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

Grandparenting: The moments they'll remember us by

When my daughter asked if I would come up and "babysit" her daughter--my Grand--for three days, she had her reasons. She had to travel for her job. Ordinarily, if she had to be away, she and my son-in-law would patch together a series of babysitters and play dates to cover the time away. But it was the first week of school. That can be traumatic any time, but even more so this year. Not only would my Grand be going back to school, she would be returning after a year in Berlin. I understood the request. I made it my business to get there.

It may sound like the easiest, most natural thing for a grandparent to do--grannie as nanny for three days--but it's not necessarily that simple. Work files have to be loaded on jump drives;  bags have to be packed and spouses/grandfathers persuaded (that wasn't too hard) to drive you to the airport.

It may sound like a lark--taking over the care and maintenance of a child in school--but it has its not-so-easy moments. It can be a long day from 2:00, when I pick her up from school, until 6:30, when her dad comes home. And then there's the pressure to get my own work done. 

So there we were, 4:00 on a rainy afternoon. She is banging out some songs on the piano and asking me if I think she's playing from sheet music or it's something she made up. I call out random answers while I have my laptop open and I edit a Q&A story on the mortgage interest deduction. She wanders over, pulls up a chair and asks me what I'm doing. I tell her I have to shorten a story I wrote--it has to lose about 200 words. She wants to help. We start with the introduction and I let her delete the phrases and sentences that can come out. As we move along, we come to a word, "sacrosanct" that I used to describe the deduction's place in the political pantheon. She doesn't know what it means. I tell her it is sort of like "holy." Well, she says, why didn't you say holy? I tell her some of the other subtle meanings sacrosanct has and why it seemed like just the right word to choose. We talk about it some more and then move on to another unusual word choice. She's interested in discussing why I called the deduction "the darling" of homeowning taxpayers. When I have to fact-check the year the mortgage interest deduction became law, she knows exactly how to go to Google, and we find the answer together: 1913.

Since this is a Q&A in which I have interviewed four experts, I have set it up so that each interview has a section of its own. The name and title of the person heads up each section. When we get to the first one, she wants to know if she can change the font for the name. Why not? She fiddles around and soon the name of the first interview--a housing economist--is maroon with a double underline. On we go, she deleting words as I tell her to, she redesigning the look of each name and title.

I can't say how long we worked on my story--an hour maybe--but it turned out to be the highlight of my visit. I was able to share with her a little bit of what I do--what writers and editors do--and she was able to show me how adept and creative she is at the computer. It was fun for both of us. But more than that, it made me realize that memories are made of this. Certainly, it was memorable for me--sitting side by side at the kitchen table, heads bent together, concentrating on what we were doing.

The three days may have had their tedious hours, but the reality is, you can't get to the heights of a memorable moment without trudging in the valley.

What did my editor think of the colorful copy I sent in the next day? He didn't say. But how often does he get copy with the name of the chief economist of Fannie Mae all dressed up in maroon Tahoma type with a double underline. For all I know, it may have been a memorable moment for him as well.

Grannie as Nannie: A rise in the professional ranks

The latest stats that count this kind of thing--they're in a report from Pew Social Research--finds we grandparents offering care, coddling and shelter to our grandchildren are part of a growth trend: The number of American children being raised by gramps and grannie rose sharply after the recession began. In one year--from 2007 to 2008--there was a boomlet of a 6 percent rise in the numbers and share of children living with grandparents. 

According to the report, the sharpest increase in the number of children who had a grandparent as a primary caregiver was among white children, even though this family set-up is generally more common in black and Hispanic families.

Here's another interesting point from the report: Nearly half of the children being raised by grandparents also live with a single parent, and 8 percent live with both parents in the household--in addition to the caregiver grandparent.

Just another sign of difficult times--and the role grandparents play in it.

Granny as Nanny: You're fired.

Her daughter-in-law was not as blunt as Donald Trump in Apprentice, but the effect was the same. Gail used to show up at her son's house every morning at 9. He would already be at work, but the two toddlers would be finishing up a morning snack and their mother, as soon as Gail arrived, would walk up to her office in the attic and work there for five hours.

Gail took care of the kids. When they were babies she fed and burped them and rocked them to sleep. As they grew into toddler-dom, she took them outside for games and walks and trips to the playground. Now they are 4 and 3 years old and she is out of a job.

