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

Money Matters: Tips on sharing our financial facts with our kids

Nine out of ten of our adult children think we the parents ought to discuss our finances with them. We the parents think so too--to a slightly lesser degree of 3 out of 4 of us.  And yet, the 40/70 talk doesn't happen--at 50/80 or 60/90 or any other age pairing.

In part, it's because money is an emotionally charged topic. For those of us at the older end of the parenting cycle, we may see our portfolio as a measure of how we've done in life. If the nest egg is not as munificent as we hoped, we might not want our kids to see us as smaller than we've lived. Or we may see talking about how we'll finance retirement and long-term care as an uncomfortable reminder of our mortality and vulnerability. Or we may think we've got plenty of time to do it.

As someone who's going down that road right now, I'm finding it's not as painful or difficult as I thought it might be. Just the opposite. Adult children may come to the conversation with new ideas, technological efficiencies, fresher ways to manage things. In our family, we aren't having the conversation with an eye toward their taking over our finances but rather to their being prepared should such a time come. We are, after all, no longer in the flush of our youth or even in the stability of middle age. My operating principle: if they know what there is and where it is, it will be easier for them to handle the material side of our legacy--or pay our bills if we're temporarily unable to do so ourselves.

Here are some tips we've come up with on this first leg of our money-talk journey.

Passwords: I'm still stuck in the dark ages. I have my passwords listed alphabetically in a little notebook. Nothing wrong with that. But a digital form might be a good backup. The bottom line is that my kids need to know how to access my phone, my computer and my savings/checking accounts. Access to the phone is key. It's where accounts of all kinds send verification codes. Our kids won't be able to take care of business unless they are able to verify via our phone.

Estate Plan: They don't have to know the details of our will--who's getting what or whether it's all going to a favorite charity. They do need to know the processes we've put in place. Are investment accounts, checking accounts. saving accounts in joint names. Are there pension plans, powers of attorney, and health care directives that cede them decision-making powers--or name other parties to take over.

Largesse: If we're helping your kids out financially--sending them, say, $500 a month to help with their mortgage--they need to know how solid that financing will be if something happens to us thtputs that payment in jeopardy. If we fall ill and, say, need extended care, they need to have contingency plans as do we.

painting: Berthe Morisot

 

 

Empty Nesting: The college dropoff blues

The college dropoff (freshman year version in particular) is a rite of passage as tearful as sending our firstborn to kindergarten and laden with plenty of meaning. Our kids are transitioning from the cosseted safety of home to the independence of young adult life. We're transitioning from controlling parents to advisory ones. In the moment of that dropoff, it's all about luggage and towels and how to find the dorm.  Once we leave the campus it's all about their new life and ours.

In 2013, Michael Gerson, a writer for the Washington Post who passed away a few years ago, penned the feelings that coursed through him as he anticipated dropping off his son at college. Here's an excerpt but you can tear up through the whole thing here.

An education expert once told me that among the greatest fears of college students is they won’t have a room at home to return to. They want to keep a beachhead in their former life.

But with due respect to my son’s feelings, I have the worse of it. I know something he doesn’t — not quite a secret, but incomprehensible to the young. He is experiencing the adjustments that come with beginnings. His life is starting for real. I have begun the long letting go. Put another way: He has a wonderful future in which my part naturally diminishes. I have no possible future that is better without him close.

There is no use brooding about it. I’m sure my father realized it at a similar moment. And I certainly didn’t notice or empathize. At first, he was a giant who held my hand and filled my sky. Then a middle-aged man who paid my bills. Now, decades after his passing, a much-loved shadow. But I can remember the last time I hugged him in the front hallway of his home, where I always had a room. It is a memory of warmth. I can only hope to leave my son the same.

painting: Lovis Corinth

Wedding Etiquette: When the invites to our child's wedding are limited

Something there is about a son or daughter's wedding that can multiply problems rather than joys. A lot of the issues for us as parents--besides whether we're going to foot the bill--is what can be called, for lack of a better word, our "allotment." That is, the number of people we can invite. It's often smaller than we would like.

That was the issue in a query to Carolyn Hax. The groom's mother was upset that her allotment would not allow her to invite the many cousins with whom she is close. Here's her lament:

My son just got engaged, and we are all thrilled. He is giving me such a small list, though, that I can only include some first cousins and not others. I hate to hurt anyone’s feelings, but we are closer to some than others. I’d be happy to give my son and daughter-in-law more money, but my son says it’s about the space, and even more than that, he just wants to keep numbers down. He doesn’t want his wedding filled with people he doesn’t really know.

