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

Re-Nesting: Our grown kids can make their fortune by moving back in with us.

We've all read or heard stories--or experienced the real thing--about college grads (or even older kids) moving back home. Thank you Great Recession and the Oh-So-Slow Recovery.

But that's only part of the re-nesting story. As I've written in a previous post, having our adult children live on their own after college is a socio-economic and cultural phenomenon. In many other countries (first world and otherwise), it's accepted as the norm that the kids will live at home until they marry. And for good reason: When they have a job, they can save money for their future connubial adventure or to invest in an entrepreneurial dream.

            All of this is the long way around reporting about a formula I came across recently: How much a stay with mom and dad is worth. The logarithm factors in the usual stuff--rent and food, as well as the other perks of living at home, such as having an Internet connection and cellphone paid by the parents and having laundry done by the host (usually, the hostess.)The findings? I'll let The Calculator tell it:

"I wish I’d lived in my parents’ basement the last four years. I’d be $85,000 richer. That would put me in down payment [on a condo] territory already.... Instead, I wasted all my money on rent, food, and TV."

Our hero kept a detailed spreadsheet of everything he spent in his four post-college-grad years living at home and used that journal to create, as he puts it, "a breakdown of the money I washed away."

       

Want to know what you're host-home is worth to your grown kid? You can go to the “living with your parents” calculator and plug in rent and other expenses (or use The Calculator's estimates of his spending habits) and see how much your grown child would save in four years of living in his or her old room at your house. Hint: The Calculator assumes you'll pay for car insurance and put him or her on your health insurance and that the money saved from living at home would be invested to earn a return.

Bottom line: Re-nesting is worth a sizable nest egg for them. For us, it's a less monetary formula: A chance to experience quality and quantity time with them. Fortune and fortunate tied up in one small bedroom. 

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Emerging Adults: What to do with the anger when our kids make us mad

When my friend Cathy got angry at her renested post-college son--for sins like not emptying the dishwasher; not taking the job search seriously--she kicked down his bedroom door. Not that she meant to. She was just kicking his closed door to make a point and Boom, her foot went right through it. It's a moment her son may  remember--not, at this point in time, in a good way, tho it likely will be a funny anecdote some time down the line.

                                                   

We may have thought that all the anger-inducing struggles with our adolescent kids were a thing of the past--now that they are adults. But they can still press our emotional buttons and make us really, really angry. Especially when they move back home for a while and fail to behave like the independent adults we thought they'd become.

Not that there's anything wrong with getting angry at them. Anger has an important function. It's part of our "affective awareness system," that is, psychologist Carl Pickhardt points out, it lets us "identify when something significant is happening in our internal or extermal world of experience, something that feels like it deserves our attention."

So anger isn't the issue. It's the lashing out that's a problem--with especially long-term consequences now that our children are grown and no longer dependents under our control. As Pickhardt points out, "in the heat of the moment it can obscure loving feelings causing unloving words or actions to occur."

Pickhardt recommends that we--as well as our grown kids--learn to, in effect, take a "time out" to cool down, and then talk further "when we can choose our words thoughtfully, and not emotionally.”

He  lists characteristics of people who are anger prone to the point of popping off in an unhelpful way:

--They are highly judgmental and need to be right.

--They feel strongly entitled and expect to get their way.

--They take events personally that are not personally meant.

--They use fresh offenses to revive memories of old grievances.

--They attack what’s wrong with anger by blaming others when problems arise.

These apply to both our kids and to us. For us, at this stage of parenting, there's a lot more at stake than there was when our kids were younger. My friend Cathy certainly expected to get her own way when her son was living under her roof again. And, of course, she didn't mean that tap on his door to be a surprising invasion of his privacy. But that little kick probably had a lot of lash-out fueling its power.

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Emerging Adults: The line between being a parent and becoming a best friend

I didn't mean to eavesdrop. It couldn't be helped. I was sitting at Panera's having a late morning latte when a trio of friends sat down at a table next to me and started chatting. In my defense, they were using their outside voices--or close to it.

I started picking up on the conversation when one man, a father, started waxing caustic about his son's request to be treated as a "best friend" rather than as the man's son.

"I told him," the dad reported to his captive audiences, "I'm your parent. I'll be your best friend when I can come to your house, open the refrigerator and eat anything I want; when I can drink your milk right out of the carton; when I can sleep over anytime I want; when I can drop by without letting you know; when I can leave without closing the door."

His friends all gave him a fist-bump of an Amen. Given his parade of horribles, I did too, although I did want to turn around and reassure him that his young-adult son was likely to outgrow his juvenile habits; that if he could give his son growing bits of leeway, their relationship would morph from parental disciplinarian to comradely adviser. His son might be chaffing against parental control--isn't that what growing up is all about?--but the dad was fortunate that his son wanted a friendly relationship, even if it was an eventuality. But I kept my comments between me and my latte.

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Re-Nesting: Those emerging adults may be moving out and on--and soon!

He's 24. He's got a job. He's still living at home.

