Mike: 1935 to 2024
Dad to two grown children, BaPa to four Grands, chief behind-the-ear scratcher to two grandpups and my favorite husband.
PenPenWrites
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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.
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PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
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PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
Sometimes we surprise ourselves with our generosity. We give our children a large gift—–enough money to, say, buy a car, put a downpayment on a house or take out a first-rate health insurance policy. But then they use the money in ways we did not intend– they go on a lavish vacation or buy themselves a designer wardrobe. We end up frustrated and angry.
What's our recourse? Here's an answer from Philip Galanes and his Social Qs. It's to a widowed mother who offered her only child the gift of the family home. While the gift is a house per se, Galanes' answer covers all the gift bases:
The mother in question wrote Galanes to say she had offered her son and his fiance, who live in another city, her home if they would "come back here to raise a family." The son accepted but when she suggested he build a guesthouse on the site for her, her son demurred. "They assumed," the mother writes, "I would move into a condo. I was shattered! The next day, he said he was sorry if I felt they were kicking me out of my house. I do. I also think if I don’t go along with them, they will stay where they are. "
Here's the gist of Galanes' answer that applies to all of us gift givers. (bold face are mine):
Your impulse to give your home to your son was a generous one. But even with gifts — maybe especially with gifts — it is crucial to express any conditions we have in mind when we make the offer. Here, I don’t think a reasonable person would expect the gift of a home to include your continued residency in it — unless you mentioned that fact.
Now, I also know how natural it is to daydream about happy situations. For you, that may include living in an extended-family household with your son and his fiancée. And it’s easy to assume that other people want the same things we do. That’s why communication is so important: Sometimes, they don’t.
art credit: Hilary Pecis, "Piecemeal Rhythm" -
PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
The question does not call for a "man bites dog" answer. Most of our adult children who are raising their own children do not want to be bombarded with our parenting advice. Not because our advice has no value. It's because they no longer want to be parented. They're the parents now! They'll ask if they have a question.
That said, I was struck by an advice column from Sahaj Kaur Kohli. She's a therapist who focuses on people with immigrant parents and on setting boundaries with parents. Here's what she told one reader who wrote about a parent who insisted on giving advice about how she, the adult daughter, was raising her child.
I'm offering up this commentary in that it may be the other side of the coin for those of us who complain to advice columnists–and to our friends–that our children are pushing us away, that they are limiting visits or not taking our phone calls. It's about how it feels to be on the other side of the relationship where boundaries are not observed or respected. With that in mind, here's an edited version of Sahaj's advice to a young woman (she signs herself "resisting daughter") with a parent second-guessing the way she and her partner are raising their child. She wants to stay connected to her parents but does not want to raise her children the way her parents raised her.
…. It doesn’t matter if you’re an independent adult, and it certainly doesn’t matter if you’re a parent yourself. To your mom, you’re the child and she’s the adult. She raised you, and you turned out fine. She has been through it, so she knows better. …
This dynamic is incredibly hard to change especially when your mom may wrap her identity around her role as your parent.
So what's the solution Sahaj offers?
…. You may not be able to change your mom, but you can change how you respond and engage with her, and manage how her behavior affects you.
….Instead of trying to get her to agree with all of your choices, you can focus on how long you visit her, or how you respond and engage with her — especially because your kids are likely observing this dynamic, too.
You don’t have to agree with your mom, or do everything she says, to maintain a relationship with her. Instead, consider what you are willing to compromise on and what you are no longer willing to tolerate to help you focus on what is important to you.
Next Post: What we can do if our adult children are pushing us away.
painting: Tryptich by Oliver Lee Jackson.
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PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
"O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as ithers see us!" That's 18th Century Scottish poet Robert Burns sharing his insight that continues to hold true today.
In that spirit, here are our adult children's top two complaints about us, as told to Carolyn Hax in an online discussion. I am hopeful neither of these top two "annoying" habits apply to me, but I'm self-scrutinizing anyway.
Number One: Offering criticism and unsolicited advice.
Number Two: Ignoring cues and asking highly personal questions when no one is in the mood for sharing.
Hax sympathizes with the adult children who responded to a reader-letter and a follow-up prompt, "What makes my parents so annoying." But she and her readers also have a few suggestions for us on how to "mitigate" their annoyance with us.
Here are a few of them (edited version):
Let your kids be themselves. Few annoyances are as annoying as being parented against one's will.
Keep your anxieties to yourself.
Learn not to feel or act hurt that your kids find you annoying. It's more positional than personal anyway.
Learn to laugh at yourself, and admit when you're wrong.
