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

Money Matters: It's okay to let your grown children treat you.

It was my birthday, and I was visiting Uber son and his family. My daughter-in-law proposed a lovely gift: A pedicure for two--me and my 7-year-old granddaughter. What a great idea. It would be her first. But my main thought was, how can I maneuver things so I pay for it. I didn't want my daughter-in-law to have to foot the bill. I didn't want to burden them with an additional charge. 

This was a little bit crazy on my part. They are, after all, on pretty firm ground financially--the double pedicure at a suburban strip mall outlet wasn't going to break the bank. So why couldn't I just sit back and enjoy?

I was finally forced to. When my daughter-in-law dropped us off for our pedicure, she pre-paid the bill. I'm glad I kept my "I want to pay" neurosis to myself. It was a perfect gift and a memorable experience to have this precious 7-year-old sitting with me while we picked out the nail polish color we'd try. We were going to do the same color so we had a lot of intense discussion about various shades of red and orange. We both dismissed the idea of blue or green. And then we sat side by side in big lounge chairs while we had our feet bathed and washed, our toe nails cut and polished. I could see how tentatively she sat on the edge of her chair, just a little bit worried about what was coming next. And I was able to sit right next to her, knowing I was right there to reassure her if something seemed strange or scary.

What a special gift. My grandchild and I still chat on the phone to compare nicks in our polish. And I've finally gotten over the feeling that my grown children shouldn't treat me. I was perpetuating an out-of-date reality--that they couldn't afford it. It's healthy for them to treat me. And it was wonderful gift for me--both the pedicure and the recognition that they were financial grown ups.

Money Matters: Facing the loss of their legacy

"It was," she says, "a very hard conversation to have." My friends DeeDee and Mel had to tell their  daughters that there was no longer an inheritance for them.

DeeDee and Mel had invested the lion's share their hard-earned money with Bernie Madoff. Now it was gone. Gone, too, was the lifestyle they were used to. They still had their 401ks--much diminished though they were by the 2008 crash--and social security. But, where they were used to being generous with their grown daughters--"we always liked sharing with them what we had accumulated"--that is no longer possible.

"When we told them," DeeDee says, "they were wonderful. They said, 'Mom, Dad, we don't need your money. If you need anything, let us know.' "

"As a parent," DeeDee goes on, "that's a very hard thing to digest. You always think it will be the other way--that you can give to them, that you'll be there to help them out if they need it. This is a whole new revelation. How do you process it? It's very difficult. We seem to be surviving."

Her bottom line: "Leveling with the kids was hard but I'm glad we did it."

Skype Me Up, Scottie: Visiting face to face with the grown kids and the grandkids.

I may be a little late to be an enthusiast, but I've discovered Skype. Had heard about it, of course. But had no real reason to use it. Now paterfamilias and I do. Alpha daughter and her family are living in a country that is an ocean--and a six-hour time difference--away. But with Skype, we "call" each other through our computers and can both see and hear each other. It makes it feel like we're right there in our daughter's apartment, sitting in her kitchen, looking out her kitchen window and chatting over a cup of tea. Our granddaughter sometimes sits still long enough for a conversation. But often she just dances by, says hi, and dances off screen. Or plays the piano for us. Our grandpup also makes her presence known.

Alpha daughter has also used Skype on her laptop to give us a tour of her apartment and a closer view of the courtyard outside her window. When we go on vacation with our son and his family next week, we hope my little notebook-laptop will Skype us a visit--the cousins can see each other and tell each other whatever silly things small children manage to convey via a computer screen.

Other friends are further up the evolutionary ladder on their Skype. One, whose granddaughters live on the other coast of the U.S., says she reads stories to the youngest kids--turning the book to show them the pictures. Has anyone tried checkers? Or another game? Or found another inventive way to use computer-phone technology to bridge the distance between our homes here and their homes way over there?

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 daighter-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.

Money Matters: Who pays for what when the kids move back home

When Shari's son, daughter-in-law and two children moved into her house, they had, financially speaking, nothing. The cookie business they started together had failed--despite infusions of money from the family. So when Shari and her husband Hal opened their home as a refuge--"a lifeline" she calls it--money was an issue. "We could have subsidized their rent," Shari says of the decision to have the family move in with her, "but their needs were so far above and beyond that. They needed food, medical insurance, car insurance, clothes--the works." Shari and Hal were fortunate to have the wherewithal to pick up the tab for the big things, but what to do about "walking around money" while the son and daughter-in-law were job hunting?

