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

Empty Nesting: How do we know when we're over the loss?

We all have our markers for recognizing that our children have grown up and left the nest--taken that giant step into independence. I don't mean when they leave for college, although that's usually the first most common step along the way. I mean a way of noting that great big void in our lives. In families where the high school kids were active on athletic teams, it may be the freeing up of Saturday mornings--or the emptiness of a day without a soccer or basketball or baseball game to attend. Or the stillness of the house when you turn the key in the lock and there's no music bouncing off the walls and singing through every inch of the house.

I just read a moving take on The Moment in a Michelle Slatalla column in the New York Times. It came when she went up to her daughter's room to clean it up--this, after her daughter returned to college after winter break of her sophomore year. "I felt a wave of nostalgia wash over me," she writes. "Everybody makes a fuss when you send a child off to college for the first time. You're expected to feel pangs when you separate from a freshman." But, she goes on to write, "waving goodbye at the end of sophomore winter break turns out to be much harder." It is, she explains, the realization that as time goes by her daughter would start to "come home for shorter periods and call home less often, and that the center of gravity of her life has shifted away."

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.

The Old Order Changeth: Making new plans for Thanksgiving

The first Thanksgiving dinner I made is a vivid memory. My two children were toddlers; we didn't look forward to the four-hour long drive to my mother's house and even less to the traffic-delayed return trip--six to eight hours stuck on the New Jersey Turnpike. Suggestions were made. And taken. My mother and brother and his wife would come to our house.

We never looked back. Thanksgiving has been at our house for more than 30 years--through births and deaths and additions of our best friends and their children, plus assorted others. Everyone loves it. Well, that's what they tell us. But life changes. Our best friends are gone; their children have moved away. So have our children. For the past decade, our children and their growing families have piled onto airplanes and come home for the holiday anyway. It's exhausting for everyone but it's wonderful to fill the house with all that excitement--and noise and mouths to feed. It's also expensive: we are talking about 8 airfares plus, this year, renting a van to transfer the family of five [a new baby!] from airport to home and back again.

So this year, suggestions were made. And taken. Thanksgiving will be at uber son's home this year. Alpha daughter and her family can drive over--it's only three hours away. We'll fly up a day or two early. I'll do most of the cooking--my daughter-in-law has her hands full with two school-age children and an infant.

Sounds fine. And it is. And yet. It is the old order changing and yielding place to the new. We say that this arrangement is only for this year, that each year we may do something different--our house, daughter's house. Could be anywhere. And yet it is a sign of passing time and years. Another flattening of the hierarchy, as my friend Marian the psychiatrist likes to say. We are moving even further off the center stage--we've acknowledged that in many other ways--and this is just another Rite of Passage. We don't feel old; we don't feel like we're ready to be flattened. And yet there comes a time when it's Their Time.

I've always loved Thanksgiving. It isn't laden with all the gift-giving or religious symbols of other family holidays.  It's just turkey [well, tofurkey for some] and pumpkin pie. It will be fun to put it all together  in another kitchen. But it won't be the same. The torch is passing.

Empty Nested: The warring emotions

I am now more than a decade past shipping uber son and alpha daughter off to college. They've graduated, started careers, moved to other cities and coasts, are leading successful and independent lives: just what any parent could wish. I couldn't feel better about them. And yet, I still remember to this day the first month of the empty nest--my children are one year apart in school years and when my youngest left, the house was suddenly so cold, so empty. No loud music blaring from the stereo; no basketball being bounced in the living room. Paterfamilias and I, who've had a good marriage, found ourselves quarreling with each other. Nitpicking. Not being nice. It took a while to realize that we were both feeling incredibly sad at the loss of the children. And it is a loss, no matter how happy we are to see them set those feet on the road to independence. And as in any marriage, it always helps when one is feeling up when the other is going through a down. But here we were, both down. We got through it and started to enjoy the next stage in our lives. But there are dangers in letting our children see those emotions--it's called a guilt trip--and there are strongly competing emotions as well, as therapists Susan Newman and Michele Weiner-Davis point out in this bit of blog from Psychology Today. Hopefully, paterfamilias and I never transmitted the sad ones, only the glad ones, to our kids. Evidently, they felt guilt-free enough to move about the country.

Here are some highlights from the Psychology Today blog:

Some words of caution from Susan Newman:

"In our digital age, the real risk is that parents remain in charge directing a student's every move no matter where in the country he or she attends college. E-mail, instant messaging, and cell phones allow immediate contact -truly a double edged sword. For college-age children, the journey toward independence is being short-circuited when parents continue to micromanage their college lives. "

"When parents run interference for every single snag in their child's life, mom and dad maintain control of their college student. Constant involvement is a very hard habit to break."

Finally, here's a surprising observation about the empty nest and the blue feeling parents feel when their kids move out and on.

"Men are 'less prepared for the emotional component of the transition.'
For women empty nest is not such a terrible thing, but rather they view it as an opportunity to move on. Men express regret for the things they didn't do and opportunities they didn't take to be with their children."

