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

Empty Nesters: Dealing with the feelings of loss–and gain

01/21/2011

When it comes to our children–grown or otherwise–strong emotions roil through us, especially at points of passage: their birth, the first day of school and their leaving home for college. Whether we admit it or not, the latter is a big deal–the last big event that takes place under our protective roof, the transition from child to young adult, the end of our tenure as hands-on parents. It's hard to put in words just what and how much it means to us. And that's what I was looking for when I picked up Andre Aciman's recent essay in the New York Times, "The Day He Knew Would Come."

Aciman did not let me down. Written as his boys–twins and an older son–returned to college after the Christmas break, he ruminated on the stillness of his household. "..when you wake up in the morning, the kitchen is as clean as you left it last night. No one touched anything; no one stumbled in after partying till the wee hours to heat up leftovers, or cook a frozen pizza, or leave a mess on the counter while improvising a sandwich. The boys are away now."

He also takes note of the up side of life as an empty nester. "All things slow down to what their pace had been two decades earlier. My wife and I are rediscovering things we didn’t even know we missed. We can stay out as long as we wish, go away on weekends, travel abroad, have people over on Sunday night, even go to the movies when we feel like it, and never again worry about doing laundry after midnight because the boys refuse to wear the same jeans two days in a row."

One point that had especial resonance for me was his realization that he now had time to reacquaint himself with himself. "Months after they'd left, I finally realized that the one relationship I had neglected for so many years was none other than my relationship with myself. I missed myself. I and me had stopped talking, stopped meeting, lost touch, drifted apart. Now, 20 years later, we were picking up where we’d left off and resumed unfinished conversations."

I had a similar epiphany–not as well or deeply articulated perhaps–but, like Aciman, it came a few months after my children left the nest. It was a sudden realization that I was now number one, Numero Uno. Decisions on what movies to see, what to prepare for dinner, where to go for a vacation–I could now afford to think of myself first. Twenty years of child-rearing tends to drop you to the bottom of the "what do you want" list. During the years my children lived at home with paterfamilias and me (and even now, when they return for a visit), I was happiest when everyone else was at peace with whatever decision had been made. It wasn't all that easy readjusting to the new reality. I had to, as Aciman put it, pick up where I left off and resume unfinished conversations.

Let me end with another comment from Aciman: "The best thing is learning how to give thanks for what we have. And at Christmas I was thankful; their bedroom doors were open again."
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Grandparenting: Showing the love

01/17/2011

I am crocheting a baby blanket–just like I did for the birth of each of my grandchildren and as a birth present for the children of other people who are special in my life. This time, though, the blanket is much smaller. It is for a granddaughter's doll. It is not so small that it's for a Barbie, but it is big enough for her American girl doll.

This is not an expensive proposition. I am using yarn leftover from the presents for real babies, and yet time and effort go into this thing. My granddaughter, living in Berlin for a year, checks out the progress every time we Skype. She helped pick out the colors from the assorted leftover balls of yarn and now I hold it up to the Web cam to show her how long it is getting and how I am putting striples into the design. She is quite excited about it and has already told me "it is big enough for Felicty"–Felicity being the American girl doll she has. In a few weeks, when I bring it with me on a visit to Berlin, I'll bring a crochtet hook that 8-year-old fingers can use and teach her how to crochet.

While I sit and work on it–squeezing time in between work and making dinner and going to yoga classes– a piece of me says, 'It's crazy to hand-make a mini blanket for a doll. What a waste of time.' And then I remind myself, this is what grandparenting is all about. This is what no greater love means: giving something of and from yourself to a precious child.

This posting is one of several featured in About.Com's blog on parenting. You can read these takes on showing love to your children or grandchildren here.
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

Vacation Togetherness: Letting the kids make the plans

01/14/2011

When friends headed for a vacation in New Zealand, they had a two-fold purpose. One was to see the country but the other was to visit a daughter who had been living there for three years. The plan was to travel around the country with their daughter and one of their sons, who came along for the family togetherness of it.

What made the trip unusual was that the parents had nothing to do with the planning of the trip once they landed in New Zealand. They let their grown kids do it. "This was a country where my daughter was living for three years. So I wanted to see it through her eyes," says the mom. "She knew what she wanted to see. My son is a naturalist so he knew what he wanted to see. We let them plan it." They followed their kids' itinerary and sat out hikes or climbs when they felt uncomfortable doing them. "I wasn't going to climb a glacier," says the mom, who waited at the foot of the climb while her children made it to the top. And that was OK with her. They saw many of the natural wonders of New Zealand. When they got to a stupendous waterfall, the kids climbed a trail to the top of it; the parents waited below. When there was a chance to swim with dolphins, the kids got into wet suits; the parents didn't.

But that doesn't mean they didn't love the trip–and the uniqueness of traveling the way 20-somethings travel. "If we were leading it," she says, "we would have had a culture clash–we would have just gone to see sights."

Although there were uncomfortable moments, the trade offs made up for it. They stayed in hostels–the kids in dorm rooms; the parents in a private room ("bare bones but clean"). They had to make the beds and bring their own food. Not the way they usually travel, but the hostels were an entree to meeting a lot of young people who were backpacking their way around the world.

They found it easy to give up the control over planning since they had done this once before–letting a son who was living in Israel be their guide on a two-week trip. "He planned everything," says the mom. The main difference between the trips? "He got us nicer accommodations."