PenPenWrites

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

Emerging Adults: Is post-adolescent parenting a demotion?

04/11/2011

Moving off the center of the stage–recognizing that we are no longer the key players in our children's lives–is an issue many of us struggle with. It starts when our children move from being teens living at home to college students to young adults moving out into the world. Writing in Psychology Today, psychologist Carl Pickhardt looks at three phases of transitioning from parenting adolescent children to being mother or father to an adult. His overarching point is that it's easy to see this parenting passage as a demotion. And it is, but in the better sense of that word.

Here are some of Pickhardt's points:

"It is the blessing and the curse of doing their job well: when parents succeed in growing their children to independence, now these adults will act more independently of them.

"So does parenting end with parents not mattering? Not at all, if parents remain mindful of their primal roles. Remember how the little child called "Watch me!" "Listen to me!" "See what I can do!" "Let me tell you what I did!" What was it the little child wanted? The answer is parental attention, interest, and approval, needs the adult child never really outgrows.

"So when parents continue their roles as emotional supporter, as rapt audience, and as tireless cheerleader, what they have to offer their adult children never goes out of style, never loses lasting value."

Pickhardt ends with a quote from the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke: "Once the realization that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky."

"Loving the distance." What a fresh way to look at our loss of centrality as a gain.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

The Kid Grows Up: They are more capable than we think

04/08/2011

A friend writes a letter of admission: "I go to my 45-year-old daughter’s house once a month to OPEN HER MAIL and sort it. Otherwise she wouldn't do it. I also help with her taxes. She doesn't seem to know how to organize her papers." Though she sees her daughter as a person in need of her mother's organizational talents, last year my friend had her eyes opened on that account:

She writes: "This past May I was hospitalized (11 days in ICU, 2 weeks in Rehab, home, then back to hospital for pneumonia, pleurisy and severe anemia.) Through it all, my daughter was more than in charge. She started a new job the day before I went in, yet she took care of me AND my friends. She set up a web thing where they could talk to her and each other, and she kept them informed of my progress. When I got better (it took 3 months), I could finally talk to my friends. After saying they were so glad to hear my voice, they all said, "You have a wonderful daughter.'"

She still helps with her daughter's mail and taxes–old habits die hard; both are used to them–but she has new respect for her daughter's managerial abilities. She's even let her plan a vacation they took together. It was, she says, the first time she let her plan anything.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Emerging Adulthood: Finding something illegal in your grown child’s possession.

04/03/2011

A friend's college-sophomore son came home for Spring break. Rule of the house: do your own laundry. But morning of day he was to leave and return to school, his room was piled high with dirty laundry. The mom was holding her ground on the rule when the dad asked his son to help him out at a soccer game he was coaching. The mom, liking the idea of father and son coaching together, decided she'd "help out" by doing her son's laundry. When she was dumping the first load from washer to dryer, she discovered she'd washed his wallet–it had been in the pocket of a dirty pair of pants. I'll let her words take the story from here:

"So i took everything out of the wallet to let things dry. And I found a fake ID [a driver's license form another state, giving his age as 21]. I was very upset about it. It's illegal to have such a thing and when our son was home at Christmas break, he'd gotten drunk with a friend and caused a commotion in our backyard that caused a neighbor to call the police. I didn't want to confront him with the fake ID so when everything was dry, I put it all back in the wallet –except the fake ID. I kept it.

"When he came home, I told him about washing the wallet by mistake. Later, as he was getting ready to leave for the airport, he went through it. And he asked, Wwhere's my ID?' I said, 'Your ID [his real license] is in your wallet.' Well, he got really angry and we were shouting at each other. I said the fake ID was illegal and that given the drinking problems last Christmas, this was no way to win back his parents trust. He said he didn't use it to buy liquor. He used it to get into concerts. The shouting went on. It got so bad I refused to drive him to the airport.

"He hasn't spoken to me since. I wrote him an email explaining why I did what I did and how I felt about fake IDs. He sent back a reply that was just short of saying f— you."

What an issue! You find something illegal in your 20-year-old's possession, something that could, in the long run, bring him harm. But you found it going through his wallet–even though you didn't mean to be going through his personal items.

My friend says her friend with a son her son's age says, "all the kids have fake IDs. Forget about it." She doesn't buy that would-you-jump-off-the-cliff argument.