Some observations on empty nest emotions from from Michele Weiner-Davis:  

"A certain stage in one's life is over. The kids have flown the coop. And while it's true that when young adults leave home, it opens up many new horizons for parents, it's also true that endings often bring a sense of loss. Feelings of loss are not unhealthy, they are a sign of love, connection and caring. What is unhealthy is the mistaken but common notion that feelings cause people to act in certain ways. In other words, if I'm sad about my child leaving home, I will behave in ways that will signal these feelings and "lay a guilt trip" on my child. "

"I have no difficulty experiencing diametrically opposed feelings at one time--sadness and pride--and feel no compunction whatsoever to act on my feelings of grief other than to normalize it when others share this emotion and encourage them to find ways to fill the void. In other words, it's possible to feel sadness and not behave in ways that are self-centered or that would thwart our children's growth.

"When a young person asked me what she should do because she felt guilty leaving her single mother behind, I simply responded: It's not your job. It is lovely that you care about her feelings. But she is an adult and she must find ways to make her life fulfilling without you. All parents need to do this, even single ones. I know you love her, and you should keep in touch with her. But she should reassure you that she is fine(even if she is lonely), because it is YOUR job to spread your wings right now and fly. Let her know you love her but keep flying."

The Only Child Speaks Up: "Take your hands off the controls."

A recent story in a Canadian newspaper touched a lot of buttons for parents of adult children, and particularly of "only children."  The story is the  adult child's complaint about the tight controls parents exert, even as the child approaches marriage. The writer, an only child who is marrying an only child, says she noticed the stepping-over-boundaries during the wedding-plans phase but that the over-involvement is moving into the choice of where to live.
Part of the answer to the writer's plea likened the only child to a little and much-beloved emperor. But the bottom line was this: Whether it's outwardly apparent or not, part of the parents' dream is that "you will become an independent adult with all the tools to make life choices yourself. Unfortunately, parents are rarely willful enough to cut the cord themselves--you have to do it." And it will hurt.
If you see yourself in this, you might want to check your intrusion factor and pedal back.

A New Baby: Offering help in one form and another

There's a lot of excitement in our small family. We have a new baby--that is, Uber Son and his wife have brought forth their third. Babies are something we know something about. And we also know--experience cannot be denied--how hard it can be to juggle taking care of a newborn while also meeting the needs of two young children, a spouse, a home and mealtimes. We know how helpful it is to have another pair of hands--especially hands that can drive a car and take a child to piano lessons, get another to soccer practice, race to the supermarket for supplies, cook meals that can be frozen for use on another day--and bring the nursing mother a glass of water while that new baby is taking nourishment (oh the thirst when you're nursing).

Paterfamilias and I just spent several days as extra pairs of hands. This is, of course, a basic service that comes with being parents of grown children.  But when we leave--we live a seven-hour drive to the south--both Paterfamilias and I key in on the same thing: How will they manage? I am distraught that I can't offer to spend another week or two to help. (It's something called a job.) What, after all, am I here for if not to help when help is needed. I look at my schedule and try to figure out when I can come back.

Paterfamilias has another solution. He sends them a check, earmarked for paying for babysitters. Get them often, he writes in his note.

It's practical. It's helpful. And it's also appreciated. And it's what we parents of grown children can do when we can't do the job ourselves.

Who's an Adult: Defining a point in time

A college professor takes a crack at pinpointing when an adolescent becomes an adult. It's not as easy as he thinks.

House and Hearth: The grown kids buy their first home

When paterfamilias and I bought our house--the one we're still living in--our children were five and six years old. My mother flew up from her condo in Florida to help with the dirty work of moving in. She and I hand-transferred to the new house a fragile antique wall clock and a gold-framed mirror that used to be hers but were now mine. Paterfamilias and I were taking up the carpeting the former owner had nailed down all over the house. We had the wood floors stained and burnished before we moved in. What I remember most about those first few days in the new house is my mother carrying things back and forth between kitchen and dining room, rags wrapped around her bare feet. "This is a good way to keep the floors buffed," she told me as she shuffled around. "You should do this all the time."

I'm reminded of this because Alpha Daughter just bought her first house. She closed on it on a Friday, and we flew up on Saturday to look it over. She and her husband were planning to strip out the old carpet and redo the floors before moving in. While we were poking around the front yard and inspecting its bushes, a neighbor came by--all big hellos and welcomes and wanting to know who was moving in. Then another neighbor appeared on the street. The first neighbor waved her over. "Lois," she said, "here's the new family that's moving in, and it comes with a Bubbe."

That would be me. Bubbe is Yiddish for a granny. And there certainly was a very active five-year-old clambering up and down and around the front steps. But use of the term was a bit of a shock for me--I'd always thought of a Bubbe as a person who's sidelined to the back seat of the car--a person who's no longer part of the main events of family life. Part of what happens as our children get older, something my friend Marian, the psychiatrist, calls "flattening the heirarchy." Others use the term Bubbe in a more benign way--as the neighbor did, to connote that the parents of the new owners were around.

This Bubbe, unfortunately, doesn't come with the house. Paterfamilias and I live a ten-hour drive away. I may never tie rags around my bare feet as my mother did. But like her, I hope to be there on moving day to help out with whatever needs doing. It's what we parents of grown children do, whether we think of ourselves as a Bubbe or not.