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

Food for Thought: A lesson from adolescence that carries over to grown children

Insights is insight. You take it where you find it. I just finished reading Carl Pickhardt's recent blog on adolescents and parental similarity--how we tend to favor the child who is like us and how the issue rears its head big time as our children go through adolescence.

What struck me about Pickhardt's column was how it applies as well to our relationship with our children once they have grown into emerging adults and beyond. How much more comfortable we are with adult children who share our values, likes and dislikes, temperaments. When adult children are very different from us--more a throwback to some grandparent or one of our parents--we may make them feel they are somehow failing us.

Pickhardt puts it this way: "In their children, parents see reflections of themselves. In their parents, children see models for themselves. To the degree that children appear to be like their parents, and parents appear how children want to be, a kind of harmony based on similarity can rule....

"In human relationships, when it comes to attraction and compatibility, perceived similarity can count for a lot. We tend to feel closer to others who seem like us. We tend to like those who believe and behave like us. We tend to assume other kinds of positive commonality from apparent similarities. We even tend to treat strangers better who appear similar to us. And we are often drawn to those people who we wish to be like."

All of which can explain a lot when we struggle with our relationship with a child whose values, temperament and outlook on life are just plain not the same as or even similar to ours--or are closer to those of a grandparent, uncle or sister that we happen to not like very much. Not that there's an easy remedy, but a little insight into why there are challenges can't hurt.

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My friend Lee doesn't understand what is was about her son-in-law that made him attractive to her daughter--even though the marriage is now 15 years old. From the start, Lee didn't see what they would have to talk about--the daughter grew up in an intellectually demanding home; the husband in one where mechanical abilities were prized. She loves to read; he doesn't. She's become a professor of English; he fixes computers. She's slim and attractive; he's pudgy and sloppy. Lee would never have chosen him  or anyone like him--for her daughter. He's totally unlike her daughter's dad--Lee's husband. And maybe that's the irritation and, for her daughter, the attraction. 

We may not understand our children's choices for romantic partners and life long mates. Their choices may run counter to what we find appealing, important and interesting. But the best thing we can do is what Lee, despite her misgivings, has done: Kept her mouth shut and learned to appreciate what she can about her son in law. 

I was reminded of my conversations with Lee on this subject--it's one I've had with several other friends as well, friends whose children have hooked up with people the parents consider "beneath" their child or inappropriate in terms of earning power--by a recent Carolyn Hax column.

A mom complained about her daughter's boyfriend--under-educated, unable to keep a steady job, a lay-about. Her 25-year-old daughter, who owns her own home, has a master's degree and a good job, doesn't seem to have a problem with her boyfriend's lax ways. In fact, she has invited him to move in with her. The mother writes Hax to express her dismay. The boyfriend, she writes, "drives me crazy to the point where I don't speak to him anymore." The issues the mother finds so negative don't seem to faze the daughter. "She doesn't see the problems I see ahead, always being the main breadwinner, the lack of financial security, etc."

Carolyn's answer is a universal one for those who are unhappy with a grown child's choice of mates--especially when it comes to financial potential or other social issues. Unless the boyfriend or girlfriend is abusive (that's a whole other issue), Hax points out that "you squander any right to protest your daughter's choices when you bring such clear biases to the table. ...If you value your relationship with your daughter, then I strongly suggest you throw away your visions of the "right" mate for her and start looking harder for what she sees in this one -- and specifically what he brings to the relationship that isn't in paycheck form....Good partners come in more than one shape and size."

This is not necessarily an easy pill to swallow. It means relying on our grown child's good sense. We can point out "issues" in a neutral kind of way. One couple kept inviting the daughter and the boyfriend they found inappropriate to join them for a lot of family outings--so the daughter would see how poorly he fit in with the family . [The strategy worked.] But expressing contempt, dislike and cutting off communication with the significant other--well, it's not worth the diminished relationship we'll have with our grown child, even if he or she eventually sees the light.

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Changing of the Guard: Home for the holidays at their house

When Pat and Dick's children were toddlers, their home became Christmas Holiday central. Her parents, who lived in the Midwest, came and stayed for three days. Pat's brother and sister-in-law drove down from New England, Dick's brother flew in from California. Everyone made it to the little white clapboard church across the street where Pat sang in the choir. Pat made her veal stew a la Romeo Salta for Christmas eve dinner and otherwise stocked the refrigerator and larder for all the meals, snacks and food a large family would consume in three days. They decorated the tree and set the "rules" for Christmas gift-giving. By the time everyone left, Pat and Dick were exhausted and lived on leftovers and pizza for several days.