I asked a friend who has a 24-year-old son what he would have done. "It depends on what was going on in the household. Were the parents letting their son have parties in the home where his friends were allowed to drink? If so, they don't have much to stand on about using the fake ID to buy liquor. I would have taken the ID but talked to my son directly about it–about my concerns about under-age drinking. I wouldn't have waited for him to discover it was gone."

Paterfamilias, a lawyer when he's not a sounding-board dad, saw the situation differently. He was not primarily troubled by the illegal document but by the mom's actions. By his lights, she should not have looked in the wallet–should not have taken stuff out to dry. And if she did and found the fake ID, she should have tucked it back into the wallet. If there was an issue about drinking and his buying liquor with a fake ID, she should address that separately–not connect it to the fake ID. Going through his wallet, however inadvertent, and then using what she found there to confront her son, "breaks a bond of trust."

Another friend, whose youngest is 33, makes light of the "illegal" act. She had a fake ID when she was growing up in Brooklyn. All her friends did. LIke me, this friend had an intrusive mother. So she reacted as I did: "I would have tucked it back in and never said a word about it."

For some of us, a fake ID is not a big crime. But what if the item she found was worse–illegal drugs, say, or evidence of an interset in child pornography? Does that change the way a parent would react? It's a slippery slope between inadvertently finding damaging evidence and behaving like an intrusive snoop.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Re-Nesting:The rules when a Boomerang kid moves back home

03/29/2011

After her 37-year-old (and single) daughter lost her job, a friend had a new roomer for six months. No surprise there: A 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center reports that 13 percent of parents with grown children say one of their adult kids has moved back home in the past year–much of that thanks to tough economic times. Before this mom's out-of-work daughter moved in, though, the mother set some rules. No, they weren't about who would wash the dishes or whether rent would be paid. Instead, the mom emailed me the following dictum she asked her daughter to abide by: "You will not talk to me about what I eat or what I wear (my hot buttons) and in return I will not ask you where you are going and when you’ll be back. I will not expect you to show up for dinner (a good thing, as I don’t cook)."

The simple rules worked well on both sides. The daughter kept her side of the bargain and more: Even though she wasn't expected to, she usually called to let her mother know where she was and when she would be back. As for the mom, she once asked her daughter who it was she was talking to on the phone. "I was told, 'None of your business.' I have never done that again!"

At the end of the "visit," both mother and daughter agreed that living together again had been really hard but that the understanding of what the ground rules were helped.

A lot of articles I read on the subject of re-nesting–of boomerang children moving back home after living independently–list a host of rules to follow: set clear expectations regarding expenses and household chores; set a time limit; charge rent. And key to it all: Write it all out in an agreement. This is good, solid advice. Practical. Sound. But, frankly, if one of my children were moving back home, I can't see myself doing it. There would be so much emotional overload and this would just add to it. It makes more sense to put your finger on the hot buttons–we all know what ours and our children's are, or at least we should–and make an agreement to steer clear of them. Not stepping on each others toes is never easy. But at least spelling out what it is you would find most difficult for a long or short co-habitation is a start. And it probably has very little to do with how much rent they will or will not pay–unless money is one of the hot buttons.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grandparenting: “What I love about babysitting.”

03/26/2011

It's a given: we love our grandchildren. But some of us love babysitting for them more than others do. A college friend–someone I hadn't heard from since we lived in the same dormitory at school–called to see if I was coming to the class reunion. She had a long list of Simmons graduates she was calling to recruit to come to Boston in June. It was so nice to reconnect, and while we got reacquainted on the phone, she mentioned her four grandchildren and how much she loved babysitting for them at her son's house. She did it once a week despite running her own small business and living a busy life. "It's the highlight of my life," she said. "It's the best thing I do." She mentioned this highlight several times, so of course I had to ask her: what it is about babysitting that turns her on? What she told me was unexpected and touching:

"I hated being a mother, and I like the way I am with my grandchildren. I am all the things I was not as a mother. I am patient. I am kind. I don't yell."

Maybe that's what we love about being with our children's children: the chance to be a kinder, gentler us.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grandparenting: A special something we offer our grown and grandchildren

03/21/2011

The importance of being a grandparent: We don't just pass down family history and those fun stories about what life was like when we were young. We aren't there just to splurge on special gifts and indulge our grandkids in loving kindnesses. We are also a calming influence on the family. At least that's what brain scientists suggest.

In Barbara Strauch's The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain, recent studies by brain researchers have found scientific grounding for what's known as the "Grandmother Hypothesis." That is, humans and primates that had helpful, living grandmothers in their group live longer.

