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

Holidays with Grown Children: That outsider feeling

The December holidays are filled with warm, fuzzy feelings: parents and their grown children get together to pay homage to cherished family traditions. There may be minor blowups and some discord, but the family is together again and that counts for a lot.

Then there comes a time in the life of almost every family when those traditions shift their ground, when our grown children start building their own family traditions with their homes and families at the center. And that can bring on a quietly sad trauma for us, the parents of grown children.

Here's one example of what I'm talking about:

Sam moved to Oregon 40 years ago--alone. None of his east coast family moved with him--not his mother, father, sisters or cousins. Sam married a west coaster and had one child, a daughter, who is now grown. Last year, she married a Portland man--a man whose family is three generations deep in that city. And that's what is making the holidays so difficult for Sam. In year's past, Sam, his wife and daughter came east for the holidays. They spent time with his sister and nephews in New York City, visited the tree in Rockefeller Center, window shopped the department store's Christmas extravaganzas and cooked Christmas dinner together. This year, his daughter, in the flush of her first year of marriage, invited her new Portland family and her parents to her house for a holiday dinner. Goodbye trip to New York and visits to all the cousins and nephews.

Sam's daughter decorated her house with garlands and tinsel. Made a good dinner for her first time at entertaining a lot of people. Sam's son-in-law's family was there by the dozens, people he barely knew. And that was the sad trauma for Sam. "It was the worst feeling in the world," he says, "to be a guest in my daughter's house and feel like an outsider."

Time and acquaintance may soften the feeling, but as our grown children put down roots with other families, we no longer make the holiday decisions or impose the traditions--regardless of how warm and cozy they felt for oh so many years.

Empty Nesting: Life and longing after the Thanksgiving weekend

It is Monday, the day after the Thanksgiving weekend and colleagues at work are chatting about the holiday--who went where, how long the left-overs lasted and, for those of us of a certain age, what it was like to have the grown kids together again under one roof. 

Betty's oldest son traveled home from his first job in another city; the middle son came home from college and the youngest was already in residence--he's still in high school. Here's her take: "It was so great to have everyone under one roof, everyone sleeping in their beds--the normal pattern of life. It's as though all of life we waited to come back to this. I felt like I finally got the right kilter back. I so lamented the break up on Sunday when two of my sons left. They'll probably be back in December for the holidays, but life shouldn't be waiting for these moments."

Kitty had her two children home for the holidays--her daughter home from college; her son back for the weekend from a job on the other coast. Her take: "It was wonderful having them both home--being our little family of four together again. The days are really limited in which we are going to be just the four of us. My son has a girlfriend. I really like her. She's lovely. I bet they'll get married one day. It's what you want for your children. But, from then on it will never be the four of us again."

I also had my family--Uber son, Alpha daughter, their spouses and children--under one roof. Not my roof this time. Uber son's. My take: It was touching to be together, to see my children and their spouses and my Grands reconnect--it has been over a year since we've had everyone together, not only under one roof but in one country.  It was also bittersweet. Late on Wednesday night, when Alpha daughter and family arrived, it was heartwarming to see my children reconnect, to see the good feelings flow and hear questions asked and answered about each other's lives. And so bittersweet for Paterfamilias and myself. We were bystanders--watching the action but not really of it. After all, we'd kept up with each family--made it our business to get to Berlin to visit Alpha daughter and kept up on Skype. And we'd traveled to visit Uber son and his family pretty regularly. So we sat and watched the third leg of that family triangle connect--son, daughter, daughter-in-law, son-in-law. Happy to see it, but no longer at the center of it.

It's what Kitty and Betty are sensing lies ahead: Once the family is no longer the snug little four or five of you, the kilter changes forever.

Parenting Tensions: They may be grown ups but they can still be very irritating.