This year--36 years later--Pat and Dick gave up the Christmas ghost. At their son's suggestion, Pat and DIck, their daughter, her husband and 6-year-old twins (plus the cat) drove down to their son's house in a city some two hours south of theirs. The son's mother in law and her boyfriend came over for dinner. There was a full house--all of Pat and Dick's Grands (including the son's dog--Pat and Dick's grandpup). Pat and Dick stayed three nights. There was no white clapboard church across the street. Pat didn't sing in the choir (sigh). The twins did not dress up in cute little dresses for their appearance at Grammy's church.

Other than that, Pat and Dick have been remarkably sanguine about what is likely to be the new normal. Pat, on request, brought a huge pot of her veal stew a la Romeo Salta for Christmas eve dinner but other than that, she had no responsibilities. She didn't have to put up a tree; she didn't have to worry about filling the refrigerator with everyone's favorite nibbles or being prepared for three days of breakfasts, lunches and dinners. "I made the stew and that was all I had to worry about," Pat says. "My daughter-in law's mom helped with the cooking. It was very pleasant not to be in charge. It was a gift." A gift that, she and Dick say, they'll be glad to get next Christmas.

"The old order changeth, giving rise to the new," and there's a pleasure in accepting the changing of the guard--even when it's at our expense.

 

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Holidays with the Grown Kids: Here today, and then gone.

Those of us whose grown kids live in other cities, countries or remote time zones, the holidays are a time of reunion. Somehow, we manage to get at least some of us together. Often at our home base.

It feels so great to have the house filled with the noise and shuffle of our kids and their families. And then, of course, they take off. A friend, whose two grown sons are both musicians, said it all and succinctly on her facebook page:

"The Christmas boys are gone, along with their Isaye sonatas and piano improvisations. Time to get used to a quiet house again. Sniff."

I am feeling the same Sniff after a four-day visit from alpha daughter and her family. So wonderful to have the house alive--alpha daughter doing yoga in front of the fireplace; my Grand setting up some elaborate American Girl village under the piano, and my son in law cooking us great meals. Now, not a peep. Sniff

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Holiday Togetherness: Tales of three Thanksgivings before Christmas is upon us

I have been collecting Thanksgiving and Holiday Season mini-tales--what the Thanksgiving or Christmas holiday was like for friends and acquaintances. Did the whole family--the grown kids and their spouses or friends, and their families--all come together under one roof to feast at one table? Was it still their table or had the mantle passed to the younger generation or to someone else? Were new traditions started or did old ones prevail?

Eva has solved the problem of competing with her daughters-in-law's parents for Thanksgiving dinner with a simple expedient: She has both sons and their families over for Thanksgiving on Saturday. She does the turkey; one son brings the pies; the other, the vegetables. It all works well, except when it doesn't: One year the pies were tied up in stop-and-go traffic on the Beltway. That son and family were two hours late. Meanwhile. the vegetable-bearing son's daughter had a volleyball tournament that evening and had to eat and run--before her uncle got there. That's the unaccountable factor when a holiday is celebrated at a day and time convenient to the family even as the rest of the world goes about its business. But the holiday dinner also goes down in the books as part of family lore. Remember the year when....

Last year, when their son was recovering from an orthopedic problem, Ellen and Joe rose early and drove four hours on Thanksgiving morning to their son's house. He planned a minimalist feast--Ellen and Joe were told not to bring anything. This year, Thanksgiving switched back to Ellen and Joe's house. It was not minimalist, with 19 people--sons, daughters, grandchildren,  aunt, uncle, cousins--crowded around a very full table and then around the TV screen: the home football team was playing a big game. This year's Thanksgiving went down as a really good one, even though Elaine felt a disjointedness that many of us who cook the meal feel--our families sniff down in minutes what it took hours and hours to prepare.

I know whereof she speaks. Paterfamilias and I flew to our son's house on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving--the better to help my daughter in law with preparations on Wednesday. This was the fourth year that the mantle of Thanksgiving dinner has been passed to my DIL. Given that both of us were feeling sub-par--my hip; her back--she and I had decided on a theme for this year's feast: Keep it Simple. If there was a short cut to take, we would take it. So we bought a pre-brined turkey [major shortcut; worked out really well. Let's hear it for Trader Joe] and splatchcocked it [thank you Mark Bittman] so that it cooked in an hour on Thursday afternoon--no oven-sharing schedule needed. We pre-baked the stuffing [aka dressing]; baked two kinds of potatoes and left whipping them till the next day.

