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

Money Matters: Teaching your kids about taxes

02/28/2011

Back in the day when her kids were pre-schoolers, Enid did their taxes–her parents had set up education trust funds for each of them. She kept on doing their taxes for as long as they lived in her house and while they were in college. Now, the funds are spent, the kids are working, own homes, have investments and their own bank accounts. But old habits die hard: they still come home for help in filling out their taxes. "My goal," Enid says now, "is to get all my children to do their own taxes."

She's closer to that goal than most of us would be. She may have "done" their taxes while they came of age, but they had to be at the dining room table with all their papers organized while she loaded Turbo Tax onto the laptop and plugged in the numbers. "I made them sit there with me, and we did it together."

Now that they are on their own, they still come home for help with their taxes. But they come home prepared. "They know what stuff to bring," Enid says. "They know what to collect. They organize it. They really don't need me anymore."

And yet they do. Independent though she would like them to be, she likes to review their final filing. "Everyone needs somebody–a friend or parent–to check that you haven't missed anything."

This year, she recommended that one of her children take his tax form to the next level: to an accountant. The reason: The son bought a condo, sold stocks and had some other complicated financial dealings. "I told him to get an accountant but to sit down with the person and let him walk you through things so you can do it yourself next time."

I can only sit in awe of the way Enid's children have been prepared for their tax futures. I had no such help as a young adult, and I am embarrassed to admit, neither I nor paterfamilias gave our children such guidance–though we did offer the services of our accountant. They chose to muddle through with Turbo Tax.

All I can do now is share with them (and anyone else out there who wants to guide their young adult children through their first few tax seasons) a piece of tax advice Enid swears by. It comes from her father. "If you really work on an issue in your tax form and it's still not clear, decide on a common sense way to deal with it–and then write an accompanying letter that says, in effect, 'I found this hard to understand so let me tell you what I did.' What you don't want to be accused of is fraud. if you come across as straightforward and tell the IRS what you did and why, you can't be accused of fraud."
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Brain Power: Adjusting to a different–but still vibrant–mindset

02/22/2011

As our children grow up and away, our parenting skills adjust to the new reality–the recognition that they don't need our hands-on advice and guidance anymore, unless they ask for it. And yet, here we are, able to see and assess situations and challenges more clearly. We kind of feel in our bones the rightness of the old adage that age brings wisdom.

It turns out, age brings a lot more than that–a shift in perspective. Carl Jung put it this way: "We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie."

Something to bear in mind not only in the living of our lives but in the advice we give our children. What seems to us like a mighty hill for them to climb today, we saw as an easy climb in our prime.

Here's another observation on a similar point, this by Nicholas Delbanco, author of Lastingness: The Art of Old Age. In youth, he suggests, "it's the reception of the piece and not its production that counts. But to the aging writer, painter or musician the process can signify more than result; it no longer seems as important that the work be sold." A reviewer of that book, Brooke Allen, sees this as a profound observation: "with time and age, the act of showing becomes increasingly subordinate to the act of making and gratification turns ever further inward."

If this is how our outlook is evolving, we might want to inculcate it into our mindset when we offer our grown children the benefits of our wisdom.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Helicopter parents: How not to talk to an 18-year-old

02/18/2011

A few weeks ago I posted a blog on how to talk to an 8-year-old. It got a lot of response, and I learned a whole litany of questions to use to get a conversation going, questions that were not conversation stoppers. (Case in point: "How's school?")

It's a little more complicated with an 18-year-old, but here too there are conversation blockers. Stephen Emerson, president of Haverford College and the father of a college-age student, sees these 'stoppers' as "Have you thought about" and "Here's how to do it," and, the most egregious of all, "how about if I call…" He calls these the sins or signs of helicopter parents.

In a recent op-ed piece, he had some sage thoughts for parents who tend to hover over their children, even as those children age out of living in the parental home and of being under their parents' advise-guide-control regime. But he also raises a basic question about hovering: what if helicoptering is, he asks, "our generation's greatest cultural sin, in that it could have lifelong effects on children taught to believe that they are incapable of autonomy?" Helicoptering or hovering–our inability or refusal to allow them to make their own way–could cause our children to develop a sense of inadequacy.