Carolyn gets right down to a solution:

How about no cousins at all? Just because you have these slots doesn’t mean you have to use them.....Choose the people you want most whom you can invite without directly hurting someone else. .... Assure any complainers (ugh) that your allotment was so small, you chose not to pick and choose.

There are other ways of getting around allotments: When I was getting married and the numbers were limited by the venue, my parents had a party for the cousins and friends--theirs as well as my in-law's--who couldn't be invited to the wedding. They held it a few weeks after we returned from our honeymoon and everyone got to see us and feel part of the celebration. Years later, we did the same for our son and his bride. The event was joyous. (BTW: Gift-giving was discouraged!)

credit: The Boating Party by Renoir

 

Observation:"No Comment" when it comes to an adult child's appearance.

Whether it's their weight (too heavy, too thin), a tat, the breakout color of their hair, their clothing choices--whatever--we are unwise to say anything about our adult child's appearance. The following observation from Philip Galanes, he of Social Qs, started life as advice to a reader who wanted to comment on a stranger's tattoos. The core of Galanes' advice is as germane to us vis a vis our adult children as it is to the querying reader.

....[C]omments about appearance are often unwelcome, end even compliments betray an unappealing entitlement to judge.

painting: Van Gogh

 

Leaving a Legacy: Clear out the stuff your kids won't want

 

This is a post I wrote several years ago. It's my simple guide to right-sizing or downsizing or just cleaning and clearing out closets that are jammed too full of stuff.  My motivation for clearing my closets (and attic storage) was a move from a house to an apartment. But another incentive was in play: I didn't want my kids to have to clear my boxes of no-longer-relevant papers and artifacts when I am no longer around.

I learned recently that my approach is in keeping with a Swedish concept called döstädning (literally “death cleaning”) that's been in the news of late. Margareta Magnusson explained it all in her book, "The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning."

For those of you who are moving to smaller quarters or just feeling the heaviness of storing too much stuff in the nooks and crannies of your home or want to "gift" your children clean closets, check out Death cleaning or read my post (reprinted below). If I may pat myself on the back, my old post still offers timeless advice without the downbeat name.

Rightsizing: How I cleared my closets and dumped all the stuff my kids didn't want.

“You are my inspiration,” my friend Eva tells me. She’s not referring to anything creative or ingenious I’ve done. The reference is to the method that helped me downsize/right-size from a sprawling 4-bedroom suburban home (where Paterfamilias and I brought up two children) to a tight, two bedroom urban apartment that’s short on storage space. It's a method that would work for anyone who wants to lighten the storage load in their house, whether or not they are moving out or just tackling the untackleable during the corona quarantine.

My inspirational mantra--You won't need to know Sanskrit to follow it--is this: A bag a day.

Prosaic, perhaps. It's not the full Marie Kondo, but it worked. Every day I would fill a bag (the gold standard: a large black garbage bag) with stuff to either give to our children, gift to charity or toss in the garbage. No matter how tired I was after work, I would head for a closet or a file cabinet or a dark recess of the basement and fill a bag—sometimes it was only the bronze standard of a brown paper lunch bag. Consistency was the point: a bag a day.

Sometimes it was easy. I came across file drawers full of old photographs—from the days when camera shops processed your film and gave you doubles of all your photos.  All duplicates in my file drawer were dumped in a bag, along with both sets of photos of the backs of the heads of my children, or a fuzzy focus, or of people I no longer knew or cared about. Ditto for the negatives. Thumbing through envelope upon envelope of old photos was an emotional trip down memory lane but the save/no-save decisions were mindless.

More mindful was the china, glassware, porcelain figurines, silver-plated candelabras  and other objects we inherited from both sets of parents. When our mothers were young women growing their families and enlarging their households, they both collected the same sorts of things. Though one set of parents was more affluent than the other, both mothers had accumulated sets of silverware—8 places setting for one, 18 for the other. The candelabra was smaller for one than the other, which was not only large but had many Rococo branches. (Whenever there was a storm and our house lost its electricity, the candelabaras and their three candles apiece lit our way through the dark evening.) Both mothers had collected sets of hand-painted tea cups that had been displayed on bookcases and side tables in their homes. Both had porcelain figurines—peasant figures playing the flute or herding one of Bo Peep's lost sheep—that graced their bookshelves or sat on coffee tables and end tables.