We bought the Tofurky and left that to Alpha Daughter--she would be arriving on Thursday--to prepare for her all-vegetarian family.

We bakery-bought the pumpkin and apple pies  but couldn't help ourselves: we baked a simple upside down pear cake and brownies from a mix. And, oh yes, we had to make fresh cranberry muffins--what's Thanksgiving without them? We prepped the vegetables; cooked the cranberry sauce [not worth the short cut of canned.] Set the table, Arranged the flowers. Yes, we were keeping it simple but it took almost all day for two cooks and several other small and large pairs of hands to whip things into readiness--and then several hours on Thursday to close the deal.

And yes, like Ellen and Joe's family, it took little time for 11 of us to down the turkey [or tofurkey] and the trimmings and take up our positions for the second half of the football game. So unfolds another Thanksgiving story for family lore.

Next year will be a new page. Alpha Daughter and family will be spending another sabbatical year in Berlin. Uber Son is also taking a sabbatical and may head for New Zealand or London with his family. Whither they goest, so goes our Thanksgiving. 

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Letting Go: The best advice on how to do it--from the grownkids themselves

Her tale was a wrenching one. For parents of grown children, it rang terribly true--and terribly been there, done that, if not in exact detail in the overall dimensions. Writing in the New York TImes, Susan Engel described the travails of two of her children and how difficult it was to cope with the pain they were in--how she wanted to set things right, the way she had when they were small children. And in the midst of this parenting quandary, came words of advice: from one of her children and then from a close friend.

 The son called to describe a crisis he was having with his graduate studies. As Engel reports on herself, "I started explaining how he should respond to the terrible graduate adviser. I wanted to ask if he was taking notes on my good advice. But I didn’t have a chance. He cut me off. “Mom,” he said, “when I tell you what’s wrong, I don’t want you to tell me how to fix it, and I don’t want you to tell me it’s not as bad as I think. I just want your sympathy.”

The second piece of worth-listening-to advice came from her closest friend. She described the heartbreak another son was experiencing with a long-time girlfriend and told her friend, "I don’t know whether to hope he works it out with her, or ends it.”

Her friends advice--and something I tell myself to remember: “Don’t hope for anything.”

Just another reminder that it's their life. We are no longer in control. Nor should we try to--or can we--assume the old mantle of hands-on care.

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Money Matters: The means to help our grown children

This little graph explains a lot. Despite the devastation of the recession and the lingering downturn, many of us with grown children are willing and able to lend or gift our kids money--to pay off debt, to get a start in life. Yes, our 401ks suffered in the 2008 debacle; some of our homes are underwater [literally--thank you, Hurricane Sandy] and figuratively). But evidently, our wealth has been coming back or it survived the hard times. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, we of the baby boomer generation suffered less--lost less wealth than other groups and overall--in terms of financial loss--are in much much better shape than our 20- and 30-something children.

Why did the Great Recession hit households headed by grown kids in their late 30s and early 40s so hard? The federal Survey of Consumer Finances suggests it gets down to housing. For most Americans, equity in their homes represents the bulk of their wealth. The collapse of housing values in the middle of the past decade sent personal wealth into a nose dive for just about everyone, regardless of age. Overall, though, the Consumer Finances survey found that median home equity—the fair market value of a home less the amount of the outstanding mortgage and other liens—fell by about a third (32%) from 2007 to 2010. And U.S. Census data released in June found that most of the decline in median wealth between 2005 and 2010 can be attributed to sinking home values. We who've owned our homes longer and paid off more--if not all--of our mortgages, are coming out of the Great Recession in better shape.

All of which translates into a fuller bank account and the wherewithal to be generous to our grown children, should we choose to be.

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.

 

Parenting Adult Children: A special anxiety reserved especially for us

There's a special anxiety reserved for those of us with grown children. Since we're no longer in control of their health and safety--as we were when they were young and lived under our roof--when there are "threats" to their well being, we can only worry, fret, second guess, interfere and do assorted other things to help control our anxieties.

Even when we share our good guidance tips with them, it doesn't solve the problem. They're going to make their own decisions and they may or may not factor in anything we say.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Alpha daughter and her family--one child, one husband, one dog--were here for a weekend visit.