As a parent, he does not see himself growing distant from his daughter as she acquires independence "but that we are realigning. Before, when we were on a clear grown-up/child path, I probably–yes–hovered above. Now I find myself at her side….as our journeys continue, we parents will see our position relative to our children shift yet again. We will be behind them, and they will be leading us."

And that's an issue many of us struggle with–letting go and letting them take the lead.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

The Happiness Quotient: Does happiness theory hold insights for parents of grown children?

02/14/2011

Does parenting grown children or grandparenting their offspring bring happiness? Certainly, we do it whether we get special joy out of it or not, but when I looked at some happiness studies–it is a hot research area–I found a lot of potential in there for a resounding, "Yes, it can."

The issue came to mind while I was reading a blog by James Kwak on Baseline Scenario. HIs discussion is about the effect of happiness on economic issues, but the happiness measures he talks about also apply to parents of grown children (and the grandparents). Here are some of the points that offer insightful into our particular human condition:

"…We know some things that make people happy: Short commutes. Predictability. Control over the environment (random noises are bad). Eating, but only until satiation. Sex, but only until satiation. Money—but only to a point; once your basic needs are met and you don’t face constant insecurity, more money no longer buys you more happiness. Participation in social groups. Marriage, usually. (Children, not so much.) Being appreciated by your boss. Generosity toward other people—even if the generosity is not observed by anyone. Work that is challenging but not overwhelmingly so. Physical contact with other people. And finding quarters in pay phones.** "

If I haven't already lost you, the point is that many of the factors that feed into happiness are part of the parenting/grandparenting condition. Being with our grown children and their families certainly brings participation in social groups. We have unending opportunity to be generous to others–small children are so winsome–and to have physical contact with them. And then there's work (i.e. babysitting grandchildren) that is challenging but not overwhelmingly so. As to being appreciated by the boss–well some grown children are better at saying Thank You than others–though spoken or not, there is an assumption of appreciation. Of course, some of the items in the list–control over environment, for one–mitigate the other way.

I can't speak to the quarters in the pay phone. We've all got cell phones now.

[The ** on pay phones refers to a study that found that if people find a quarter in a pay phone, afterward they will report they are happier than people who didn’t find the quarter. This effect persists and also affects people’s reported happiness about unrelated parts of their life, like their family life.]
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

On Vacation: Feeling the pull of home

02/07/2011

We are in Budapest, traveling around, seeing the world, sending home emails to our grandchildren. We understand they have opened their maps, are tracking our trip and, hopefully, gaining a sense of the world from the details we provide. We tell them that Budapest is a very bicycle-friendly city–even the traffic lights have little bicycles on the red and green orbs to let bicyclists–not just pedestrians–know when it's safe to cross the street and when to stop. We also write about the stone lions that stand guard at one of the many bridges that cross the Danube and of the gold-gilded interior of the opera house.

View this photo

An email from one of the grandchildren–a 9-year-old–comes back at us. It is filled with chatter and questions about the details we've been sending. But at the end of the note is an addendum: from our grown son. The 9-year-old has broken his arm playing soccer; the mom is down with a migraine. There is no hint of a request for help. And yet, there's a pit-of-the stomach feeling: Part of me would like to confirm their well-being by being there. The old protective, maternal feelings kick in: Am I needed? Should I be there? And then there's the current reality: They are a family that can take care of itself. They know how to cope with these minor ups and downs and challenges. Stay where you are and enjoy the violins and the music that seems to float up from the Danube. Email the grandkids the photos of the bridge lions so they can enjoy them while you are.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Brain Change: How we–and our grown children–measure up.

