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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.

    Emerging Adults: Their burdens are bigger than ours were at their age

    A little–perhaps a lot–of sympathy may be in order here. Our kids–the young adults coming out of college and graduate school–are drowning in debt and a lot of other woes that ripple out from that. "It's a very different world than 20 yrs ago" says Nancy Molitor, a clinical psychologist who practices in the Chicago area. "Parents in their 50s and 60s don’t have any idea of the stress their children are under."

    There's some $1 trillion outstanding student debt floating around out there. Molitor, who's also Public Education Coordinator for the American Psychological Association, saw the face of that debt up close and personally when she was a speaker at a seminar for graduate students in psychology. She asked the 150 students attending the seminar for a show of hands: How many of them had debt from college and graduate school? All hands went up. She then broke it down: How many had debt of $50,000 or less. Roughly 1/3 raised their hands. How many had debt of $100,000 or less? Another 1/3 raised their hands. When she upped it to $150,000, another 1/3 put up their hands. When she asked about debt above $150,000, ten hands shot up.

    That's a lot of money to owe when you're getting out of graduate school and can't find a job–or can't find one that pays enough to start whittling down that debt. But psychology isn't the only field where young people are under stress. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, opportunities for college and graduate school graduates have tightened and are almost at a point of diminishing return. It is no wonder, Molitor says, that a lot of the young adults she sees feel "bamboozled." And a lot of them, she adds, turn their anger on their parents–for sheltering them from the harsh realities, for leading them to believe that doing well in college would mean a good job, a worthwhile career, a house and a life style similar to their parents. "They feel let down, she says.

    It's also one of the reasons they're delaying marriage and are unwilling to start their own families. "These young adults feel like the debt is saddling them," Molitor reports. "It affects every decision they make. When you have debt you can’t take risks."

    It's a point Daniel Burrus, futurist and author of Flash Foresight, riffs on as well. As he sees it, kids aren't being guided properly. They're going to college and majoring in things, like philosophy, that will never lead to a job. His solution: better guidance counseling, better education about school debt versus level of diploma versus job opportunity.

    So where do we parents come into this? Certainly, we can help with the guidance and whether our particular children need to give up philosophy and concentrate on accounting or whether they–make that we–can afford to have them study disciplines that will enhance their critical thinking skills but not  necessarily outfit them for a job in today's market.

    Is there a parallel between the present crisis Burrrus and Molitor have observed, and a decade ago when the post 9/11 economy threaten to tank? George Bush famously offered his solution to the problem: Go shopping. Would that the solution to today's economic woes and job collapse were as simple as that. But maybe the fix is a variation on that theme: If we and our 401k plans can help our college and grad students reduce that debt, go pay it.

     

     

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

    Grandparenting: A how-to list on creating a loving bond with the grandkids

    Came across a post on a parenting blog that listed 10 ways to be a fabulous grandparent. Some of it is the usual–have fun with and don't be afraid to be silly around the grandkids. But two key in on issues that are far from silly and can effect our relationship not only with the grandkids but their parents:

     Take the lead: It's your job to stay in touch with your grandchild or grandchildren. If you expect them to do it, you'll be disappointed and frustrated. "It's age-appropriate for kids to be thoughtless about staying in touch. If you want the relationship, you have to be willing to do the work," says New York therapist Sharon O'Neill. Remember birthdays, but celebrate other special occasions as well…. Ask if you can bring artwork home to put on the fridge. Attend sports games, plays, and dance performances. Cheer loudly, bring flowers, and take everyone out for ice cream afterward. "

     Beware grandparent rivalry: Avoid the trap of keeping up with Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josie – this will only lead to hard feelings….A close relationship with one set of grandparents doesn't detract from your importance – unless you let it.

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

    Money Matters: The stats on how we help our kids buy a house

    Yes. It's yet another survey on how generous our generation is to our children. This one comes from Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate and keys in on the ways in which we help our children buy a home.

    According to its December survey, nearly one in five self-identified baby boomer couples had assisted at least one adult child in a home purchase. This help came in the form of down payment assistance, outright purchasing or mortgage co-signing.

    How do we do it? The survey found that many of us are digging into our savings or we're dipping into emergency funds or retirement funds in order to come up with the average $10,000 to $30,000 down payment for an American home.

    Do we expect to be repaid? The survey doesn't say. For some of us, it's repayment enough to see our children living in a nice, solid home that someday–should the housing downturn ever turn around–will appreciate and bring them a modicum of good fortune. If they eventually flip the house and make a killing (those days may never return but….), they might share the pot of wealth with the ones who made it possible.

    Few of us can count on that one. 