Her daughter-in-law got a new contract that will require her to work longer hours. She is placing the children in an all-day pre-school. She found it disruptive to hear her children crying or being disciplined by the grannie-nannie.

And that, for Gail. is that. She is out of a job without so much as a two-week notice. She's sad about it. She misses the kids.  It's difficult to catch up with the family on weekends.

This is one of the perils of being nanny as a granny. You may be family but you are still "hired" at the will of the parents. And if their needs change, well, so does your job title.

Not that there are any bad feelings between Gail and her daughter-in-law. In fact, Gail hopes to be re-hired. A baby is due this winter.

Grandparenting: How much babysitting do you want to do?

"You're a pushover!" These are the words my friend Gale hears when she mentions she's babysitting for one of her grandchildren. My friendship with Gale goes way back to third grade. We no longer live in the same city, but as long as I've known her as an adult, she was always the worldly one: Want to know the best new trendy restaurant, don't-miss Broadway show, terrific museum exhibit? Want to know a charming place to stay in Tuscany? She's always been the one to ask. 

And now, this pushover business. Her sons, their wives and children live in the same city as she does--one 20 minutes to the north; the other 25 to the south. Both the families have regular babysitters but when there's an emergency--a child at school feels ill or a 5-year-old doesn't want to go to camp one day--Gale gets the call. "I'm the go-to girl," she admits. And she doesn't mind. "I love being part of their lives," she says. "They are such interesting little people. I love knowing who their friends are, what they like, what they don't like."

As to being a pushover, she says it isn't as though her grown children were asking her to do something she, personally, didn't want to do--say, be the regular babysitter two days a week. And if she felt she were being put upon? "I have a big mouth. I might not complain to my daughters-in-law about it, but I sure would pick up the phone and let my sons know."

So far, she hasn't had to. She'd just like those "pushover" remarks to go away.

They probably won't. Whether friends have grandchildren living nearby or have to fly across the country to see them, everyone seems to have their own style--or pace--for being with their grandchildren. Maybe it's their own personal toleration for being around children. Or a commitment to helping out their grown children.  But when friends aren't available to do things with us, many of us lean back on that old saw and think--they're being taken advantage of by their kids. Or they're giving up their autonomy and I wouldn't do that. But that's saying our friends don't know how to say No if they don't want to do something. Most of the time, we want to do it. Or we wouldn't do it. It's part of our autonomy.

Grandparents Rule: We're a growing presence in cyberspace

We who are not only parenting grown children by grandparenting their children are part of a growing and vigorous online community.

I know this not only because I've discovered Susan Adcox's excellent about.com grandparenting site [see blogroll], but because another blogger was good enough to post the 50 best sites for grandparenting.

Who knew there were so many of us?--though we are not all doing exactly the same thing. The list is divided into categories--some by active grannies, some by papas and others that are only in part about grandparenting [such as this one].

Setting a Deadline: When grown children move back home, how long should they stay?

When her son's business crashed, Sheri invited him and his family--wife, two toddler-aged children--to put it all behind them . She encouraged them to move across the country and into her house until they got back on their feet. Two and a half years ago, they accepted the invitation. They're still living with Sheri.

"Friends asked me if I put a deadline on it," Sheri says. "Did I tell them they had a few months or a year or something like that?"

She did not. "If it had been just my son or just my son and daughter-in-law, I might have put a time limit on it. But when there are two children, it's different." Besides, it is not as though they wanted to prolong the stay. As Sheri puts it, "I have sympathy for my daughter-in-law.  Who at 33 wants to come live with your mother-in-law? I have been cognizant of that."

And then there was Sheri's past history: "My first husband passed away when I was 35 and I had three  children. My parents and my sister were there for me. My mother never said, "We can’t always help you." So there's a unique bond because of what happened. I'm giving  back to my son the way my mother gave to me."

Even if there were no emotional reasons, hard economic times make it trickier to set a deadline. And certainly, Sheri's son and daughter-in-law faced harsh times, moving as they did from the fire of Florida into the frying pan of California--two states that have suffered inordinately from the economic downturn. Besides, Sheri wanted her son to not just get a job but a career-line job. "I told him to take time to get his feet on the ground," she says. "You can't put a time limit on that."