I’d had these objects in storage in my basement since we inherited them. Would my children want them? I took out my iPhone, snapped a shot of my mother’s gold-rimmed dinnerware and texted it to my daughter-in-law. “Would you like this?” I asked this mother of three of my Grands. Within a minute her ping came back at me: “I haven’t used my wedding dishes yet.” 

For sentimental reasons, my daughter took a few of the hand-painted tea cups but the porcelain figurines and candelabras met universal resistance. I closed my eyes, held my nose (figuratively speaking) and put it all in bags for charities that, presumably, will sell them to pay some of their bills. My one flirtation with "monetizing" these treasures came when I opened a box filled with fur jackets and stoles my mother had amassed. (My father was a furrier.) I went up on eBay to see what the market was for them. The answer: Not worth my time or effort to sell. They got packed up with the porcelains.

It was guilt-inducing but easier to part with the inherited items. What of the things I had collected or amassed? I had written regularly for the Washingtonian Magazine for a dozen years back in the 70s and 80s. I had every issue of the magazine from that time in my basement. I asked myself, Would my grandchildren read these? Would they even look at them? We all know the answer. I tore out a few articles that represented the variety of stories I had written, promised myself I would digitize them for posterity and recycled the rest of it.  Ditto with other clips from my pre-Internet, freelance years: save a few; dump the rest.

Paterfamilias's boxes of law briefs from big cases he had worked on met the same fate. He had to do a lot of shredding, but he made his way through it slowly and methodically.

We started our purge a few months before we put our house on the market so there was no need to rush. Just a bag a day. That held for serving platters, pots, pans, small appliances. I had to harden my heart, but I was amazed at what I could part with once I set my mind to it. Add it felt good to know I was fulfilling part of my legacy to my grown children: clean closets. That is, when the time came and I was no longer around to do it, they wouldn't have a mess of stuff to clear out.

We moved into our apartment nearly four years ago. I have yet to miss a pot or platter or candlestick holder.  Come Spring, what I miss is my garden. But I saved a few pots for that.

photo: P Lemov

painting: Piecemeal Rhythm by Hilary Pecis

Relationship Advice: What to do when an adult child pulls away.

Our adorable children. Sometimes it's hard to realize they're adults now. They may not be quite as cuddly as they were when they were three years old but more to the point, they probably don't want us hovering over them or offering advice.

Here are two tales that tell you what I'm talking about--plus bonus pointers for "what to do" if our adult children want to keep us at a distance.

Case One: Writing to Carolyn Hax, a parent is concerned that her college-age daughter doesn't want to answer the parent's texts, emails and phone calls--the daughter wants to determine when and where to communicate. The mom writes:  I think we should talk to her and maintain contact even if it’s not the “right” kind; my spouse thinks we will make fewer errors of omission and none of commission if we stay silent and let our daughter take the lead.

To this question of giving a young adult space, Carolyn Hax had this to say:

Back off. A lot. For a bit. Treat this like it’s pre-telecom-revolution times and she’s studying abroad. Treat this like she needs it. Because she needs it — and has the spine to say so.

You can apply the 1980s treatment to your side, too, and communicate with her via snail mail. Assuming she has a mailbox, much less checks it.

Case Two: A mom, writing an essay in Better after 50 admitted to a deteriorating relationship with her grown daughter and then talked about how she righted the ship. Key excerpts:

This complaining about my adult daughter diminished when I started to view her for what she is in that order: ADULT then DAUGHTER. Once I changed my perspective to treat her as an adult first, my daughter second, our relationship became much less strained and tenuous. 

Some lessons she learned along the way:

 Do not give unsolicited advice.... If she does ask for advice, give it. If she doesn’t heed it and fails, keep your mouth shut.

Do not ask about partners: not new ones, old ones, potential ones. ... Let her offer as much information as she wants when she wants. You do NOT need to know everything about her dating life. 

Do not whine if she decides to miss a holiday/family gathering/birthday party… Okay, no lie. This is a difficult one for me but I’ve learned the hard way not to guilt her into doing something she doesn’t want.