My friend Cathy is beyond frustrated. Her son is not helpful around the house. She's tired of asking him to take out the garbage, empty the dishwasher or run an errand--in the car she and her husband are providing.

Part of his inertia is his job history over the past four years. A graduate of a high-tier college where he got more-than-respectable grades, he's taken internships with  nonprofit organizations--even worked one that involved relocating to a destitute Central American country for a year--but doesn't feel he's on a career path. The current job is not in his field and is only a one-year contract. He's applied to graduate school and hopes to go next year. So right now he's feeling immobilized--despite his parent's suggestions that he have a plan B for living arrangements: They may sell the house this summer and move closer to the dad's job.

It may not ease her frustration to know that her son is part of a recent trend: the ever-so-slow growth in household formation. It's not only frustrating for those of us with adult children living at home, it's also a drag on the economy. Each time a household is formed, it adds about $145,000 to output that year as the spending ripples through the economy, according to an estimate last year from Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics [as reported in the New York Times].

Over the last year, household formation has been picking up as this map from the New York Times indicates.

Source: Census Bureau, via Haver Analytics.

The pickup, the Times reports, "is probably related to job growth, which has enabled multi-generational households to spin off into multiple new homes." 

The overall trend is good news for Cathy. Her son may be forced to move if she sells her house and will certainly move if he gets into graduate school [he's applied to schools one and two time zones away] and may even be heartened to move out by his improved chances in an improving job market.

“They can only live with their parents for so long," Zandi noted. "There are powerful centrifugal forces in those households, on both side. As soon as they have a chance to get out, many will take it.”

All of which could help Cathy feel better about putting her house on the market--That is, if her second son, graduating from college this spring, finds a more favorable job market than his brother did. It's still too soon to "amen" to the pressures of the re-nesting stage.

 

Visiting Privileges: We're guests--not parents--when we overnight at a grown child's home.

The travel section of a newspaper isn't the most likely place to find a story on a major parental adjustment. Dominque Browning  managed to turn a trip to Boulder into a tale of her first journey, as a newly minted empty nester, to her youngest son's new nest and her recognition that she was no longer the homemaker-mom but a guest in her son's home.

Her son moved from the east coast to Boulder. Boulder's a fun town to visit--I won't go into those details--but Browning had some thoughtful insights on the experience of realizing her youngest son was a grown up with a home of his own--a home that was wasn't hers and that was, moreover, half way across the country.

Her first point: "There is a moment of truth all parents must face, usually on a sofa bed. Children eventually make their own lives, entirely separate from ours, and we participate in them only by invitation. It is a wise mother, indeed, who remembers the lessons that once came out of her mouth about how to be a good house guest."

About that sofa bed. It was another wake-up call. As Browning and her son settle in for her first night at his apartment, he let's her know where she'll be sleeping. She won't, he tells her, "be taking my bedroom. That's the master bedroom. I am the master. I don't want to sleep out here. This is the guest room."  That was, Browning writes, "the moment. That was when I realized the earthshaking reality of having traveled to see my child, only to become a guest in his home. He was not my child, but my host, a grown-up. I could feel the tectonic plates of power shifting and grinding between us. A volcano of protest sputtered out, and I agreed that the living room, er, guest room, was the perfect place for me."

It is a shocker of a moment. I remember the first year when uber son and his family booked and paid for the vacation condo and, when we arrived, instead of commandeering the master bedroom--as we did lo those many years when we booked and paid for the condo--we were relegated to an upstairs bedroom that one of our grandchildren vacated to accommodate us. Not that we had any complaint. (Or that they hadn't graciously offered to move out for the three nights we would be there. They did offer. We declined.] It was breathtaking recognition that the tectonic-plate had shifted--we were no longer the masters in charge with all the rights and privileges that come with that master's degree.

Browning's blog follows up her New York Times travel piece, sharing with her readers the bits and pieces from her article that were left on the cutting room floor. Here's one item that struck home and that underlies my Note to Self about good housekeeping tips. Browning, it would appear, managed to find subtle ways to share such tips with her son, Theo: 

"Driving my rental car to Target for supplies, Theo discussed the challenges of living on his own. “I think the tub leaks when I shower.” We bought shower curtains. “Isn’t it hard to pour boiling water from the pot to a teacup without spilling most of it?” We bought a kettle. “I should have taken the vacuum cleaner you offered me from home.” We bought a broom."

 

 

Parenting Grown Children: The curtain comes down when a family visit ends.

They packed up the van and loaded my three Grands in the back. Six hours later, Uber son, wife and Grands arrived at the family manse for a weekend visit. Within minutes of their arrival, Paterfamilias and I began an immersion into their lives--in the ins and outs of who likes what for a snack and how things are going at school and what's happening with the indoor soccer team. It's exhilarating. Not just in a deja vu kind of way but in a real fascination with how the grown child's career is expanding and how the Grands are growing up--what their concerns are, what their many strengths and occasional weaknesses are. One by one, they plop themselves down at the piano and play. We can hear a growing sense of rhythm and musicianship by the two who are taking piano lessons. They take the Razor scooter parked in our carport out for a spin and we watch how adventurous they are--or are not--in scooting down our steep driveway and along our dead-end street. Soccer balls are kicked around. Basketballs heaved at a rickety hoop at the end of the street. The van disgorges a tricycle for the not-quite-four year old and we get to marvel at her new accomplishment.