In a few months, the family of four will be moving to a rented house an hour's drive from Sheri's. Both adults now have good jobs. Although there were difficult times and Sheri is looking forward to having her house, her husband and her life to herself again, she is not sorry she did it. Friends badgered her about not setting a time limit, but she doesn't see why she should have. Yes, it was hard. Yes, it was uncomfortable. But she had a goal in mind--not just employment but good employment--for her son and her daughter-in-law. And she was fortunate enough to have the means to afford the luxury of time it took for her son to get back on his feet. She can count the 2 1/2 years but she has never toted up the cost of the gift in terms of money. Do her other children? That's another issue.

Grandparent Rivalry: Does more time with the toddlers translate into love and devotion?

"It's not a problem." This is what a woman I am talking to at a party tells me when I tell her I've just posted a blog on the subject of grandparent rivalry. Her son, his wife and toddler twins live in Los Angeles; she and her husband--the grandpop--live on the east coast. The other grandparents live in Los Angeles and "are co-parenting"  the twins, says my new acquaintance. But it is not a problem, she says, because they are "very giving people." When she goes west for a visit--usually for four or five days-- the L.A. grandparents make themselves scarce, giving the east coasters plenty of space to bond. "It works out just fine," she assures me. Except once.

The once: She went out for a longer visit--nearly 10 days. And while she was there, her son asked her if she would mind if the other grandparents came by. They wanted to say hello to her--and they wanted to see the children. "I told him, if they have to come they have to come. But I'm very angry about it. If you ask me if it's OK with me, it's not." They did not come.

I came away from that conversation thinking about what was at stake and how I would feel in her place. Are the stakes the fear that the toddlers will love the other grandparents more? That they will have a stronger bond and more allegiance to the other set of grandparents? Despite my previous blog on the subject-- based on a Dear Carolyn Hax query by young parents--I was surprised by my party-companion's reaction. And shocked.

I'd like to think that I would be more generous and welcoming, that I wouldn't ask my son to have a "you can't come by" conversation with his in-laws who have, as the east coast grandmother has already acknowledged, been "very giving" to her son and his young family. But emotions can run strong--and overrule what is in your head.

But there's another emotion running around my head when I'm the out-of-town grannie visiting one of my children and their children: loneliness. There I am in a city not my own, away from my usual routine and  comforts, far from my walking buddies, husband, job, whatever. It doesn't matter how warm and loving the grownchildren and their children are, it is still lonely. Personally, I would welcome a visit from the other grandparents during the long, slow daytime.And a chance to talk ad nauseum about my grandchildren. Who else would be willing partners in such a conversation?

Granny as Nanny: Offering your services, even from a distance.

The magazine where I've spent the past 20 years of my career has been sold. The new owners have, as they say, brought on their own editorial team. In other words. my work-family of 20 years is no longer under one roof. So now I am free to spend more time on this blog (a plus) and to be available to help my grown children, who live in cities far from me, should they need it. This is the message I relayed to Alpha Daughter. To which she replied: "Well, I have a real problem with child-care coverage on Wednesday and Thursday. It would be wonderful if you could come up here from time to time to help out." I would pick up my little Grand at school, amuse her, get dinner ready--in other words, I would be a helpful, hands-on grandparent and parent.

It takes some recomputing on my part to figure out how this would work: Free to travel on a Wednesday and Thursday? I'm used to thinking Saturday and Sunday. But why not? "Have computer. Will travel. Can help out." That should be my new motto--if I can just wrap my mind and new reality around it.

Moving in Together: Giving grown children a home or vice versa

Hard times are here and there are lots of changes afoot: parents and their grown children are finding themselves more economically inter-dependent. Between 2000 and 2007, according to the U.S. Census, the number of parents living with an adult head of household increased by 67 percent. The numbers for 2008 and 2009 are bound to exceed those.
Sometimes, the move-in together is driven by the grown child's problem: loss of a job or a drastic cut in paycheck. (A growing number of companies are shaving the base salaries of employees by 5 percent--or imposing furloughs that take a salary down several pegs. Or the parents suffer the same layoff/salary decrease issue or their retirement savings are greatly diminished or gone.
Here's a story from the Chicago Tribune that catalogues some of the variations on this theme. One of the trends it takes note of is of parents moving to be physically closer to their children--even when the move means pulling up stakes and resettling in another city. They may settle in a place of their own or with their children. Many are doing so to provide babysitting--grandparents as nannies.