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

Holidays with Grown Children: More on that outsider feeling

Christmas dinner at his daughter's house: Dick was surrounded by his wife, grandchildren, son-in-law, stepsons and their families. What could be warmer and nicer for the holidays? For those of us at a certain age, plenty.

Dick says that as everyone moved from the living room to the dining room for dinner, he sat down on the sofa and brooded. Am I still needed? he asked himself. As a business man (retired but doing volunteer work with a small business advisory group), Dick had been there to advise his son, son-in-law, daughter, and stepsons on their career moves--on getting started, on moving up the corporate or other ladders. Now that they were well on their way, they had reached a point where they knew more about where they were than he did. Never good at small talk, he felt left out of the general chit chat going back and forth between and among his grown children. "I didn't see where I fit in. I wouldn't say I felt irrelevant. I would say I felt almost irrelevant."

To put in perspective the feelings that flooded him that Christmas night, Dick says it has been harder to take than some of the physical diminishments he has experienced as he has gotten older--no longer having the same endurance or strength he had as a 60-year-old man who rode his bike for 50 miles or more on a Sunday outing. Illness and age have taken a toll (20 miles is the new comfort level).  But he says he feels that diminishment of strength less keenly than the loss of his role as the wise head of a many-branched family. As far as he is concerned, the grownchildren have outgrown their need for his advice. "I brought them up to be independent," he says. And now they are.

Who knew success would feel so empty?

Holiday Togetherness: Calm, comaraderie and connection in the kitchen

We arrived for Thanksgiving at Uber Son's house on the Tuesday before the great feast. The idea was to help our daughter-in-law out--make it easier on her by either doing the shopping or watching the Grands or some combination of both. On Wednesday, while the older Grands went off to school, Uber son went to work and Paterfamilias took the laptop to Panera to edit a transcript, my daughter-in-law and I had the kitchen and all that cooking to ourselves--with occasional help from the 3-year-old who puttered around, climbed up on counters and "assisted."

What a perfectly wonderful day it was. All morning and most of the afternoon, my daughter-in-law and I kept each other company while we each prepared our share of the dishes. How companionable it was. We talked about everything and nothing, about how the kids were doing in school, what my son's plans were for the future, how their trip to London had been, how she was composting and what tips I had, and whether she should make her own pie crust [her idea] or use a frozen crust [my favorite shortcut]. We set the table, pre-cut everything for the salads and other side dishes, brined the turkey, pre-baked the stuffing, and finally made the crust and baked a blueberry-cranberry pie and a pumpkin pie.

Three days later, when I called from home to thank her for her gracious hosting of our family's Thanksgiving, she mentioned Wednesday and how nice it had been to spend time together in the quiet calm of the kitchen.

Talk about a Thanksgiving gift. Can't ask for more than that.

Holiday Togetherness: The Thanksgiving Day handoff from us to them

My book club's monthly meet-up is winding down. We've finished parsing all the meaning we can out of Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra. We're picking at dessert when the discussion devolves into the personal. Are your kids coming to your house for Thanksgiving dinner?

We are all women of a certain age--an age when our kids are in their 30s and 40s and have kids of their own. What struck me as various book-clubbers coughed up their plans was how few of us are still making The Dinner. Not that we're not up to it. Nancy's son has really gotten into cooking. He's coming to her house with his family--she has the Big House--but he's manning the oven and burners for the family, which includes his two siblings, their kids, his kids and his parents. Nancy says she'll stack the dishwasher.

Elaine says her son, who lives in city that's a 4-hour drive away, usually comes home with his family but this year he's got a neck injury. So she and her husband will travel to his house. When she asks what she can make, what she can bring, he says he doesn't need anything. The meal will be a less ambitious one than Elaine usually cooks. Her son says he can handle the dinner preparations; after all, there will only be seven of them. Even the offer of baking a pie or a cake is turned down. It is going to be a leaner meal, not a Big Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner.

Ann says she gave up the ghost several years ago. Her daughter-in-law loves to cook, has tried her hand at several cooking schools. She doesn't like her mother-in-law or anyone else to step into the kitchen while she's at work. Since the results are excellent, Ann happily acquiesces. She'd agree even if the food were so-so. She never liked cooking. She pitches in with the clean up--as do her two other children and their children--but it's not her home so it's much easier on her.