01/29/2011

Here's food for thought: the confluence and trajectories of "maturing" that we experience (the graying hair, the flabbier muscle tone, the forgetfulness) and the "maturations" our grown children are undergoing. Put in Gail Sheehy terms: The Passages we're experiencing vis a vis the Passages they're experiencing. If we had more understanding of what natural changes or passages they and we are going through, would that give us insights into our approaches to parenting our grown children? Would that help us with the challenges we face in our role as advisory parents in our adult children's lives?

I'm not sure Barbara Strauch has the answers, but her new book,The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain may offer some clues. I say "may" because I haven't read it yet. I've been clued into it by Susan Adcox who blogs about grandparenting . In writing about one of the big points the book makes–the mature mind may be more forgetful but it compensates with other strengths–Adcox notes, "Middle-aged people who find themselves 'on the foggy planet of lost keys and misplaced thoughts' may have to learn new ways of coping, such as list-making and note-taking. But they are rewarded with minds that see the big picture, that are capable of flashes of insight, that can solve problems of enormous complexity."

The book has just arrived on my doorstep. I'll be reporting back on what I learn that has relevancy to our roles as parents of adult children. You may find those reports offer insights into your relationship with your grown children–unless you choose to read the book yourself.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

The Appreciation Factor: Where have all the Thank You’s gone?

01/25/2011

A friend has a complaint: Much as he and his wife do to help their daughter with the daily hassles of rearing three children, they rarely get a thank you. He doesn't mean the rushed "thanks, bye" sign-off at the end of a visit. He means a more formal gesture that suggests Grammy and Poppy are doing something special to help out their daughter–a more acknowledged appreciation for all that they do: lending the daughter and her family their beach house for summer vacations and fall weekends, babysitting every Friday night so the parents can have a "date night," picking up a child at school when the parents can't get there, driving one child to weekly soccer practice and the other to twice-a-week swim lessons.

"When she just says. 'Thanks, Bye,' I feel, Is that all?" he says. "I want to feel more included in their lives. I'd like to be invited over for dinner or given some token gesture that suggests how important a role we play in her family's life."

Another friend talks about having her children and grandchildren vacation at their summer house–a house near the beach where she and her husband spend the summer. It isn't a matter of the grown chidlren thanking them for using the house, it is more about the babysitting. Almost every afternoon, everyone [two grown children, three grandchildren] traipse off to the beach while the baby sleeps–everyone except the grandparents. Pops spends the time fixing things around the house–he enjoys puttering; Grams sits and stews and wishes she were at the beach, too. But at no point was there "an acknowledgement of the effort. No Thank you." When she took everyone out for ice cream, there was no thank you then either. "You do these things because you enjoy doing them, " she says. "They're family and of course you do things for them. But it's that taken-for-granted feeling."

We do things for our grown children because we love them, because we want to ease the way for them–take a little sting out of the overwhelming experience that child-rearing is. And yet, we'd like those random or regular acts of kindness acknowledged.

This was the point in a recent Family Almanac column in the Washington Post. A reader wrote columnist Marguerite Kelly to complain that she sends gifts and a little money to the children of her grown step children –even though she's retired, money is tight and her husband (the father of the two grown children) died several years ago. Two of the teen-age children "have only sent me one thank-you note in the last five years." The writer doesn't want "to abandon these children, but I do feel as if I am wasting my time and my money." She asks Kelly, should she stop giving them presents?

Kelly's answer: Send presents because "they are your grandchildren, you love them and they love you too." At the same time, it's time to write to them and "say, kindly, and gently, that your feelings are hurt because they don't thank you." They need to know that the gifts are "one way to show your love for them, just as thank-you notes are a way they can show their love for you."

Thank you notes are, as Kelly notes, far, far from a teen-agers mind, what with all the turmoil they are going through. A similar case could be made for parents of young children–the everyday pressures of raising children, holding a job, keeping house, being a spouse can keep the thank-you to parents out of the conscious part of the brain.

Explanation is no justification. Sometimes it helps to let those you love know your feelings are hurt–and that the remedy is as simple as a heartfelt Thank You. The friend whose son spent his vacation at the beach house wrote the son a post-vacation email suggesting a thank you would be appropriate. She and gramps got a nice note in return.