Whether they are emerging adults in their 20s, settling down in their 30s or marching into middle age of their 40s and 50s, they are still our children, and that makes them a source of great joy and of dreadful anxiety. In a 2009 study of the relationships between adult children and their parents, Kira Birditt, the lead author of a University of Michigan study, notes that the parent-child is one of the longest lasting social ties human beings establish. "This tie is often highly positive and supportive," she notes, "but it also commonly includes feelings of irritation, tension and ambivalence."

In short, the study, which was published in Psychology and Aging, found that the majority of parents and adult children experience some tension and aggravation with one another. Those tensions and aggravations, however, are harder on us than they are on them, particularly when it comes to issues regarding our children's lifestyle or behavior (finances, housekeeping). According to Birditt, we may be more upset by those tensions because we have more invested in the relationship. We're more concerned than they are about seeing them launched into successful adulthood.

Other points from the report:
--Daughters were more of a source of tension than sons, not because sons are that much easier to get along with. Rather, daughters generally have closer relationships with parents that involve more contact and that may provide more opportunities for tensions.

--When it comes to unsolicited advice, moms are more the problem than dads. "It may be that children feel their mothers make more demands for closeness," Birditt said, "or that they are generally more intrusive than fathers."

--While the years when our grown children are in their 20s are filled with a lot of unresolved issues--what careers will they have, who will they chose as a life's partner--Birditt found it surprising that parental perceptions of tension increased with the adult children's age. "Middle-aged children," she said, "may be less invested in the parent-child tie than young adult children because they're more likely to have formed their own families and experience multiple role demands."

In related, unpublished research, Birditt analyzed the way some of us cope with the relationship tensions. While most of try to accept and understand our grown child's point of view, the more intense the tension level, the less likely we or our children are to use constructive strategies and the more likely we are to yell and argue or avoid the situation entirely. 

But here's the kicker. Though many of us have learned to keep our mouth shut when we don't approve of something our adult children are doing--the way they dress or their choice of friends--Birditt suggests there are limits to such a strategy. "The old adage, 'If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all,' isn't good advice for parents and adult children," she said. "Avoidance doesn't work as a strategy for dealing with conflicts. It appears to make things worse."

Go figure. Clomping around on the eggshells may be the healthier way to behave.

 

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Losing Control: We're the offstage players now

One of the trickiest parts of parenting adult children is recognizing that we are no longer the center of the family universe, that our grown children are now the sun and stars. We are revolving around them.

In her 2008 book Patriotic Grace, Peggy Noonan wrote about politics and our need to face common challenges together. But she might as well have been talking about parenting adult children when she wrote: "There is even a feeling, a faint sense sometimes that we have been relegated to the role of walk-on in someone else's drama, that as citizens we are crucial and yet somehow...extraneous."

Letting Go: Knowing when to take our hands off the control button

We've all had an Aha! moment--the little epiphany that tells us, it's time to let go of the controls, that our children are adults and it's time to treat them that way. For me, it was when Alpha daughter came home from college for the summer of her junior year. She asked if I was excited about a vacation I was planning--a hiking trip in Corsica. I would be, I told her, except that I couldn't think about it: I had so much to take care of to get her brother and her ready to go back to school. "If you did a little less," she told me, "and we did a little more, we'd both be happier."

I thought about that moment when a friend from my own college days sent an email commenting on control issues and adding one from her own experience. "My son," she wrote, "had been married almost a year before it dawned on me that I should no longer buy his underpants."

Aha!

 

Emerging Adults: Is post-adolescent parenting a demotion?

Moving off the center of the stage--recognizing that we are no longer the key players in our children's lives--is an issue many of us struggle with. It starts  when our children move from being teens living at home to college students to young adults moving out into the world. Writing in Psychology Today, psychologist Carl Pickhardt looks at three phases of transitioning from parenting adolescent children to being mother or father to an adult. His overarching point is that it's easy to see this parenting passage as a demotion. And it is, but in the better sense of that word.

Here are some of Pickhardt's points:

"It is the blessing and the curse of doing their job well: when parents succeed in growing their children to independence, now these adults will act more independently of them.

