The Criticism Factor: Everything we do can be taken the wrong way.

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.