You do not need to hear from her every day. ...We compromised that I would be her ‘in case of emergency’ contact. Guess what: most days I do hear from her as she walks to the subway or gym.    

photo: Maia Lemov   

 

Vacation Togetherness: Go big to avoid bad vibes

"If it isn't one thing--it's another! It's always something.” Thus spake Gilda Radnor (SNL circa 1970s) as Roseanna Roseanadana. I think of that line now as summer vacations loom.  Some of us may loll on beaches or travel the country without our children and grandchildren. Others of us, though, are planning intergenerational get-togethers. In today's new normal, we may find our vacations afflicted by canceled flights, positive Covid readings or last-minute schedules/obligations of our adult children, their spouses or their children.

We can't control any of the above. But there is stuff we can. One of them is space. If we're picking up the tab for an oceanside beach house, a chalet in the mountains or a campsite in the woods, think big. Rent as spacious a place as you can afford. There's nothing like enough bedrooms to go around or an extra alcove where someone can chill out and take the edge off the inevitable stress of being together on a family vacation.

I make this point in a previous post on family vacations  and in an article that ran in Next Avenue. More recently, I'm backed up on the space issue by Karl Pillemer, a sociologist and gerontologist at Cornell whose research focuses on intergenerational relations.  In a piece in the NYTimes, Pillemer suggests physical distance is important in reducing family tensions. While he is addressing the stresses of holiday visits, what he says about "taking some space" is relevant to vacations as well. "The goal is to focus on underreacting--and stepping away when you need a break."

paintings: Henri Matisse

 

Observation: Michelle Singletary on adult children still living at home

A few weeks ago I posted a blog about a relatively new trend: Our adult children--college graduates and/or employed adults in their 20s--have been moving back home and staying there for longer than, say, we would have at their age.  Since my children have long grown and flown, mine was an observational piece about economic pressures as a possible cause.

More recently, Michelle Singletary, the Washington Post's "Color of Money" columnist, put a more personal face on the phenomenon. Her 20-something children, she writes,

"all live at home, and, despite it being the smartest move in a high-cost area, they often feel the need to explain their living situation to avoid the twisted lips of condemnation that they should be more financially independent."

As a parent, Singeltary wonders if those twisted lips are pushing young adults too hard to meet certain money milestones.  AS part of her argument, Singletary notes that in a previous column addressing financial tips for graduates, she had laid out the path as she saw it for reaching financial independence. Hers was an unhurried one. The more recent column carries readers reactions to her tips. Several wrote to disagree with her suggestions, which ranged from holding back on buying a house and tackling college debt before putting money into savings to realizing that debt can be destructive if overused.

Singletary closes out the back-and-forth discussion with a quote from a 28-year-old reader:

"From my perspective, it's helpful to hear the wide-ranging perspectives folks have about these hot-button topics. I have always thought of personal finance as very cut-and-dry as if there was only one right way to do things. But there is a laundry list of learnings of what's not the best idea. Finance isn't always so cut-and-dry."

And neither is the decision for a young adult to move back home till they've got the wherewithal to move out and on.

painting: Pierre Bonnard, "The Conversation."

 

Observation: On getting beyond the empty-nest blues.

In an essay for the Washington Post's Parenting column (The graduation speech we should be giving to parents), author Mary Laura Philpott puts into perspective what lies ahead for soon-to-be empty nesters. 

The exact circumstances have been different for all of us, but among my friends, we’ve experienced countless surprises after our kids reached legal adulthood. We’ve navigated more changes of plans, academic hurdles, social issues, money troubles and midnight phone calls than all the pillowcases and shower caddies we bought back when we thought checking off shopping lists was the same as being ready. Back before we realized the stuff they packed was the least important part of being prepared. There’s so much joy and discovery ahead, but there are challenges coming too, and you can’t predict them. You owe it to yourself to shore up your strength, because being a parent never ends. It only changes.

Doomed: Our adult children's concerns about our drag on their future

Our adult children are worried about us. Not necessarily about our health and well-being. It's more a generation vs generation thing and the fear that the aging population (that's us) might doom their economic future. That is, we'll drain the purses that support  Medicare and Social Security and leave them working without a future safety net and in a disrupted economy. Here's why: Those of us who are currently working pay into a fund that pays benefits to those who are retired. Since we're living longer than our parents and their parents did, we're using up those funds faster than they can be replaced. The math is not in Gen Z's favor.

To sum it up with brief factoids:

The share of Americans age 65 or older is expected to grow faster over the next 30 years than the share of Americans between the ages of 25 and 54, the so-called “prime working age.”

The labor force participation rate is expected to dip over the coming decades.

With more people in need of care and fewer people working, economists see a potentially crushing burden on the U.S. economy and welfare system.