My tale is more complicated. I love making Thanksgiving dinner. I love having the turkey leftovers to fiddle with. I love picking meat off the carcass the day after. But three years ago, Uber son and his wife had a third child, and it got complicated for five of them to get on an airplane and come to our house, when two of us could fly to them. And, since Alpha daughter was within a 3-hour drive of her brother but flying distance of us, it made even more sense: air fare for eight vs airfare for two. A no-brainer.  Everyone prefers the arrangement, except for Paterfamilias. He wants everyone to come to his home for the holidays. He likes the idea of it: His home and everyone he loves in it. He made his case for Thanksgiving at Our House when we were visiting Uber son a few weeks ago. He was swayed only when our son, who travels a lot for his job, said with an enormous sigh, "I would pay not to have to get on a plane."

Case closed. Thanksgiving dinner at Uber son's house it is. I'm allowed to bake and bring and arrive a few days ahead to help with the shopping and cooking. But I don't get to take home the carcass. It will have been turned into soup and sipped up before we head for home.

Holiday Visits: Are we good guests at holiday meals?

It was a cry from the heart. A loving son--someones grown child--was upset by his father's behavior at his mother-in-laws Thanksgiving dinner last year. In a question to the New York Times' Social Q's, he complained that his father, who had wrangled an invitation to the feast (he had no place else to go), "dominated the entire dinner conversation with stories about himself." He'd prefer the father not attend this year, but how to make that happen?

That was the question he posed but there's the obverse side to it. Is he--and his peers--talking about us? We don't have to be an invitation-wrangler to be on our worst self-centered behavior. We can even be hosting the Thanksgiving dinner and be overbearing. Age may have its prerogatives but letting the evening be all about us is a dangerous place to go--as this son's query suggests. We may do it because we feel a bit ignored or are rebelling against the reality that we are no longer center stage or have the starring role in the family. The Social Q's answer to the upset son might as well be a reminder to all of us who may feel we have the right to impose ourselves as the master/mistress of the evening. 

What Philip Galanes, the author of the column, wrote was a suggestion to the son that rather than trying to exclude dear old dad, he try talking to him along these lines: "Can you do me a favor, Dad? Susie’s family isn’t as gregarious as you. Let’s ask lots of question, to draw them out.”

Always worth remembering. As are these lines that I posted from a poem in this blog. Here's the pertinent excerpt:

"An abundance of opinions will generate heat/but accomplish nothing./You no longer have to comment/on each and every little thing./You can observe events with a detached serenity./When you speak,/your words are gentle, helpful, and few./Your silence is as beautiful as the Harvest moon.

Holiday Fatigue: Help wanted at Thanksgiving feasts.

My dentist was and wasn't looking forward to Thanksgiving this year. Her back has been bothering her and the idea of making a huge Thanksgiving dinner--family tradition calls for everything to be home made--was tiring in itself. And she knew she would get little to no help from her son and his wife, who come for the lavish meal and stay on for an overnight visit--with their four small children.

Whew. I'm tired just thinking of all that work. She has to get all those beds ready, stock the fridge not only for Thanksgiving dinner but for meals the next day. Her son occasionally helps a little with clean up but her daughter in law, she says, considers the trip to "grandma's" house a vacation.

"I understand that," says my dentist. "She's got four small children and she's home schooling them. She offers to bring something but I don't feel i can ask." What my dentist would really like is not an extra pumpkin bread but to be able to keep her seat when the meal is done and have her grown children pitch in to clean up.

How do we ask for what we need? Are we afraid of asking too much from our adult children? Or are we so used to doing everything ourselves that, comes the day when that gets difficult to do [the back hurts; so does the wrist], we don't know how to turn things over to others?

Sibling Spat: Thanksgiving brings a quarrel home

A grown-up brother and adult sister have quarreled. The rift had to do with the responsbilities they had to each other--and a misreading of exactly what those were. They ended up not talking to each other, and it has gone on for months now--despite another brother's attempt to be peacemaker. "They both ended up angry at him," says the mom of that failed effort.

The father is unworried about the tiff. His theory: Time will heal the wounds. They won't stay mad at each other forever.

The mother is not so sure. She sees the rift growing worse each day--the brother and sister now refuse to be in the same room as each other. The daughter, who is currently living at home, made one gesture at reconciliation. It was rebuffed, and that has refueled her anger.