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

    Grandparenting: When rivalry with the other grandfolks morphs into resentment

    When their daughter-in-law became desperately ill–sick enough to be in the hospital for a week–Alice and Edward went into crisis mode: picking up and delivering the two small grandchildren to day care and bringing them home at the end of the day; feeding them; playing with them and putting them to bed. Their son–the dad–was around but he was also working and shuttling back and forth to see his wife and her doctors. It was a difficult time for everyone, especially since Alice and Edward work full time.

    "This is what we do," Alice says, when a very tired Alice and I are sitting and having coffee. I agree. We are programmed to put our lives on hold and help out when we're needed–at least we are at this stage of our lives.

    Or are we? The daughter-in-law's parents, who had lived many years abroad, had moved back last year to the city where their daughter was living. The father, who was with an international institution, was working full time but not the mother. Aside from visits to their daughter in the hospital, they were no where to be seen at the child-helping end of the equation. What had Alice really ticked off, though, was that her DIL's mother–the co-grandmother–left town in the midst of the crisis to visit another daughter so that the other daughter could take some time off. "If it were me," Alice says, "I would have called the other daughter and said, 'Your sister is seriously ill. I know you'll understand that I need to be here to help out. You'll have to find someone else to cover for you.'"

    When the DIL's parents first moved back to this country, Alice was worried that she and Edward would seem dull and oh-so-ordinary–they hadn't lived in Indonesia or Japan; they hadn't entertained high level diplomats and important business leaders. If she felt any rivalry with her co-grandparents, that feeling had now morphed into resentment–that they weren't there to take on some of the burden rippling out from their daughter's illness, especially when it came to bringing aid and comfort to two toddlers.

    Who knows why others don't feel compelled to drop everything and rush to the rescue of an ailing child and his or her family. Maybe they were waiting to be asked.  Not everyone has the same code,feels the same closeness or believes they would be welcome and needed. 

    As for Alice and Edward, they have gotten their reward: Once the daughter-in-law was at home and recovering, their son took them aside, thanked them for being there and told them they were "really special." That says it all, doesn't it?

     

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

    Parenting Grown Children: The curtain comes down when a family visit ends.

    They packed up the van and loaded my three Grands in the back. Six hours later, Uber son, wife and Grands arrived at the family manse for a weekend visit. Within minutes of their arrival, Paterfamilias and I began an immersion into their lives–in the ins and outs of who likes what for a snack and how things are going at school and what's happening with the indoor soccer team. It's exhilarating. Not just in a deja vu kind of way but in a real fascination with how the grown child's career is expanding and how the Grands are growing up–what their concerns are, what their many strengths and occasional weaknesses are. One by one, they plop themselves down at the piano and play. We can hear a growing sense of rhythm and musicianship by the two who are taking piano lessons. They take the Razor scooter parked in our carport out for a spin and we watch how adventurous they are–or are not–in scooting down our steep driveway and along our dead-end street. Soccer balls are kicked around. Basketballs heaved at a rickety hoop at the end of the street. The van disgorges a tricycle for the not-quite-four year old and we get to marvel at her new accomplishment.

    All this is a long way of saying that when our grown children arrive at our house with our Grands and they stay for a few days, we are suddenly and deeply absorbed by and into their world. We sop up all the small talk about what they're learning in science class and how the math is going; the challenges of a co-ed versus all-girls soccer team; how limits are set for screen time and games on the iPad. By Sunday, we're rolling along with the plans for upcoming birthdays and summer vacation in Vermont.

    And then the van is repacked, kids and tricycle loaded. Their world backs down the driveway and trundles down the road. When grown children and their families live far away, there's a yo-yo like relationship with their lives. So much intimacy. And then none. 

     

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

    Grandparenting: 10 reasons we can be terrible sitters

    Reader alert: This could get ugly.The view from the trenches of our grown children is not always a pretty one. There's a blog out there called findababysitter.org that suggests that some of us should not be called on to babysit. I agree. Not all of us enjoy it–especially if it lasts more than an hour or two. And evidently, the feeling is mutual: Not all parents enjoy having their parents do it, even if the price seems right.

    You can go to the site to read all 10 reasons. Some of them are cheap shots. See reason 2: "Concessions – For a moment’s peace, and the chance to perhaps recharge their pacemaker batteries, your folks are apt to give anything to your child."

    Some are issues we who have grandchildren struggle with all the time. "Discipline – For better or worse, in a lot of ways our ideas about parenting differ from our parents. Your child’s grandparents may not be 100% on board with your own ideas about discipline, and how to raise your child."