All is not doom and gloom. There are economists out there who see an alternative reality. A 538 story  reports on three scenarios that tackle the labor part of the problem and one that takes a less gloomy look at the financial side.

Encore Careers: Jim Johnson, a professor at UNC's business school, sees us--America’s 70 million or so baby boomers --as an asset that could help build “the longevity economy,” which is what the economy will have to look like to accommodate an aging population. Here's how he puts it:

“Everything has to change in both the built environment and the social environment to accommodate an aging population. ... Given the labor market challenges that we're facing today, post-COVID, ‘encore careers’ [beginning a new vocation later in life] are something that we're going to have to pursue in a major way.”

Immigration Boost. Higher rates of immigration help countries experiencing population aging because immigrants tend to be younger and therefore more able to work than the domestic population. Many economic forecasters assume that by 2030, population growth from immigration will supersede that from natural increases (births minus deaths).

Recruiting Workers. Only two OECD countries spent less than the U.S. on programs to encourage labor market participation — like job training programs and employment subsidies — as a share of their GDP. Economists suggest that we (theU.S.) invest more in such programs to get more people working.

We Have Assets: We may not be the drain on the social security purse that everyone fears. As retirees, many of us have saved for our so-called Golden Years. What sets us apart from our European counterparts is the share of income we older residents draw from assets, rather than government transfers, in our old age. That means we may not be the burden Gen Z fears we will be.

painting: Heidi Malott

Bank on It: Why aren't our adult kids moving out and on?

I remember it well: The thrill of graduating from college, getting my first "career" job and, highlight of highlights, moving out of my parent's house in the suburbs and into a one-bedroom apartment in The City with my best friend as a roommate.

A generation later, our kids graduated from college and did things a little differently. They had the thrill of independence by moving around the country, taking non-career jobs and living in group homes with an assortment of roommates.  They eventually figured out what they wanted to do with their lives. But they never lived in our house again.

Another generation later, reports tell us, the kids aren't into the kick of independence.  A good number of them aren't moving into their own apartments or taking a share of a room in a group house in a city in another part of the country: They're living at home with their parents--even if they have "career" jobs that pay well. They're doing this while they calculate how much in savings it will take for them to achieve their personal and financial goals. Those goals may not include living independently right now.

It's a trend that's been noticed by the NYTimes. Here's the newspaper's observation/explanation for the phenomenon:

Young adults are often encouraged to leave the nest as a rite of passage to establish financial independence and build a life and career away from their parents. But for some members of Generation Z and younger millennials, factors like the high cost of living, student debt, family obligations or cultural traditions keep them living at home for longer than expected. The pandemic and its resulting economic downturn also forced many young adults to move back in with their parents.

A Pew Research Center survey this past summer gives the rising trend a numerical perspective. 

In July 2022, half of adults ages 18 to 29 were living with one or both of their parents. This was down from a recent peak of 52% in June 2020 but still significantly higher than the share who were living with their parents in 2010 (44% on average that year) or 2000 (38% on average).

Many of us are waiting for our adult kids to move on and out, but generation Z  seems to see the world as more perilous and less financially sound than we did. And they're not going anywhere for now. The thrill is gone.

painting: Edward Hopper

 

 

The New Sandwich Generations: We're in the mix somewhere.

 

 

We've all heard of the sandwich generation--the one where we're on the hook for caring for our aged parents and our young children. What with many of us living longer and the needs of our adult children changing, there are two variations on the sandwich motif.

One is the club sandwich: We're taking care of our aging parents and still supporting our adult children.

The other is the grand-sandwich: We're taking care of our aging parents and helping out with our grandchildren.

Either way, the generation in the middle (it may be our adult children rather than us) has a load of emotional stress and time-consuming responsibilities say nothing of dealing with a financial squeeze.

A Washington Post story posts some of the details for those of us caught in the middle or worried about our adult children who are stuck there:

Point one: The financial burdens associated with being responsible for multiple generations are rising, but the main culprit may not be elderly parents but adult children.

With more post-college youths coming home to live with parents or doing so throughout school, there are now estimates that nearly 30% of 25-to-34 years olds live with their parents. Essentially this leaves parents taking care of many of their children's financial burdens in addition to tending to other responsibilities they may bring about.

Point two: The emotional stress of caring for elderly parents runs deep.