"So does parenting end with parents not mattering? Not at all, if parents remain mindful of their primal roles. Remember how the little child called "Watch me!" "Listen to me!" "See what I can do!" "Let me tell you what I did!" What was it the little child wanted? The answer is parental attention, interest, and approval, needs the adult child never really outgrows.

"So when parents continue their roles as emotional supporter, as rapt audience, and as tireless cheerleader, what they have to offer their adult children never goes out of style, never loses lasting value."

Pickhardt ends with a quote from the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke: "Once the realization that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky."

"Loving the distance." What a fresh way to look at our loss of centrality as a gain.

Boundary Lines: Asking too much of our grown children.

When our kids were young and living under our wing, parenting had a lot to do with setting boundaries. No, you may not go outside without me. Yes, you can have the car but you must be home by 10.

Now that they're grown up and living under their own powers, parenting still has a lot to do with setting boundaries--but this time it's all about our respecting those boundaries. An example of a worst-case scenario is in a recent column by Carolyn Hax. A woman in her mid-20s who lives in her own apartment and supports herself, complains that her parents "insist they are entitled to know my every move because they are my parents." If she doesn't respond to a phone message within 24 hours, they threaten to call the police. If she tries to withhold details of her Saturday night, "they become very angry and claim I'm disrespecting them."

If it sounds overboard and overly intrusive, it is. And yet, Hax assures the writer, "yours aren't the first parents to have boundary issues."

That's some of us she's talking about. The solution Hax suggests is for the daughter to employ a non-confrontational approach. She should answer general questions about how she is but if demands are made for "a transcript of Saturday night," the daughter can tell her parents that she's "not going to answer questions about tracking my movements." Another way to handle it, Hax says, is for the daughter to answer the question she wishes her parents had asked, as in "I'm doing great, thanks. How's work, Dad?"

When we find our kids evading our questions with that time-honored ploy, it may be a heads up that we're asking stuff that's over the boundary line. Hopefully, they'll tell all we need to know when they're ready.

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.

Visiting Privileges: A second opinion on visits with grown children

When our grown children come home for a visit, we juggle many things--from what to cook [who likes what?] to where will they sleep [who gets the guest room, who the blowup bed on the floor of the TV room?]. If more than one grown child is coming home for a holiday or family celebration, remembrance of sibling rivalries past may flit through our heads--and remind us to tiptoe carefully around those minefields.

I recently came across a blog by Cynthia Samuels that gives her take on the highs and lows of such visitations. You can read it here. One of her points is this: "When your kids grow up there’s not a lot you can do for them besides feed them and not pressure them to be around when they can’t."

She also has this advice: "...one of the two [of her sons] is married and that makes temperate, respectful exchanges even more important. The worst thing in the world is to have to choose between parent and spouse. I work hardest to keep that from ever happening, not only about when they come and how long they stay but also about whether we serve beef (nope) or schedule a lot of activity (also nope)."

In other words, those visits are not all about us.

Your Grown Child's Spouse: Ceding center stage to the new couple.

Seems like an obvious thing to say: Get off to a positive start with your grown child's spouse. But a recent Carolyn Hax column details how one mother-in-law managed to tick everyone off at the wedding. She ignored the bride's and groom's request about no photography during the ceremony, ordering the photographer to take the shots. The commotion during the ceremony upset the bride and when the couple called the mother about it a few days latter, she refused to discuss it. Now, according to the letter from the bride, the mother blames her daughter-in-law for the spat and won't talk to her.

As Hax notes, "This isn't about pictures. It's about her staking out her territory at your wedding, and now, with her outsize anger at you, in your marriage."

It's also about centrality. Most of us would not--hopefully--be as brazen about getting our way. But a big issue for us, as parents of grown children, is letting go--not just of trying to control our child but of  needing to be center stage, of being the one in control of the family drama. We may be more subtle than the photo-aggressive mother in the Hax column, but guilty in smaller ways. It's why I keep referring myself to a Note to Self: "It's their life."