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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.

    Lessons from Grown Children: Their careers open us up to new ideas and fields of interest.

    I am having coffee with Jeannie–she's a friend of a friend that I haven't seen in a while. We are catching up by swapping tales of what our kids are up to. Her son is graduating from
    college with a major in costume design. Neither she nor the child’s father is into anything even remotely artistic. She’s an occupational therapist;
     he’s an accountant. But thanks to her son's interest, she’s learned a
    lot in the past few years about what goes into bringing a play from script to
    stage. She’s gone to New York with her son to see shows on and off Broadway—something
    she never did before. Her son hopes to get into a special internship program in
    New York City that will give him a boost up his career path.

    Her story reminds me of the days when our children lived at
    home and developed interests outside of ours. Alpha Daughter played
    the piano competitively; Uber son swam in a league of community swimming pools. We learned a lot about the back
    stroke [his specialty] and upper body development; about Mozart Rondo alla Turka
    competitions and how the pianist has to concentrate the mind as well as the
    fingers. We miss those universes now that our little participants have grown up and
    moved on. But like Jeannie's son, their careers have taken Paterfamilias and I into fields quite diverse from
    our own. This time around, we’re still
    standers-by who,
    once again, get to learn all the fascinating details of a new and different universes—only this
    time, our children are our teachers. The care we have to take is not to be a know-it-all. It's easy
    enough–it may be the only way to connect–to apply our general wisdoms
    [and prejudices] to their fields, but we have to do so with care and
    tact. Otherwise, it's another minefield.  

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

    Grandparent Rivalry: The secret envy

    It's almost embarrassing: Like sibling rivalry,  grandparents can work up a good case of jealousy of the other grandparents–or anxiety that we will be loved less than they are by the little ones.

    I've blogged about this before: Grandparents who live far from their children envy the grandparents who live closer to them. Envy might be a pleasant term for what can be a raw and rivalry-driven emotion–and one that can be destructive if the grown kids get wind of it.

    How competitive can it get? A Canadian article put it this way: "Even the sweetest, most devoted grandparents can get competitive. How does
    one set feel if the other set of grandparents lives closer to the grandkids?
    Who gets to see them more often? Who do the grandchildren phone first when they
    get a good report card — or when they get home from summer camp?"

    And there's more: "Factors like the number of grandchildren, physical distance and differences
    in socio-economic status can exacerbate the competition. If, say, there's only
    one grandchild, competition between grandparents is usually stiffer.
    Grandparents who live out of town tend to be jealous of those who live closer
    to their grandchildren, and grandparents whose children's in-laws are wealthier
    than they are may worry the grandchildren will prefer the grandparents who
    supply the more lavish gifts."

    So, true love is not easy, even when it should be. There are some words of advice if you're suffering through the pangs of jealousy. California psychiatrist Arther Kornhaber says don't bother feeling guilty about having
    jealous feelings. It's how you handle them that counts.

    For those worried that the wealthier set of grandparents will have more sway over their grandchild's love, Kornhaber says it isn't so. "Grandparents need to understand that everyone makes their own
    contribution. What children value most are basic human values like
    love, caring and being there when needed. Time together and undivided
    attention supersedes everything else, including money," he said.

    There can even be benefits to being the out-of-town grandparents who don't see the grandchild as often as the other set of grandparents do. Coming to visit and staying in the grown child's home lets grandparents experience
    their grandchildren's lives in a way the grandparents who live around the corner do not.

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

    Refilling the Empty Nest: It’s summer and the college kids come home

    Friends report that their youngest child is returning home from college for the summer. Their son lives on the other coast, so it's only the daughter coming back to the nest–and that only temporarily. An email spelled out how they feel about having her at home:

    "Our daughter is home for the summer which is balm to our souls. As we've
    discussed, it's not like our lives are empty without her. Our
    work is endless, we really like one another's company as much as is
    possible, and we've begun to reconnect with old friends, whom we had
    left behind in favor of spending time with our children. So, life with
    kids in the house is full and happy. That said, having our daughter here is
    like discovering that the rooms are full of sunlight and rainbows that
    we had been missing."

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

    The Pain of Parting: A Child Is Moving Far Away

    I was whining to a friend: Alpha Daughter leaves for a year abroad in three weeks. After spending several months being excited about all the opportunities a year in another country means–for her career, for her family–I am faced with the moment of truth. She is packing her bags and I have an oh-so-heavy feeling inside, a "when will I see you again" kind of heaviness. Paterfamilias does not seem to connect with my pain, I tell my friend. He says, "you'll go visit whenever you feel like–hop a plane and you're there whenever you want to be." I say it's not the same as being able to pick up the phone and chat or, hearing there's a sudden need for your services, getting there the next day. Distance is a fearsome factor. And it also means that on any visit, I am bound to overstay my welcome or, if not my welcome, my comfort level.