At first, the four adults held Sunday night meetings: to go over any unmet needs or frustrations; to keep Shari and Hal up to date on job interviews and other employment prospects. Once it became clear what some of the day-to-day cash needs were, Hal came up with a plan. Every Monday morning they would leave Shari's son a check that was big enough to cover lunches, car fare, outings with the kids, other incidentals for both the son and his wife. That way, the younger couple wouldn't have to ask every time they needed something. This was important to Shari: "Money can be very divisive," she says. "It can be a wedge." She didn't want her son to feel demeaned by his circumstances, that he had to ask his Mommy for money to meet a friend for lunch or take his kids to the movies. And there was this: she didn't want either her son or daughter-in-law to rush into a job that wasn't on a career path.

It helps when you can afford to be as generous as Shari and Hal were. But the important point, to me, was not so much how much they could give and how many bills they could cover, but the open way they communicated. Talking things out--being up front about even the most personal money issues--can ease a tricky financial situation. And for Shari, setting a clear goal--jobs for her children that were on a career path--helped her formulate a plan she could live with and not resent.

Share the Wealth: To help our children now or to leave a legacy later?

Paterfamilias and I have been incredibly lucky. We've had good jobs and rewarding careers--to the point where we have been able to set aside enough padding for our retirement--and a little bit more. It's that "little bit more" than wiggles and jiggles inside my brain and bank account.

If we have "a little bit more," why not share it with our grown children in the here and now? Not to spoil them but to step in when there's a crisis or a need. And to let hem know in advance that should they need help, we've got their back. If we can afford it. We see nothing wrong in that. But recently, I've been doing some research on the question and that has raised some doubts about how good a practice this is.

One book by a psychologist suggests that to keep on offering money both spoils grown children and infantilizes them. It's a way to control the kids by keeping the apron strings tied to money. He suggests we who offer cash are suffering from affluenza, that our financial parenting has run amok.

I took all that to heart, but then i read an online story that interviewed several psychologists who all tsk-tasked the idea of helping kids out with money. When questioned about their own personal practices, however, all admitted to being guilty of helping out or indulging their grown children.

is this a case where common sense and best psychiatric advice differ?

And does it all come down to what we're comfortable with, what makes sense for our particular children and their behavior. If they aren't dependent and don't make constant demands and suggest they expect your help indefinitely, then why not help out on an as-needed basis? Isn't this a case of no harm no foul?

Lessons from Grown Children: Their careers open us up to new ideas and fields of interest.

I am having coffee with Jeannie--she's a friend of a friend that I haven't seen in a while. We are catching up by swapping tales of what our kids are up to. Her son is graduating from college with a major in costume design. Neither she nor the child’s father is into anything even remotely artistic. She’s an occupational therapist;  he’s an accountant. But thanks to her son's interest, she’s learned a lot in the past few years about what goes into bringing a play from script to stage. She’s gone to New York with her son to see shows on and off Broadway—something she never did before. Her son hopes to get into a special internship program in New York City that will give him a boost up his career path.

Her story reminds me of the days when our children lived at home and developed interests outside of ours. Alpha Daughter played the piano competitively; Uber son swam in a league of community swimming pools. We learned a lot about the back stroke [his specialty] and upper body development; about Mozart Rondo alla Turka competitions and how the pianist has to concentrate the mind as well as the fingers. We miss those universes now that our little participants have grown up and moved on. But like Jeannie's son, their careers have taken Paterfamilias and I into fields quite diverse from our own. This time around, we’re still standers-by who, once again, get to learn all the fascinating details of a new and different universes—only this time, our children are our teachers. The care we have to take is not to be a know-it-all. It's easy enough--it may be the only way to connect--to apply our general wisdoms [and prejudices] to their fields, but we have to do so with care and tact. Otherwise, it's another minefield.  

