PenPenWrites

It's almost universal–parents all over the world tell stories about how they tried to help their grown children only to find their assistance was taken as criticism. Here's my latest story, from a pediatrician I met from Sweden.
His grown son and wife live a few blocks away. Now that they have a baby, the doc and his wife are regular visitors. The beloved grandchild is now 15 months old and the grandparents have finally been asked to babysit. The assignment came with this warning: Not to worry. The little girl cries herself to sleep. It's just part of her going-to-sleep routine.
The young parents leave and the grandparents take over. Sure enough, when they put their grandchild to bed, she cries. "So," the pediatrician tells me, "I tiptoed into her room and sat by her crib and held her hand. She wrapped her litle fingers around mine and fell asleep. No crying."
The outcry came when the parents came home and learned what had happened. They were not pleased. "It gets particularly difficult," says the doc, "because i"m a pediatrician so my daughter-in-law tends to see everything I say as a criticism."
Pediatrician or not, a lot of us run into the same buzz saw–based in part on the fact that we've raised kids so, presumably, we know something about it. We can't help for hurting.

When my children were young, my mother lived in another city. I always thought her visits were the joy of her life. She was widowed and I saw her visits–she planned them; they lasted three weeks each time–as a welcome break to her loneliness and to her routine of playing bridge and canasta with her friends.

I am rethinking that view. Yes, she planned long visits and yes they broke up her routine and brought the company of our young family. But how pleasant a break it was in terms of her routine is what is up for revision. I have written at length on this blog about how tired most of us feel–especially those of us with children living in other cities or even other countries–when we visit our children and their very young children. There's the physical exhaustion of being around all that energy that is compressed into small children and the energy it takes to care for them. And, the change in routine takes a toll.

But there is another factor. The loneliness. Yes, our children are companionable and absorb us into their lives while we are there. We are not excluded. But there is still a longing to go home. I am reminded of this by an email I got from a friend who has been recruited to care for grandchlidren who are  9 and 13. Her son just got divorced. This summer, custody was split by five weeks each. Her son had to work and didn't have the money for camps or babysitters. So she flew out to California to be chief cook and driver for two weeks. She took the kids to the community swimming pool every day, to doctor appointments, to Target to get their school clothes. By the time she made dinner each night, she was wiped out. But most of all, she was lonely–even though she lives alone and here she was in a house full of people and the bustle and spats of pre-teen and early-teen children. Her email to me said it all: "How I miss my little house and my daily regime." 

Why do we feel the longing for home? I ask myself that when I am at my children's homes. I want nothing more than to be helpful; I love my grandchildren and they are well-behaved. And yet, something there is that wants to be surrounded by your own things and the routine of your own life. It is a contradiction in reason. It makes me wonder how much my mother liked her visits here.

If there's one thing most of us know (or should), it's that there's one place our advisory counsel should not go: Suggesting to our grown children that they have a baby. Or asking them when. The opening line of such forbidden dialogue would start with, "It's time." I say this because I remember it happening to me (my mother and father thought that was the point of getting married), and I suppose that's why I consider it forbidden territory. It's a personal and private decision and touches on a fiery nexus of sex, money and independence.

Doonesbury now joins me in those ranks. He's always followed along with the concerns of our generation and now there this: His Sunday, August 23 strip has the mom, sitting around the table with son and daughter-in-law, start off with a conversation changer: "So when are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?" When asked what elephant, she answers: "The grandchildren that aren't sitting around this table." Things deteriorate from there. But for any of you tempted to make a similar point, check Doonesbury first.

The economy's been brutal, and especially so on the generation that's just getting started on its careers and on those the next rung or two up. We who have retired or are close to doing so are probably in better shape–despite losses in the 401k. So it's not surprising that a recent poll by Grandparents.com finds we are the well-tapped Bank of Mum and Dad. Three-fifths of 10,000 recently
surveyed grandparents said they have been providing some sort of
financial support to their grown kids and grandkids in the last 12
months.

For some, that helps includes housing: the adult children move back in, some with their kids. Whatever the arrangement, financial advisers say parents need to take steps to protect
their own finances, such as making sure their homeowners and auto insurance will cover the adult children and even grandchildren that are now in residence.

For more tips, check out these ideas from the experts. Here's a shortened form of the tips that go beyond the usual.

Avoid reverting to decades-old
behavior, from when the adult children were still teenagers, when it
comes to bill paying.

As emotional and
relationship issues collide with financial issues, the older parents need to be wise and
cautious. At the same time, they can demand that their adult children share personal
financial information.They don't have to share theirs.

Older parents should try to keep a budget while their adult kids are
back at home so that they can avoid going too heavy on withdrawals from
retirement accounts"Just give
kids a place to stay and help them until they get back on their feet." one expert says. "They just need to have a reasonable lifestyle."

Retirement funds should be kept separate from funds used to run the household.

If you were planning to give gifts anyway, don't be afraid to spend money on them now. It just means you'll leave less in your will or give smaller presents in the future.

While older parents are the executives of the household, rules–about buying food using the phone or computer–should be crafted together.

When our grands were 1,2 and 3 years old, and again when they were 2,3, and 4, we spent our summer vacation by renting a large condo in Vermont and inviting both uber son and his two children and alpha daughter and her one to stay with us. All of us–under one roof. My reasoning was simple: Alpha lived on one coast; Uber on the other: if we didn't have this family-together time, how would the cousins get to know each other?

Readers of this blog may know that these vacations didn't work out so well. Oh our grown children said they were fun–they even requested repeat performances. But I felt so divided–always wanting to ease the way for a Grand who needed a cuddle or a parent who needed a mini-break–and was worn out by the end of the week. Since then, the Grands have grown–they are now 6,7 and 8 plus there's a new 1-year-old–and Alpha daughter has moved east to the same coast as her brother. They now live a mere 3-hour drive apart. So the compelling need to vacation together under one roof is no longer so pressing. Nor so desirable. Different parenting approaches can make for hard feelings when you're all under one roof. My daughter-in-law summed up one of those vacations best: "It's like a great play date–that goes on too long."

The whole issue of family vacationing was taken out of our hands this year. Uber son rented his own place for a week and invited us to join him for part of the time. So we, in turn, rented the same place for the next week–thereby letting him extend his stay a few days. And we invited alpha daughter to haul  herself and her family to that condo while we were there. For three days of those two weeks, we were all together–the "big" cousins romping and playing and giddy with the delight of seeing each other. Alpha daughter and her family stayed in a nearby motel that allowed dogs [she came with her rather large puppy and several of us are allergic to dogs] and it all worked out really well. The natural break at bedtime–one family to bed upstairs; the other to the motel–gave the cousins time to unwind. The dog was a big hit with Uber son's baby and there was scarcely a meltdown or scene to be seen.

We got to spend time with each of our children and their family exclusively–and expend all our attention on the Grand or Grands at hand. But when we were all together, magical things happened. My daughter-in-law taught her niece to ride a bike; my son-in-law taught his nephew to catch frogs. The dog cozied up to the baby and let her explore the wonders of her pelt. I say magical, but it's really what families are all about. It's just that when your grown children live in different cities–from you and from each other–these "normal" moments don't have too many chances to happen. And that's what made this serial vacation [with overlap] so wonderful: the time and opportunity for the miraculously normal things to happen.