    My friend has been through this drama. Her daughter lived abroad for several years. I figured she would understand the feelings and fears. And she did–with this pragmatic twist:

    "I feel your pain about
    a distant daughter," she wrote in an email. "but I have to side with [Paterfamilias] on this one.  Getting to
    Germany is not a big deal and if you go every three or four months, it will
    suffice.  When my daughter was in Israel with the first grandchild, I went every
    three months and the flight was 12-13 hours. I would stay for five days,
    get adjusted to the time change, then board the plane again. It was awful. And sort of unnatural: no contact and then too much. But Germany is
    easier.  Between email and visits, you should be fine. I shouldn't
    be so smug. I now have my grandchildren less than 30 minutes away and I see
    them every week."

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

    Money Matters: The long arm of parents who help their kids.

    "We are spending so much money on our kids," a friend tells me. "They need to be rescued every once in a while."

    The kids in question are hers from her first marriage and his from his first marriage. One of her sons went through a painful and devastating divorce, including court battles over child custody and support. He lost his job. My friend, her husband, her other son, the father of her son and an uncle all pitched in to help the divorced son. It took several years before he was back on his feet. And now his eldest son–one of my friend's three grandchildren–was ready for college. He had to choose not the best school he got into but the least expensive one. My friend and her husband dipped into their retirement savings to pay tuition–her son couldn't afford it and neither the ex-wife nor her parents (the other grandparents) were willing to help out.

    My friend could live with the choice of the lesser school. That's life. It made her angry that the other grandparents weren't willing to help. That's life, too, but more emotional, verging as it does on fairness.

    Now, she's got another financial anxiety: Her stepson–a man in his late 40s–has always been self supporting and single. And has always been shy around women. So, when he started dating a woman his age and then announced he was getting married, everyone was thrilled. But the new wife came with old and huge debts from her life with a former boyfriend. The new husband is helping his wife pay off those I.O.U.s–the credit card debt keeps compounding like crazy–and now everyone's helping out. It's another drain on my friend's dwindling retirement resources.  

    "It never ends," she says. "It seems like one of our kids is always having a money crisis." A few years ago–just before he retired–my friend's husband paid off the mortgage on their house. "So we are lucky," she says. "What would we do–how could we help our kids–if we had a $2,000 a month mortgage payment to meet?" It also raises the question of how long you help out your grown kids. When does the rescue line end? And maybe even more to the point: How do you define crisis?

    Does it help to know she–and by extension we–are not alone? The Brits are experiencing similar pressures. Here's a news story I just came across. In Great Britain, "millions of grandparents are cutting back their spending because they
    feel under pressure to fund their grandchildren." Research also found that
    the majority of grandparents regularly spent cash from their retirement savings on
    clothing, toys and other treats for their grandchildren. Others helped pay for essentials, such as shoes and
    school uniforms, to help their own children balance their finances.

    Here was a key finding that hit home: "Although some children did ask their parents for financial help, much of
    the pressure to provide for grandchildren comes from the grandparents
    themselves." 

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

    Re-filing the Nest: An economist looks at the phenomenon

    While families struggle with the financial and emotional impact of having grown children move back home–and take up residence in their old bedroom–there are some interesting macroeconomic effects.

    Here's how a Mark Thoma, a well-respected economist, blogged about the implications of re-nesting. First he looks at a phenomenon he calls "Family as insurance:"


    The
    parental home as unemployment insurance

    "It is well known that in Spain and especially Italy, people in their
    twenties and even thirties stay with their parents until they find a
    job, and they often wait for the "perfect" job. This looks like an
    unemployment insurance with infinite duration with substantial moral
    hazard, which has lead to sky high youth unemployment rates in Europe.

    Greg Kaplan is
    documenting that something similar is happening in the United States.
    …many of those who do not attend college
    return home during unemployment spells, much like college students
    return home over the Summer. This analysis is very nicely done with an
    estimated structural model that features a repeated game between
    children and altruistic parents. In particular, this allows us to
    understand why the savings rate of young people is so low. As they have
    the option of returning to their parents, they see no need to build up
    any precautionary savings. This means also that programs like
    unemployment insurance have little impact for them."