    But one really hits home. It's #8 on the list, and it gives one pause: "Privacy – Let’s be honest, some parents would just as soon not have their own parents spending any time in their homes unattended. For whatever reasons – and we don’t pry or judge here – you would prefer to have the neighbor’s daughter babysit instead. At least she just raids the fridge."

    ooooph. Makes me want to re-read my Notes to Self and see the wisdom in keeping good housekeeping hints to ones self.

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

    Parenting Grown Children: Their jobs are high-wire acts that cause us angst as well.

    "I worry all the time about their losing their jobs," a friend writes about her two sons and their wives, all somewhere in their late 30s and early 40s. "They are doing well but the fields they are in could implode any minute."

    The problem: They need two incomes to maintain their lifestyle, and the pressures on them in the modern-day workforce are immense. One daughter-in-law's job expects her to be available 24/7–or night and day as we used to say.  "She's on a 24-hour cycle–emails and text messages all day and night," my friend continues. "On the weekend. if she doesn't answer, she could be fired. If she does, she ruins her weekend." Either way, it puts pressure on the marriage, on child rearing and on my friend's relationship with her DIL.

    Although she wishes there were a way to ease the stress for her grown children, all the understanding in the world doesn't ease the pain when she sees how tense her son's relationship with his wife has become.

    Neither my friend nor I remember this kind of pressure when we were at the heights of our careers. Certainly, texting and 24-hour communication wasn't as readily available. Maybe there would be sniping in the marriage anyway. But the complications of 24/7 jobs seem to make things worse. For them–and by extension–for us.

     

     

     

     

     

     

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

    Grandparenting: Expert advice for the grannie as nannie

     Grandparenting isn't all fun and games, especially when we do more than pop by for an hour's visit. Those of us who help out our grown children with babysitting–from the occasional coverage so the parents can go out for the evening to a regular granny-as-nanny stint–may find our grands acting in less-than-adorable ways.

    There's a post on grannynannies.net that details "10 Common Reasons Grandparents Get Mad at Grandkids." It won't tell your how to deal with the ugliness of tantrums, the maddening unwillingness to go to bed or the frustrating habit of overindulging in video games, but it will bring comfort in knowing you are not alone, that some misbehaviors are universal. The 10 common reasons are not appalling-equal, but even the lesser of them can sure can tick off some grandparents. Number one in that category is probably the failure to say thank you for gifts or better yet, send a thank you note. Maybe it's a generational thing, but based on advice columns in the newspapers, it's one that gets a lot of granny and grampy goats.

     

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

    Emerging Adults: The guest room, the bedroom and your daughter’s boyfriend

    Times have changed; social mores too. But there still remains this issue: Your grown child comes home for the holidays (or just for a weekend visit) with a friend–as in boyfriend or girlfriend. They are a couple. At least they are in their eyes. Do you let them pile into your child's old bedroom together or do you provide separate sleeping quarters?

    For parents of college-age children it may be a bigger issue than for those with older, single children. But not necessarily. I've read some "Ask Amy" letters where grandparents don't want their grandchildren "shacking up" with their lovers under their roof–even when the grandchild in question is in her 30s.  That said, the younger the child, the trickier the issue–even though we all assume that in this day and age, our adult children are sleeping with someone they consider a boyfriend or girlfriend. It's mainly a question of what goes on under your roof and what you find morally objectionable.

    A mother posed the bedroom question to Social Q's. Her daughter, a freshman in college, was coming home for a visit with her first boyfriend. The home did not have a guest room–or any spare room. "I'm thrilled she wants to visit (and bring him)," the single mother writes, "but I don't know what the sleeping arrangements should be. Should I put him on the [living room] couch, or look the other way and let him stay with her?"

    When my children were that age, I had the luxury of a guest room. I suggested luggage and other accouterments be dumped in that room, closed my door and paid no attention to final sleeping arrangements. Nor did I offer any suggestions as to my preferences. But this mother had a space problem. And Philip Galanes, who writes the Social Q's column for the New York Times, came up with his usual brilliant answer. I offer it to those who are struggling with this age-old problem:

    "Once the baby birds have flown the coop, there are only two ways to lure them back: by making their visits congenial or by canceling their MasterCards. Opt for the former, Mother Dear.

    "It doesn’t sound as if you have a moral objection to lodging the lovebirds together. If you do, simply disregard the balance of this answer and make up the living room sofa. Eighteen-year-old backs can handle much worse.

    "But if it’s propriety you’re concerned about (or parental duty), you’ll fare better by phoning your daughter than gnashing your teeth with me. Say: “Honey, I’m trying to work out where Tom should sleep. What would make you most comfortable?”