Part of their premise is that, as we get older, the amygdala part of our brain reacts less and less to negative things–unlike the way it reacted when we were younger. This may sound counter intuitive. After all, we as a generation–that is, as "older" people–have a reputation for being grouchy. Sometimes we are–the body as it ages can give us enough pain to make us whine and, given natural losses of friends and some functions, we may get lonely. But overall, our brains tend to bring us to the sunnier side. Here's what one researcher says about our "positivity effect:"

"…As we age we become much more aware that we have less time left in life–and it therefore becomes much more important for us to maintain emotional stability. One way to keep on an even keel is to steer clear of the bad and focus on the good. And, though we're not aware of it, we manipulate both our attention and our memory to suit that goal."

And voila: that makes us super-helpful to our families. "Grandmothers with a sunnier outlook," the brain scientists say, "give their families a greater ability to thrive and survive." Grandpops, too.

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

Visiting Privileges: The parental instinct rises

03/18/2011

We hear the car pull up just as the 11:00 nightly news draws to a close. Uber son and his family have arrived: they've come home for a long weekend visit. Our voices are hushed as we hustle out to the car. The two-year-old is bundled from car seat to a big bed inside. The "big" kids (they are 7 and 9) are bleary eyed but ready for a snack and a look around. But they too are soon dispatched to bed as are parents and grandparents.

The morning sounds wake us earlier than we're used to: little feet running around the house; hushed yips of excitement as secret passages are revisited and closets explored. Cereal is poured into bowls. Bread is toasted. Attempts to play the piano are curtailed until "everyone" is awake. A house comes alive when there are grandchildren in it.

So does our weekend. Where we usually scramble around looking for something interesting to do and friends to see, Saturday and Sunday are now a mad jumble of museum visits, walks in the woods, football catches on the street–lucky us, we live on a dead end–and greetings by a neighbor's big, friendly dog. And endless trips to the supermarket. It is amazing how quickly we go through a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, a carton of eggs. And amazing, too, how fast we–Paterfamilias and I–are absorbed into the rhythm of a young family's life: the upcoming piano recital, soccer game, play date, art class, school play. It is as though we lived in close proximity instead of in a city that's a 7-hour drive away, that we always knew in minute detail what was going on with our Grands, and that they were always an up-close and personal part of our day-to-day lives.

Then comes this reminder. It is late afternoon on Sunday. Uber son and his son are down in the street passing the football back and forth, running imaginary screens and plays. PF is too tired by now to join in. One Grand is playing the piano; another asking for a snack when our grandson bangs on the door with a frantic rap. He is yelling and crying: "Dad is hurt. Dad is hurt. Come quick." Out of the house flies my daughter-in-law. PF gets in the car and drives down the hill in case transportation is needed. I stay behind with two of the Grands to keep some semblance of calm and reassurance that all will be well. We can see from the window that their dad–my son–is sitting on a curb, hunched over in pain. Then we see him helped into PF's car and driven back up the hill to our house and helped inside. His face is devoid of color; he is shaken by pain. He needs to lie down. He wants his wife–not his mom, not his dad–to stay by his side. He thinks he may have broken his ankle.

I call an Urgent care clinic: they can see him if he's there within an hour, at which time they close for the day. Everyone wants to go with him. He wants his wife. His son, frantic that he somehow caused the accident, insists on going. It falls to PF and I to do the really hard part: Keep up the spirits and quell the fears of the two children left behind. We talk about where dad is going, why they can't go, too and then we find a box of Shrinky Dinks for the 7-year-old. She is taken up with that. We read a story to the two year old. And then we find a DVD of the Muppet Show. No one is watching exactly but it is a surprising comfort for all of us to hear the familiar chortle of Kermit the Frog and the high pitch of Miss Piggy's complaints.

The phone finally rings. It is Uber son. Sounding strong and less pained. We put him on the speaker phone. He tells us he'll be seen next at the clinic and is hopeful that the ankle is not broken. The pain is subsiding. Fifteen minutes later the phone rings again: A voice with a very foreign accent asks, "Are you next of kin to….?" In the mini second it takes between the question and our son's laughing prank-voice, a quick-as-blink thought runs through my head: The voice is asking for parental permission for X-Rays to be taken.