All this is a long way of saying that when our grown children arrive at our house with our Grands and they stay for a few days, we are suddenly and deeply absorbed by and into their world. We sop up all the small talk about what they're learning in science class and how the math is going; the challenges of a co-ed versus all-girls soccer team; how limits are set for screen time and games on the iPad. By Sunday, we're rolling along with the plans for upcoming birthdays and summer vacation in Vermont.

And then the van is repacked, kids and tricycle loaded. Their world backs down the driveway and trundles down the road. When grown children and their families live far away, there's a yo-yo like relationship with their lives. So much intimacy. And then none. 

 

Emerging Adults: They get by with a little help from us

Yet another confirmation of what many of us know: We are the generation that offers our grown children financial help. Pew Research Center's latest poll finds that one in 10 American adults receive money or financial assistance from their parents or other family members. The bulk of those receiving help are emerging adults--men and women in the 18 to 24 year old range. It falls off from there but doesn't stop--some of us are still getting help from our parents. 

I'll let this Pew Research Center chart, courtesy of the New York Times, say it all:

Based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 6 to 19, 2011, with a nationally representative sample of 2,048 adults ages 18 and older.

Empty Nesting: The challenge young adults face living on their own.

Once they've graduated from college and gone off to seek their fortune, it can be disheartening to see them return home to live with mom and dad again. Psychologist Carl Pickhardt who writes about issues revolving around adolescents and post-adolescents--emerging adults is the latest term--has come up with eleven common challenges or reasons young adults might come back to the nest and what they learn from sticking it out and facing up to the challenge of independence.

You can read a fuller description here, but here's a brief rundown of the 11, with Pickhardt's take on the learning moment:

1. Loneliness or homesickness from living apart from family. Pickhardt writes: "Coping with this challenge can teach the capacity to live at a distance from family while still staying in touch, and to develop an independent social network of one's own."

2. The chaos of living with too many choices. Pickhardt's take: "Freedom isn't free because all choice is linked to consequence for which one has to take responsibility, and order must be established."

3. Finding and keeping a job. What your child learns from this, Pickhardt says, is that "there is no job security and it can take a lot of work to find work."

4. Flunking out of college--or coming close to it. The lesson: "It is easier to get into college than to complete it, and self-discipline to do the work is required to graduate."

5. Living with roommates who may have different life experiences or may be incompatible. The life lesson: "Skills in managing a domestic partnership can provide valuable preparation for a significant relationship later on."

6. Falling in love and losing out. "Love is challenging and risky, is not guaranteed to last forever, and a broken heart can be mended."

7. Living in a drug-filled world. Lesson learned is all about "moderating alcohol and other drugs meant to induce good feelings so that use does not cause bad decisions, at worst creating a reliance that is hard to break."

8. Being strapped for funds but trying to keep up with more affluent friends. Lesson learned: It takes work "to repay what is owed and the importance of living within one's means."

9. Stress from adjusting to the increased responsibilities that come with independence. "Coping with this challenge can teach how to moderate demand, physically maintain oneself, and keep the pressure down."

10. Negative feelings can overwhelm positive ones, leading to emotional disturbance. What do kids learn from this? "How to recover from intense unhappiness and develop strategies for maintaining a sense of emotional wellness."

11. Fear of the future and the ability to cope with the demands of adult responsibility. "Coping with this challenge can teach pride in having what it takes to brave the unknown and chart and chance one's course through life."

The Re-Filled Nest: Improvements for our college grads in search of a job

The economy has wreaked havoc on those of us with recent college grads. One friend, whose son was fortuante enough to get a job in his professional field (accounting), reports that he is the only one among his set of four best friends to do so. And that's not untypical of the job situation for the past year.

Many of those children--emerging adults, frustrated at not being able to convert their college degrees into good-paying jobs--are living home. That's creating a whole nother set of tensions. For those parents looking for a break in that bleak picture--we love our kids but we don't necessarily love having them live at home anymore--there's some hopeful news on the job front. Not necessarily the dip down to 8.5 per cent  unemployment (though that's welcome), but the signs that show where the job growth is.

In a December jobs report, workers with bachelor’s degrees or other post-secondary educations were the ones who hit the sweet spot: about 1.1 million bachelor’s degree recipients found work. Meanwhile, the number of workers with high school diplomas or less who were employed fell by half a million. More surprisingly, the least-skilled workers also added jobs over the last year. The number of high school dropouts who had jobs rose by 126,000.

According to Catherine Rampell, who runs the online Economix site for the New York Times, the numbers support MIT economist David Autor‘s argument that the work force is hollowing out, producing very low-skill service jobs that generally cannot be done by machines or workers abroad (like food services) and higher-skilled jobs that require greater schooling (like medical jobs).

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.