Refilling the Empty Nest: It's summer and the college kids come home

Friends report that their youngest child is returning home from college for the summer. Their son lives on the other coast, so it's only the daughter coming back to the nest--and that only temporarily. An email spelled out how they feel about having her at home:

"Our daughter is home for the summer which is balm to our souls. As we've discussed, it's not like our lives are empty without her. Our work is endless, we really like one another's company as much as is possible, and we've begun to reconnect with old friends, whom we had left behind in favor of spending time with our children. So, life with kids in the house is full and happy. That said, having our daughter here is like discovering that the rooms are full of sunlight and rainbows that we had been missing."

The Pain of Parting: A Child Is Moving Far Away

I was whining to a friend: Alpha Daughter leaves for a year abroad in three weeks. After spending several months being excited about all the opportunities a year in another country means--for her career, for her family--I am faced with the moment of truth. She is packing her bags and I have an oh-so-heavy feeling inside, a "when will I see you again" kind of heaviness. Paterfamilias does not seem to connect with my pain, I tell my friend. He says, "you'll go visit whenever you feel like--hop a plane and you're there whenever you want to be." I say it's not the same as being able to pick up the phone and chat or, hearing there's a sudden need for your services, getting there the next day. Distance is a fearsome factor. And it also means that on any visit, I am bound to overstay my welcome or, if not my welcome, my comfort level.

My friend has been through this drama. Her daughter lived abroad for several years. I figured she would understand the feelings and fears. And she did--with this pragmatic twist:

"I feel your pain about a distant daughter," she wrote in an email. "but I have to side with [Paterfamilias] on this one.  Getting to Germany is not a big deal and if you go every three or four months, it will suffice.  When my daughter was in Israel with the first grandchild, I went every three months and the flight was 12-13 hours. I would stay for five days, get adjusted to the time change, then board the plane again. It was awful. And sort of unnatural: no contact and then too much. But Germany is easier.  Between email and visits, you should be fine. I shouldn't be so smug. I now have my grandchildren less than 30 minutes away and I see them every week."

Money Matters: The long arm of parents who help their kids.

"We are spending so much money on our kids," a friend tells me. "They need to be rescued every once in a while."

The kids in question are hers from her first marriage and his from his first marriage. One of her sons went through a painful and devastating divorce, including court battles over child custody and support. He lost his job. My friend, her husband, her other son, the father of her son and an uncle all pitched in to help the divorced son. It took several years before he was back on his feet. And now his eldest son--one of my friend's three grandchildren--was ready for college. He had to choose not the best school he got into but the least expensive one. My friend and her husband dipped into their retirement savings to pay tuition--her son couldn't afford it and neither the ex-wife nor her parents (the other grandparents) were willing to help out.

My friend could live with the choice of the lesser school. That's life. It made her angry that the other grandparents weren't willing to help. That's life, too, but more emotional, verging as it does on fairness.

Now, she's got another financial anxiety: Her stepson--a man in his late 40s--has always been self supporting and single. And has always been shy around women. So, when he started dating a woman his age and then announced he was getting married, everyone was thrilled. But the new wife came with old and huge debts from her life with a former boyfriend. The new husband is helping his wife pay off those I.O.U.s--the credit card debt keeps compounding like crazy--and now everyone's helping out. It's another drain on my friend's dwindling retirement resources.  

"It never ends," she says. "It seems like one of our kids is always having a money crisis." A few years ago--just before he retired--my friend's husband paid off the mortgage on their house. "So we are lucky," she says. "What would we do--how could we help our kids--if we had a $2,000 a month mortgage payment to meet?" It also raises the question of how long you help out your grown kids. When does the rescue line end? And maybe even more to the point: How do you define crisis?

Does it help to know she--and by extension we--are not alone? The Brits are experiencing similar pressures. Here's a news story I just came across. In Great Britain, "millions of grandparents are cutting back their spending because they feel under pressure to fund their grandchildren." Research also found that the majority of grandparents regularly spent cash from their retirement savings on clothing, toys and other treats for their grandchildren. Others helped pay for essentials, such as shoes and school uniforms, to help their own children balance their finances.

Here was a key finding that hit home: "Although some children did ask their parents for financial help, much of the pressure to provide for grandchildren comes from the grandparents themselves."