Don't make them spend time with you. If you have a relationship where they can say no to a visit or that they have other plans, then there's a limit to how much you can annoy them.
painting: Emma Amos, Self Portrait
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PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
When I was first introduced to grandparenting I had to adjust to rules my children set for their children's snacks at my house. One family did not want their toddler to eat certain sweets; the other forbade individual portions of boxed juice drinks. I was fine with their decisions; I just had to remember who approved of what lest I offer juice drinks to the wrong grandchild.
My experience was in keeping with what my friends were telling me: Their children were setting down food rules for grandchildren that were bewildering to grandparents. What's wrong with home-baked chocolate chip cookies?
I mention this because a recent letter to Carolyn Hax is a man-bites-dog variation on this theme. The complaint comes from a mother whose parents are serving her children super-healthy meals that the children won't eat. The grandparents refuse to supply snacks that would assuage the children's hunger, which occasionally causes meltdowns. The mother/reader continues:
"While the food may seem healthier at the grandparents’, I don’t like the amount of control the grandparents hold over the food for everyone else. Isn’t the point of a holiday to eat, drink and be merry? Do you have a food solution for when families of different generations and geographies come together that could help keep everyone sane?"
Here we are with tables turned. The grandparents aren't baking sugar-loaded cookies and letting their grandchildren snack on them all day; they are setting healthy eating standards that are over and beyond those of the parental household. So, is there a way to keep everyone sane about food? Here's part of what Hax has to say. Spoiler alert: Hax does not pour the blame on us:
If your kids are physically, medically or religiously able to eat what the grands serve and simply choose not to, then you have a straightforward path: Recognize that it’s not your place to parachute into the grandparents’ house with pallets of cheesy poofs. If their nutritional orthodoxy strains their bonds with the kids, then that’s a natural consequence the grands can perceive and address for themselves.
“Best-case,” though, and arguably the inevitable case, your kids will learn all kinds of things from the food gap: how different people and cultures express themselves in different homes, how to default to gratitude when someone goes to the trouble to provide them with healthy meals, how to cope when the world doesn’t bend to their will — all previously known as having some manners — and how to eat when they’re hungry.
Meltdowns are bad, but entitlement is so profoundly worse.
Painting: Pierre Bonnard, The Late Interiors
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PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
It's a trend that's grounded in fiscal reality. Our kids–twenty-somethings and 30s–are living with us, nearly 25 percent of them, according to several surveys. The surveys also find that they've moved into their childhood bedrooms for monetary reasons.
Although many of them are on the first rung of career jobs or are earning decent money in the gig economy, they see how much it costs to live in the world. They may be carrying sizeable student debt, buying cars on credit or face a rental market that's unfriendly. The national median for a one-bedroom apartment is currently around $1,500 a month, according to Zumper, but rents are significantly higher in cities like New York ($4,300), Boston ($2,990), San Francisco ($2,970) and Miami ($2,600), cities where young adults are drawn to live.
For many of our adult kids, living at home isn't a sign of social failure. It's a way to save for a future goal–whether it's to buy a place of their own, start a business or have a decent nest egg before plunging into marriage. Sometimes the move home is transitory. A friend of mine's 34-year-old son relocated from a city in the Midwest to his hometown where rents are high. He's living home while he searches for an affordable place. My friend would like him to speed up the search–she's finding the adjustment to his presence tricky–but he doesn't seem to be in a hurry. For him, the price is right and the refrigerator full.
Whatever their reasons for living with us, we're party to a parallel trend: 65 percent of us (the parents) are providing some form of financial support to our adult children between the ages of 22 and 40. According to a USA Today survey, housing topped the list (either paying their rent or letting them live free at home), after that came help with the cell phone bill, then car payments and more personal stuff like clothing, their takeout bill and entertainment (Netflix and the like). Dead last: health insurance or medical bills.
A good number of us–one in three–report that the support is a strain on our budgets. Nonetheless, we have not set limits. Nor have we let our kids–or ourselves– know for how long we’re willing to put them up and help out.
painting: Cezanne
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PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
Long-time readers know how I've ranted about an important part of the legacy we leave our children. That is, besides the assets and the sense of our values we leave our children, we should clean out the mess of papers and junk stored in our closets, basements, attics and crannies of our house. I have friends who don't want to touch the many storage places in their basement: "Let the kids take care of it," is what they tell me. For them, that's 45 years of accumulated stuff they're asking their kids to sort through and disburse.
I won't rant on. I'll leave it to Carolyn Hax to back me up. A reader–the daughter of a "widowed, healthy, vibrant mom"–says her mom refuses to go through her belongings and pare down the massive amount of stuff and old furniture in her house. "She says that 'someone else' can take care of it," the reader writes. The 'someone else' is the daughter who feels saddled with the enormous chore that lies ahead. "I feel trapped, and I can't enjoy the present with my mom without feeling anger over the future."
