10/01/2012

Many of us want to make things easier for our grown children–pave the road for them with a little help here and maybe even a lot of assistance there. That is, if we have the wherewithal to do it.

Recently, the New York Times weighed in on the issue, taking as its news cue presidential candidate Mitt Romney's remark, "I have inherited nothing." The initial point Times writer Ron Lieber makes is that a living inheritance comes in many forms. "It exists along a range
from the free room and board for a 23-year-old intern to a stay of years
for a 43-year-old single parent who has lost a job or recently
divorced. The contribution can be as small as a first month’s rent or as
large as the 25 years of payments that many parents now make on college
loans they took out so their children would not have to."

The larger point is that the harder a young adult has to work to make the next geographic, career and economic step up, the more difficult it is to make that step. And repayment of student loans–a crisis that is raging among college graduates, both recent and long-time–is one of those hurdles that can keep a grown child from making that next step up. "The lack of any family help can have a
compounding effect on the millions of people who have negative net
worths well into adulthood thanks to their student loan debt," Lieber writes.

Meanwhile, even as college costs rise, today's economy is marked by a distinct lack of opportunity for college grads to move into career jobs that pay enough to cover living expenses. And that's why so many of us are helping our grown children. Recent data shows that nearly
60 percent of 23- to 25-year-olds report receiving some kind of
financial assistance from their parents–even when it's sometimes a stretch for the parents. As one 70-year-old parent told Lieber, he didn't want any of his three children "to go so far downhill that they’ll never get out.” In other words, those of us who can afford it are, in effect, trying to guard our children against downward mobility.

Lieber ends his piece with a suggestion for providing family funds for college students: a loan pool set up by the family. He noted that George Lewis, an 82-year-old
lawyer in Quincy, Ill., along with his nine siblings set up an education fund in honor of his grandmother who "had a
strong belief in education." Today, the nearly 50-year-old fund, with holdings of $111,000, lends money interest-free to scores of members of the extended
clan.

SInce that piece ran, Lieber has updated it with other examples of family funds. Some of the examples are of fairly prominent people–Berry Gordy (the founder of Motown Records), for instance–who set up family funds to lend money to the upcoming generation. But one made it all seem within reach to the non-prominent among us. Lieber reports that Suzette Haden Elgin, in a book called “The Grandmother Principles,” offered her own notion
of a family loan fund that grandmothers can initiate. She suggests
asking for a small deposit from everyone in the family, including
children. Having the younger ones pitch in can help give them a stake in
the process and a reason to track the fund’s growth and its
beneficiaries.

Put that way, it doesn't seem so formidable and even has the frisson of bringing the family along on a daring step toward the future.