Those amid the sandwich generation are handed double duty by also wanting or needing to help take care of their aging parents—a role many consider far more their responsibility than taking care of adult children. Whether their parents live at home, in a facility or within their home, the stress can become overwhelming. The burdens of medical costs, helping with daily activities, overseeing supervision, legal considerations and other concerns can take a physical and emotional toll on top of ongoing financial concerns.

art: Rauschenberg

Money Matters: Should a financial gift come with strings attached?

We are a generation that wants to--especially if we have the wherewithal to--help our kids out financially. Whether it's a gift to assist with the downpayment on their first house or money to pay health insurance premiums, we're often very generous with our grown children.

Whatever the reasons behind the gift, there is always a question of whether they do with it what we intended. That is, if we hand over a chunk of cash to pay down their car loan, will we be angry if they use the cash to buy new clothes.

In a recent Social Qs column, Philip Galanes answered a reader who told Galanes she often sends her brother and sister-in-law, who were living in financially tight circumstances, a check "to make their lives easier." Her aim, she explained, was to make sure they had money for emergencies; that her largesse would, in effect, be put aside as a safety net. But when her brother called to thank her for a recent gift, he mentioned that he and his wife had used it to travel to Europe. Her question--and one that applies directly to those of us who are financially generous to our grown children--was, how could she make sure, without dictating how they use the money, that they use it responsibly--at least responsibly in her eyes.

Galanes's answer is a practical one for those of us who struggle with the same or a similar issue:

There is nothing wrong with calling your brother to say: “Please tell me to butt out if you like, but I worry about your financial security. If you ever have an emergency and can’t pay an essential bill, please let me know, and I will try to pitch in.” From a distance, this seems to be what you want to do: help protect them without becoming their bank or fairy godmother.

But to continue giving them money and then feeling resentful when they spend it differently from how you imagined, isn’t fair to any of you — particularly given your hazy sense of their financial condition and prudence.

In other words, we can tell our kids there's a string attached to a particular gift--paying off of a car loan, say--and hope they use it that way or we could pay off the loan directly. No point building up resentments over gifts: they're supposed to be joyful and helpful not a sourse of future ill will.

Blessed are those of us who are able to give the gift and trust our children to use it as they see best.

painting: Picasso

 

The Five Stages of Grandparenting

As parents we worried, watched and weaned our children through their various stages of growing up: from wee babies to toddlers to teens and beyond.  Now our kids are having kids and as grandparents we're experiencing those stages but in a different way. At least that is the point Karen Rancourt, who writes an advice column for Grand Magazine. as Dr. Gramma Karen, makes in her list of grandparent stages. 

The stages, Dr. Gramma Karen writes, "are intended to provide a framework to think about and better understand grandparenting roles and how these roles change as grandchildren age." Of course, they may vary as more grandchildren are added to the family. You can read it all here but below is my brief summary of the Big Five stages of grandparenting.

            Stage 1: Grandparents as indispensable contributors (birth to 4 years old): We the grandparents are very involved in our first-born grandchild's life, called into service by the inexperienced parents for advice and counsel. We're highly valued for our experience and wisdom.

           Stage 2: Grandparents as critical contributors (4 to 8): As our adult children become more practiced as parents, our greatest value is in spending time with our grandchild. We do a lot of teaching, educating and hanging out. Our grandchild may even consider us their best friend.

            Stage 3: Grandparents as important contributors (8-12): Friends become our grandchild's focal point. We're less of the main attraction. Our role is being social directors and chauffeurs, helping with the arrangements and transportation to help the grandchild be with their friends or go sport practices or art classes. We're chauffeurs; we support our grandchild from the sidelines.

            Stage 4: Grandparents as occasional contributors (12-16): The reality for many pf us is that our grandchild and their parents (our adult children) need us less as an active part of their lives. Our main role now is to be a  backup--we might take grandchild to an activity or doctor's appointment when the parents have other commitments.

            Stage 5: Grandparents as nonessential contributors (16 - adulthood): We realize, sigh, that we are no longer needed. Our work as participants in the ongoing growth and development of our grandchild is done.

As a grandparent in stage 5, I find that nonessential tag stings. And yet, much as child rearing was, each grandparenting stage is somehow more entrancing than the previous one. We may not be essential in stage 5, but we are still privy to the joy of being around our young adults and understanding the world through their eyes. 

I can't help but end with this snippet of Robert Browning verse: "Grow old along with me/the best is yet to be..."