Here's Hax's answer:
As long as you’re okay with handing over control of where the stuff ends up, you can hire a company to clean out the house: all the paper, all the clothes, all the toxic cleaning solutions, every stick of furniture. It’s not cheap but can be cheaper than you’d expect, especially if the projected sale of some contents can offset the final price. Get a few estimates — ask real estate agents for names — pull those treasured photos and letters out for yourself, then drop the proverbial match.
The practical answer may help the daughter. But is this what we want to happen to our stuff? Are there treasures buried in a closet or photo album or old letters that should be kept ase part of family history? A lot of meaning can seep into small kindergarten drawings or a large old sofa. Do we really want it all dumped? And if we do, why not start dumping some of it–a bag a day–into the trash now. I have to admit I might not have gotten started on my "'piles of papers" and assorted belongings (from our parents as well as us) if I hadn't sold my house and moved to a smaller apartment with no storage space. That was an incentive to get the job done.
Hax notes that, for our kids, sorting through our stuff after we've left this world–stuff that's suffused with memories of us–and "sending it on a dumpster ride is not for the faint of heart." It is, she writes, "a heavy emotional saddle." We can spare them that.
painting: Picasso, Still Life
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PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
All families have their holiday traditions. For those of us who plan for a full family get-together over an extravagant holiday feast, there may be a surprise in store when our grown kids head for home. They may bring a new love interest, someone who may be a possible new partner in their life. Or they may use the family setting to announce a commitment to someone you've already met.
Amidst all the tumult of various family members pouring through the doors and taking up residence on the sofa, how do we deal with our child and their guest who may become an important person in our lives?
Writing in Psychology Today, Jane Adams has some pertinent advice. It starts with this important point: By bringing someone home and incorporating them into the family tradition, they're not asking for your permission or even your blessing.
Here's Adams' fuller expansion on that point:
The holidays, which often reunite far-flung kith and kin under one roof for celebratory rituals, are a popular season for couples presenting a ring or otherwise committing to a relationship with a future, whether or not an engagement or marriage is formally announced….
Although a blessing would be nice, it's not required. Young adults aren't really asking, they're telling. Their closed circle is opening up enough to admit you, unless you express your doubts, concerns, or misgivings. They don't want your judgments, they're not asking for your advice or opinion, and unless or until they do, keep it to yourself. Maybe you don't see what they see in him or her, but you don't have to, although there's nothing wrong with saying, "Tell me what you love about them," or even asking, "When did you know this was It?" not in a challenging tone but a gently curious one.
Her final piece of holiday advice:
Grab the newest member of your family, get them under the mistletoe, and plant one on them—after all, it's a blessed time to open your heart as wide as you can.
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PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
I do not have the complication in my life of a second marriage and stepchildren. That means my adult children do not have to worry about whether step brothers or sisters will complicate the inheritance of the worldly goods their father and I leave behind.I mention that because, experience-wise, I was unprepared for a complaint in a Philip Galanes Social Qs column from a reader whose stepchildren have stopped talking to their father (the reader's husband of two years but partner of 20). The husband's children asked for and were granted access to the terms of their father's will. They didn't like what they saw–their stepmother (the author of the letter to Galanes) stood to inherit a chunk of the father's property and money–and that's when the silent treatment began.
Galanes answer is specific to the problem of the letter-writer and the tricky business over property. But most of his observations are general enough to hold wisdom for us all.
You probably don’t need me to tell you that your husband’s children behaved atrociously — both by counting their father’s money as if it were their own and by disrespecting your relationship of two decades. I am not shocked by this story, though. Inheritance often brings out the very worst in people.
The gist of the rest of his answer was a version of this basic truth: We love our children but what we do with our worldly goods is none of their business, until it is (and we're no longer here to hear the arguments). There's this caveat: If we are favoring one child over another (one, say, is more successful financially than the other), we would be wise to alert them to our reasoning, an issue that I discuss here and here.
credit: painting by Pierre Bonnard
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PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.
Jhumpa Lahiri tells us how a father (the narrator of her short story "P's Parties") misses his son, a son described by the father as "a grown man, a college graduate, a few months into his new life abroad, pursuing further studies at a foreign university."
The father muses on his wife's joyful acceptance of their son moving successfully into his adult years. For his wife, the narrator says,
the fact that he was getting by on his own for the most part, and now had a woman in his life, and was far from us, was a much deserved and happy ending to our long and exhausting road as parents. It meant that we’d done a good job, and this was a milestone worth celebrating.
The father was not as sanguine. Lahiri has him say,
…For me, not seeing him every day, not hearing his voice around the house, or even his mediocre violin playing, not knowing what he was up to, not adding his favorite juice to the grocery cart—it all came as a blow. I was proud of him, yes, I was excited about his prospects, but I still had a hole in my heart.
painting: Rebecca Lemov
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