How weird and without logic is that? And yet, it is a reminder to me of how deeply go those maternal roots and the role we played in our children's lives,even though those roles have been supplanted–and appropriately so–by others.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Money Matters: Sharing the wealth in a rational way

03/15/2011

She's a doctor; he's a lawyer. They've both done very well–financially and otherwise. Their only child–a son–has taken a different road. He's living his dream career: he's a firefighter, studying to be an emergency medical technician.

I've never heard the parents complain about his life choice–except when their son was called up during the war in Iraq. Since they've got more money then they need to live on–and to finance retirement–they've been giving their son a portion of his inheritance every year–the maximum they can give without incurring tax penalties under gift tax laws. Currently, that's $12,000 from her; $12,000 from him.

"He relies on that $24,000. He factors it into his budget," she says. They don't give it to him in one lump sum at any particular time. They send checks and he keeps tabs on what's come in. And when he needs money for something–he lives on a farm and recently wanted money to build a small auxiliary barn–he can call up and tell his parents what he wants or needs and why he'd like an advance.

Apart from the requests, do they keep an eye on how he's using the money. Not really but sort of. "I wouldn't want him to use it for something frivolous–in his case, another antique gun for his collection. But he pretty much spends it on legitimate living expenses."

Her point is not to approve or disapprove of his spending. Rather, she wants him to know how much he can depend on so he can plan and budget for it. She'd rather do it that way then just send the odd gift here and there–as many of us do. This lets him make rational decisions about his personal budget. And it gives the parents the pleasure of knowing they're providing a cushion that let's him pursue the livelihood that makes him happy–regardless of how much it pays.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grandparenting: Dinner table taboos

03/08/2011

What is it about table manners? A lot of grandparents flip out over the way small children eat their food. I'm not talking about food fights, but about eating food with fingers or whining about the food they're served or just messing with the food on their plate. Or, even more annoying, having to prepare special meals for each little person.

A friend whose daughter, son-in-law and three small children came to live with her for a year (the daughter was awarded a special internship in her parent's hometown; the son-in-law telecommuted), says the biggest tension was at the dinner table:

"My husband was very impatient with the kids at meal time. He just couldn’t deal with the noise, the picky eating. He didn't like that the kids were not doing what their parents told them to. He would lose his temper. He should have had more sense than to do that. The parents are right there. When parents are there, they are in charge. He didn’t need to be stepping in. My daughter would say, "Dad, I’m handling this." But it made her mad.

"I had my issues, too. Our generation did not cater to our kids' eating preferences the way this generation does. When my daughter's family was living with us, I would go in to prepare a meal and feel like a short-order cook. I didn’t like it, but I did what I had to do. And I didn’t say anything about it. But it was annoying."

It's one thing to watch how meal times play out when we're visiting our children's families in their homes. If there's a mess, it's their mess. If there are special requests, they're used to it. It seems to be quite another matter when it's our house. Maybe it's the feeling that aliens have invaded our space. Or we feel like we ought to be in charge–but we're not.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Visiting Privileges: Making the trek to a cold clime

03/04/2011

"Remember those news clips of the Beatles landing in the US in '64–the crowds going crazy, jumping up and down?" This is the question Alpha Daughter poses to Paterfamilias. It is also her report on the reception I received when I arrived in Berlin a few weeks ago to visit her and her family. My Grand–her 8-year-old daughter–was jumping up and down and shouting cheers of welcome when I was spotted coming into the international baggage claim area–separated from the waiting crowd by a huge glass wall.

There's April in Paris (chestnuts in blossom), and then there's February in Berlin (Lindens without leaves). It may not have the same zing to it, but I'll take Berlin. When your grown child and her family live in a city far from you–even if it's only for a year–that city can be infused with warmth and joy. It wasn't just the immediate reception. It lasted throughout the week-long visit. The pleasure of the visit was blending into their day to day lives–meeting Frau Shroeder [my Grand's teacher], taking my Grandpup and Grand for walks around Lake Schlachtensee to feed the ducks, riding the S-Bahn train through the Grunewald forest, having coffee at a cafe in Zohlendorf, meeting my daughter's friends and colleagues. One day we were a little more ambitious and tried to see the Collection of Classical Antiquities at the Pergamon Museum, but the line was so long on a Saturday afternoon–even though this is not tourist season–that we had to give up on it.

And then the week was up, and it was time to go home. Berlin may be gray and chilly in February but I remember it for the warm tug of being pulled into the life of my grown child and her family. I don't think I've ever felt quite so wanted–and appreciated for making the trek. Grown children are independent adults leading lives on their own course. But sometimes they need us.