 

 

Gifts for Grownchildren and Grandkids: The frustrations of the no "Thank-you" note

It's the irritant that won't go away: A good number of readers--of my blog and of advice columns--have vented deep anger about not being thanked for presents they send. Some have considered calling a halt to the gift-giving or, in the case of gift cards or cash, cutting down on the size of the gifts. Some of us hold out for written missives on fine-grained paper but many of us have evolved and accept a thank-you via email, text or phone message. All we want to know is that our gift was received and, even more, that it was appreciated.  For one reader of Carolyn Hax's column, the gift-giving was not just about bringing pleasure to a loved one. They were her way "to let them know we love them and that we are not going to forget that they are part of the family."

And therein lies the rub.  In her reply, Carolyn Hax zeroes in on a larger issue that she calls "the diminishing relevance of gifts for the emotional purpose we generally intend." Hax remembered receiving gifts from various relatives when she was a child and that the feeling of love for the sender was not from the gift but from year-round efforts to have a relationship with her.

The reflection leads her to look at the issue from the recipients’ point of view. And therein lies some explanation for the lack of response from our big and little loved ones.

... anyone buying gifts as emotional outreach is using steeply devalued currency. Another sweater/toy/tchotchke! Thanks?

Which doesn’t excuse the death of polite thank-yous — I will defend and urge and send them to my last breath — but may help explain it.

This is clear from the anguish I hear from the recipients’ side. Anything but the most useful, imaginative, sustainable or apt gift, small or large, risks incurring an obligation on the recipient. To find a use or place for it, to regift or dispose of it responsibly, to show somewhat unfelt gratitude for it, to tamp down the guilt of costing someone money and being a helpless party to natural resource depletion. Call these recipients killjoys or ingrates or both, but you can’t say they’re wrong.

Thus my advice: Think carefully about what you want these gifts to say to the children in your family. Try to think of a different, more personal, non-holiday-stuff-pegged way of saying whatever it is; adopt that way.

Observation: We are no longer the "finishing school" for our adult kids

We may not like the way our adult kids dress or tat their arms or use foul language. We may want them to change the way they cut their hair or, for their health's sake, lose weight! But "fixing" adult kids is a ship that has sailed. They are who and what they are--much as we'd like to tweak a habit or look or two.

Carolyn Hax addresses  one aspect of the "appearance" issue in an answer to a mom whose children use profanity on a regular basis. ("It makes my kids seem crass," the mom worries.) She wants to know what to do to correct her children's salty language, language that she fears could harm them professionally.

Here's the wisdom Hax imparts:

This isn’t a what-is-a-mother-to-do question anymore, not with your kids in their 20s.

Instead, it’s about where your authority ends and theirs (or anyone else’s) begins when it comes to decorum. Do you have standing to ask your kids to curb their profanity in your presence? Yes, you do, as anyone does. Do they have the right to ignore your requests? Yes, technically they do, though that’s rude and I hope they don’t exercise it. Do you have to stand for that? No, you don’t. But they’re your kids, so you may understandably have other priorities in your relationships with them.

art: self-portrait by Sara Cain

 

Holiday Greetings: And a reminder about stress and family get togethers.

The Holidays are upon us. May there be peace and joy in our lives and in family get-togethers.

But just in case, here's a column I wrote a few months ago about the behavioral stresses at play when our adult children are in our company for extended periods of time. May we all relax and enjoy our children's company and they revel in ours without pushing any emotional buttons. So as a reminder, here's the column on the baked-in stresses of holiday get-togethers with adult children:

The holidays are coming. Maybe you've been distracted by the disastrous hurricanes or the sudden outbreak of winter weather. But Thanksgiving is not that far away. That dinner often sits on the back burner because, unlike multi-generational family get-togethers around Christmas, it's supposedly free of stress and anxiety.

Don't you believe it! Thanksgiving may not mean gift-giving and big get-togethers at grandma's house; it may not have religious overtones or problems with someone drinking too much eggnog. But it still creates demands on family togetherness. 

One friend, whose son and daughter are both married with teenage children, is navigating a path between Thanksgiving "suggestions" from her children. The siblings had a falling out this summer and now their proposals for Thanksgiving dinner, though based on rational reasons, exclude the other one. A compromise has been hammered out: The grandparents (my friend and her spouse) will spend Thanksgiving Thursday dinner with their son, who lives nearby and travel to Boston on Friday to have a second Thanksgiving feast with their daughter and her family. It's not that the compromise is an unreasonable solution. In fact, many of us who can't be in two places at once, have doubled down (doubled up?) on Thanksgiving dinners. We did so last year.  For my friend, though, the double dinner makes it clear that the animosity between her children has not cleared up, and that's what's making her miserable about Thanksgiving.