It was a lovely visit--lots of chit chat and talking about big and little things. But this weekend, it turns out, was the one where Superstorm Sandy was due to land late on Sunday or early Monday. I wasn't sure how involved our city would be, but between our home and Alpha Daughter's, chaos would reign. Before I went to bed Saturday night, I checked some online sites--the New York Times among them. And there it was--an announcement that Mayor Bloomberg was likely to close bridges and tunnels in and out of the city as well as the subway system. Airlines were announcing low or no cancellation fees for Sunday flights. Towns along the coast--New Jersey and Delaware beach towns--were being evacuated.

Alpha daughter and family were planning to drive home Sunday afternoon. Oy, as my grandmother might say. My son in law was still awake and working on his laptop. I laid out my concerns. He didn't seem worried. But I was all anxiety now. I sputtered on about how difficult it would to drive through or around the city. I suggested they get up early in the morning and drive straight home. 

He didn't exactly poo-poo my suggestion--he's too polite for that. But he did let me know that he didn't think there was any reason to change their plan yet. My parting shot was, "Just think about it."

Maybe it's because I'm getting older or less able to control actions, but little worries tend to be bigger ones now. I was awake most of the night. Fretting,, worrying, wondering how they could get home safely. And if they didn't leave on Sunday, they were not likely to be able to get out until Wednesday. I got up and did some deep breathing, some Yoga, some meditation. I couldn't force them to get up at the crack of dawn and get going. And that's what I felt they needed to do to get home safely and within a reasonable amount of time.

Alpha daughter's an early riser. When she got up and online, she started packing her bags. The situation was even worse than it had been the night before. As the extent of the proposed evacuations became clear, they decided to take the "long" route home--and not go near New York City but head west to Pennsylvania before heading east to their home in New England.

So one anxiety down--they were leaving early--but a day of nervousness ahead: were they finding their way on the new route, was there a lot of traffic, could they get gas and food at highway stops.

We can drive ourselves crazy thinking about the things that can go wrong. Fortunately, Alpha daughter was kind to her aging mom. She or my son-in-law called every few hours to let us know how well things were going. It took them 11 hours to make what otherwise should have been a 9-hour drive but they got home safely.

Now I could turn to anxieties over personal survival if we lost heat and light--or even part of our roof--from the storm. We were, luckily, on the edge of Superstorm Sandy's fury and just got a glancing blow. Ditto for Alpha Daughter in New England.  Now what else could I find to worry about? Oh yes. The election, which was still more than a week away.

Finally, today, the election is history and I can breathe deeply. For now.

 

 

 

The Homecoming: Rising to the challenge of the generation gap

When our kids were in the pre-teens and early teens, they started to question our wisdom. When they were old enough to go off to college, they came home with even more questions: deeper ones about our beliefs and how their thoughts now differed from ours--on politics, life style, religion, culture. It's the generation gap, and it tends to widen. They may never return to our way of thinking.

All of this is in the natural flow of things--they're becoming independent and that's what we want, isn't it?  In a recent post on the subject in Psychology Today, psychologist Carl Pickhardt noted that "the generational differences should become more clearly pronounced as the young person is now more committed to seeing and living life on more independent and individual terms. In consequence, she or he can be more critical of where parents stand and what they stand for."

The question Pickhardt raises is how do we--and they--deal with these differences and still stay close. That is, how do we not let the differences rock the basic relationship, even when we're attacked for being politically incorrect, stuck in our traditional ways or otherwise "ye olde fogies."

Part of his answer starts with this observation: "The mistake parents can make when confronted by revisionist thinking... is to take offense." Rather than try to change the grown child's point of view or attack his or her ideas, he suggests that it's better to treat their ideas with respect and worthy of discussion--even if we find those ideas offensive or they run counter to our basic beliefs. By being "unwilling to change themselves but demanding change by the other, the generational difference is allowed to become a barrier to contact instead of a bridge to further knowing."

His "solution": Rather than focus on change--better to keep the discussion about ideas just that: a discussion--we as parents should focus on what needs no changing: "our commitment to stay connected as age and experience continues to grow us apart. How we live our lives, or believe about life, does not exactly have to match for our relationship to stay closely connected."

It's an important issue to tackle when it first rears its head. As those of us whose children have moved beyond the post-adolescent years have experienced, pretty soon it won't just be ideas picked up in and honed by college debate. They'll marry and come under the sway of another family's ideas. They'll start to raise children and have child-rearing philosophies that are very different from ours--as ours were from our parents.

Here's Pickhardt's parting shot--and one worth hanging onto: "As your adult child grows older and further differentiation between you occurs, your tolerance for these changes must grow as well if your relationship is to lovingly carry on."