    Then Thoma comes up with his kicker: "Just
    thinking of all things parents do to provide the insurance, yet minimize
    the moral hazard problem. The last place I would have wanted to live at
    that age
    was with my parents, and I'm pretty sure the feeling was mutual."

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

    Health Coverage: Even if they’re married, you can help.

    Maybe it's because it was such a sore point for paterfamilias and me: When our children graduated from college and set forth to various parts of the country to figure out what to do with their lives, neither of them figured they needed health insurance. Never thought about it. We, of course, did, and we had to scour plans in the states where they had wandered to find catastrophic coverage for them–to make sure that if something terrible happened, a doctor and hospital wherever they were would take them in and that we wouldn't be stripped of our assets when the bills came due.

    I blogged about this a while ago. The big news then was that a few states were allowing parents to keep their grown kids on their health insurance policies until those kids were 25 or 26 years old. Now, it's easier. The health reform law that finally inched and sighed and crept through Congress and onto President Obama's desk this year has important provisions for parents of young adult children. Not only can we keep our adult children on our health insurance plan until those children are 26, we can keep them there even if the kids get married. However, if your child's employer decides to offer coverage, all bets are off–your child can no longer stay on your policy.

    The other news? Some states are expanding that age-of-coverage to 30. Given the current employment picture–hard to find a job; growing trend toward contract work, which doesn't offer health coverage–that could be invaluable.

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

    Boomerangers Move Back In: The New Yorker cover says it all

    A picture is worth a 1,000-word posting. Amidst the joy and celebration of graduation time, the May 24 New Yorker cover has a message for all whose grown children are heading home after getting their higher-ed degrees. There he stands, the returning son, hanging his PhD diploma on the wall of his childhood bedroom wall–right near the rock n' roll poster and sports trophy. Note in lower left corner, the suitcase and in lower right, the box of college paraphernalia. While the magazine usually comes up with an archly clever title for its cover art, this one leans more to the simple and direct: "Boomerang Graduation."

    Well, for those going through it, the cover art makes it clear: You are not alone. So does the Shouts & Murmurs column, "Your New College Graduate: A Parents' Guide"  Here's an excerpt:

    "How do I teach my college graduate independence?

    Good
    question! Experts have differing opinions on the subject. Some suggest a
    “firm” approach: assigning housework, banning marijuana, requesting
    politeness, etc. Others suggest a “liberal” approach: cooking and
    cleaning for them, praising their “poems,” etc. Unfortunately, neither
    approach works."

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

    The Big Hurt: When our grown children won’t talk to us

    It's the great What If and the core fear of parents of adult children: What If our grown children cut us off–wouldn't answer our phone calls, emails or letters? Just wanted to have nothing to do with us?

    This traumatic issue is not something I've dealt with in this blog–it's too deep for someone without therapeutic training. But there was a piece in the New YorkTimes recently that explored the issue briefly and relied on the wisdom of Joshua Coleman, a psychologist who has been through the trauma himself. The estrangement, Coleman says, appears to be happening more often, even among families where there has been no obvious cruelty or cause such as drug abuse or addiction. "This is not a story of parents who have made egregious mistakes," he says. "It's about parents who were good parents, who made mistakes that were certainly within normal limits."

    If you're suffering through this trauma, check out some of the Web sites of professionals like Coleman–there are also a number of online chat rooms devoted to the subject–and take heart: Time and patience, persistent effort and small contacts, can pay off. That is how, Coleman reports, he was able to slowly repair his relationship with his daughter.

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

    Missing the Kids: Grown children move away but are not forgotten

    For those of us of a certain age–especially those of us whose children have grown up enough to leave the nest–there are some pithy, witty and heart wrenching observations of our condition in a new book,The Three Weissmans of Westport.

    The book is not about empty nesters–though one of the characters, Annie, is one. It does, however, have a lot to say about that empty feeling, and the author, Cathleen Schine, manages to offer insights with words that fly along the page–even while they point a dagger at the heart. Take this one, describing Annie's sadness–she's a 50-ish single-mom–that her grown sons could not come home for the Christmas holiday, which she was spending with her mother and sister.

    "For the first time that she could remember, Annie felt alone, truly and desperately alone. Even when her husband had disappeared and she had been left to fend for herself with two little boys, there had been the two little boys. Now they were gone, too. They loved her and called her and sent her e-mails and would still snuggle up to her to be petted when they were in the mood, but they were men, and though they would always be at the center of her life, she was no longer at the center of theirs."