Now the holidays are rolling around. Thanksgiving is a dinner the mother has always made and, in recent, years, it's been one of a few special times each year when everyone--the daughter, the two married brothers, their wives and their children--get together. The daughter has let her mother know that she will absent herself if the brother with whom she is quarreling is at the Thanksgiving dinner.

What's a mom to do? She could invite everyone: throw the chips up in the air and hope for the best. But she knows that will not work. She is sick at heart and disturbed by a wrenching choice: Invite the son or the daughter.

She has swallowed hard and made an executive decision: The quarreling son will not be invited. Her reasoning: He'll be taken care of on Thanksgiving Day. He has his wife's family to be with. The pain of the family separation will be all hers.

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."

Home for the Holidays: Being a good vistor or host

Whether your family comes to you or you go to them, the holidays--Thanksgiving, Christmas, Passover, whatever--can be a strain on everyone. Setting aside the emotional pitfalls, there are also the day-to-day physical displeasures--beds to make, food to prepare, individual needs to cater to. That's what I found so helpful in this blog: It's full of simple ways to ease the hospitality issues.

One of the writer's ideas: keep little tote bags for each grandchild--or adult child. Fill it with special little things each one likes or needs (a wash cloth, slippers, favorite lotions; for little kids, crayons and a pad of paper.) On arrival day, put the tote on each child's bed, along with a towel, new box of tissues and a bottle of water. Repeat for each visit.

So simple. So welcoming. And so easy to do if it becomes a habit. I like it! I may even try it.

 

 

Happy Holidays: The torch passes and our kids put their stamp on Thanksgiving.

It is the Saturday after Thanksgiving and I am still peppy. Usually, at this point in the Thanksgiving weekend, I fall into bed in a state of total exhaustion. But I've just spent three days with three families under one roof [paterfamilias and I; uber son and his growing family; alpha daughter and hers]. All three of the "big" grands were there, and all the running around and energy that  a 5, 6 and 7 year-old can expend in their waking hours were expended. Footballs were thrown, dress-up was played; special "performances" were given.  Plus there was all the cuteness, sweetness and smiley-ness of a 6-month old--and all the constant parenting and protecting that involves. A big dinner was served [turkey as well as tofurky and many many trimming] and lots and lots of other meals [both regular and veggie]. Beds were made, dishes washed, stories read, long walks taken. And yet, here I stand, feeling perfectly refreshed.

The difference? This year our family--each of us live in a different city--convened at uber son's house. He, and most especially my daughter-in-law, took on all the responsibilities for shopping and figuring our where everyone would sleep. I helped with the cooking--I made some of my favorites--but I was second mate. New dishes or new variations of dishes were introduced. My daughter-in-law [AKA second daughter] has a real flair for floral arrangements and, with what seemed like little effort, a lovely and appropriately low-key arrangement was created for the center of the table--as opposed to my smooshing flowers into a vase.

It didn't matter how much I pitched in to help, the reality is this: It wasn't my house . Is it that simple? Not really. As usual, I wanted to do everything I could to make things easier for my children--by helping with their kids, running an errand, doing a load of wash or whatever. Still it wasn't that tiring because others were in charge. Maybe it's because paterfamilias and I experienced what my friend Marian, the psychiatrist, calls "flattening of the hierarchy."  At moments, paterfamilias, who is much less involved in making the household work, came close to what my friend Steve calls "feeling irrelevant." Not that either of us felt irrelevant--but we were not the center of the dynamics. Connections were being made between daughter and daughter-in-law; between daughter-in-law and son-in-law. Reconnections were being made between son and daughter who don't see each other very often. Bonds were being forged between pint-sized cousins. We are the original connective tissue, but they are stretching out without us. Which is how it has to be.

I kinda liked passing the Thanksgiving torch. I didn't miss all the shopping, cooking and bed-making that having eight visitors in my home entails--to say nothing of the many trips to the airport to pick everyone up with suitable car seats in cars. But paterfamilias was of another mind. Of course. He likes being master of the house. He likes filling it with his children and his children's children. He likes the routines we had--the zoo on the day after Thanksgiving, the setting up of his old but still-runnable electric trains. Being head of the table and of the family. He is not tredding lightly on any flattening of the hierarchy. On this Saturday after Thanksgiving, he wants to re-think what we do next year and who does it.