Parenting Grown Children: What Dr. Spock Forgot to Tell Us

Vacation Views: Who pays for what

This is a little too problem-free for my experience, but here's a blog, from Momsbestwisdom that talks about how a family with seven adult children handles the financing and management of a beach vacation together. The gist of what this mom has to say is this:

--Vacations are an important part of our yearly tradition. My husband, Patrick, has always held vacations as a family as an important and necessary event. 

--Now that almost all of our children are grown, we have established the tradition of a yearly beach trip as a family. Everyone comes--sons, daughters, in-laws, and grandchildren. Patrick pays to rent a six bedroom, four bath house with a pool, and each family is in charge of making one dinner and doing the clean up that day. The family beach trip has been a big success.

--Patrick and I have also gone on several vacations with our adult children and their spouses one at a time. It gives us an opportunity to know them as a family and gives us a lot of time with grandchildren.

My hat is off to them if that beach vacation is as raucously happy as it sounds. Maybe the greater the number adult kids and grand kiddies in attendance, the easier it is: You can't focus on any one person's discomfort.

This next excerpt from a blog--by an adult child at an enfamille beach vacation--takes note of some of the roils behind the raucous good times:

You know, no matter how much you love your family, it is inevitable that there will be some level of stress when adult children spent a week with their parents and their own children. No major drama though. (Okay, there was some drama, who am I kidding? And I really tried to stay out of anything and everything was just not any of my business. And then I started to worry that I was becoming a hard and uncaring person. So you see the Goddess Neurosis, she never deserts me.)

Anyhow, we are so lucky that my parents are able to make this happen, and am very aware that one never knows what the future will bring, so CARPE DIEM and all that.

Communicating with the Kids: Times to keep your mouth shut--and times not to

There's a new book out on talking to your adult children--and the advice we all give each other to "keep your mouth shut." Ruth Nemzoff, a scholar at Brandeis University, pulls together her studies on the subject in "Don't Bite Your Tongue: How to Foster Rewarding Relationships With Your Adult Children."

Here's one of the points she makes in an interview:

"One of the most important factors in maintaining a healthy relationship with adult children is forgiving both yourself and your child for not being perfect. " And the definition of perfect changes daily, said Nemzoff. "One day it could mean being compassionate, and another day it could mean being high achieving with conflicting desires, so there is no perfection."

On the subject of grown kids moving back into the nest between school and job, she had this to say:

"Tell them what you expect, and invite your returning child to do the same. Agreeing together about the rules of the house before your adult child returns may be key to preventing every out-of-place coffee cup, shoe, or T-shirt from becoming a cue to reenact past dramas."

Ah the reenactment of things past. We all know we press certain emotional buttons when the kids come home, even when it's just for a visit. If only we knew what they were--as well as they do. I haven't read Nemzoff's book yet, but I will and will report back on some of her other insights.

Money Matters: How much of a helping hand do we owe our children

A recent blog on Tellinitlikeitis, looks at the issue of what we owe our adult children. Grown children who demand help buying a house or regular babysitting or loans that are really gifts--that can feel like parental failure, and parents may be culpable for being enablers when this happens. Many of us get much joy from giving our children gifts--significant gifts such as help with a down payment on a house. But things can get out of hand.
For those in that position--their adult children are demanding, whether it's for goods or services--may be interested in this point in the blog:

"When children become adults, parents do not owe them a down payment on a house or money for the furniture. Parents do not have an obligation to baby-sit or to take their grandchildren into their home when the parents go on vacation. If parents want to do it, it is a favor, not an obligation. Parents do not “owe” their grown children financial help or an inheritance regardless of how much money a parent has. Parents must learn to cut the financial umbilical cord for their own sake and for the sake of their children."

Here are some books that address the point: Eileen Gallo and  John J. Gallo,: Silver Spoon Kids : How Successful Parents Raise Responsible Children; Gary W. Buffone: Choking on the Silver Spoon: Keeping Your Kids Healthy, Wealthy and Wise in a Land of Plenty.

Re-Nesters: Profile from the UK on kids moving back home

We are not alone. The phenomenon taking place here is also raging in the U.K. According to this survey of British home life,

Nearly one in ten parents have grown-up children living with them--young adults who have been "priced off the housing ladder."

The parents are not only looking after their kids well into adulthood, but are also caring for grandchildren.

One in four give regular financial help to their grown-up children; 7 per cent don't get any financial contributions for the household from their adult children.

The biggest help these parents of grown children are giving, this survey says, "is by funding their grown up children's housing costs, by allowing them to carry on living at home for free."

Helicopter landings: Overprotecting adult children does not pay off

There's an interesting discussion on the perils and pitfalls of helicopter parenting--of the sour fruits parents reap when they don't let their grown children grow up and take care of themselves--at this web site. While many of us think of the moms as the overprotective parent, this is a story about a dad who does too much.
It reminds me of a dad I know who was having trouble letting go of a 29-year-old daughter. "I know she has to take off the water wings," he said, "but what if I'm not in the water to catch her."

here's a grab from the entry on jimsjourney.wordpress.com:
"His children were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but they didn’t have to do it.

I remember one day in particular that the man was more than a bit irritated; he had to go home and change the oil in his forty-year-old son’s car. On further questioning, the man revealed the true reason for his anger… the oil should have been changed weeks earlier.

The bottom line is that his children were only partially to blame. On the surface, it appeared they were taking advantage of Daddy. In truth, Daddy had a personality that needed to be needed."