There's another stress that may surface around holiday visits--especially when they include an overnight or two at our house or theirs. Some of our kids may be worried about spending too much time with us! This issue was posed and answered in a New York Times story with the provocative title: Your Mom is destined to annoy you

The column handed out suggestions to help our grown children survive a holiday visit with us. Since visits are a two-way street, here's the "sanity-preserving advice" they're getting that may apply to us as well.

Prepare for your inevitable regression. From our children's persepctive, "It’s not a question of if the regression is going to happen, it’s when."

Our kids are advised to ask themselves where there are "particular topics of conversation or physical places that tend to send your family into a tizzy" and then try to avoid those topics and places.

One solid piece of advice we can act on as well: "if the family dinner table always devolves into chaos, try going out to eat one night and see if it improves relations."

Get ready for parenting criticism. Our adult children--particularly our daughters--are on knife's edge waiting for us to criticize their mothering skills. How grandchildren are being raised is a major trigger for this dynamic. 

Our daughters are advised to “try to remind yourself that it feels like criticism, but it is an expression of caring. Your mother just wants everything to go well for you, and she’s trying to help (even if it makes you want to scream into a pillow)."

We are offered advice on how to keep that screaming to a minimum: "Bite your tongue, because even the most benign (to you) suggestion may be perceived as criticism." 

Make space for yourself. You will need an escape hatch from time to time.

Our kids are advised to create space in order to "get some emotional distance from your family." This could mean hiding out in the bathroom for 10 minutes to cool down, structuring the length of visits or springing for a hotel rather than staying in our guest room.

What works for them should work for us as well. It's not as though we aren't feeling similar tensions and need breathing room as well. Just don't let that bathroom get too crowded.

Don’t expect change. The holidays are stressful. "There won’t be a magical solution to your family trauma over the holidays."

This is not, our kids are advised--and we are too--"the time to bring up old baggage and expect to work through it."

Forewarned is forearmed. On with the holidays. Let joy be unconfined.

painting: Baillargeon

 

Observation: Parenting Coach Meghan Leahy on solving our grown children's problems

When our kids were young, we were their problem solvers. It came with the parenting territory. We had to keep them safe, help them understand how the world works and show them how to move toward independence.

Now that our kids are adults, does that territory need to be trimmed?

That's an issue parenting coach and Washington Post columnist Meghan Leahy addressed in this Q and A session.

The guest asking the Q was concerned that her 24-year-old daughter is depressed about her job and making little effort to find a new one. The mother writes that she is "trying to solve her problems for her, which leads to further issues."

 

Here's how Meghan suggests this mother deal with her daughter's problem.

 

"Back out and be supportive."

I would ask on the phone, "Would you like my advice or would you like me to listen?"

You could say, "I have noticed, Amira, that you've disliked this job for a while...what is standing in the way of changing that?" And then see what she says.

Otherwise, keep saying, "I trust that if and when you need support making a change, you will do it. I am here for you, no matter what. I love you."

Then, keep your boundaries.

That last line may be the most challenging. But what Meghan is telling us is this:  We're no longer in charge of solving our grown children's problems. Our job is to be good listeners and, if the opportunity seems right, make observations.

painting: Picasso

 

Covid Realities: The new normal for caring for our kids when they get sick.

Several years ago when my daughter lived clear across the country, she called late one evening. She was sick and so was her husband and the baby--my year-old granddaughter. "I wish you lived next door," she said in a dispirited, sick-person voice. I was on a plane the next morning, It's what we do if we can, and I could. I arrived to make soup. straighten the house but mostly take care of my baby Grand so her parents could get some rest.

Fast forward to last week. My son, daughter-in-law and their daughter--my 14-year old granddaughter--were all sick. My daughter-in-law was bedridden with an excruciating headache; my Grand had a fever and was congested; my son had what he thought was a bad cold. They tested and all of them were positive for Covid.

I did not hop on a plane.

This is the new reality. There are times when our grown children need us--or we may think they need our ministering care.  But we can't or shouldn't race to their side. It isn't just Covid that keeps us away--though that's a significant part. In ways that the pandemic accelerated, the home care we once provided has been supplanted by apps. Prescriptions can be delivered; so can food--prepared or otherwise. Friends and neighbors can be texted and asked to drop things off or run errands. As to taking care of my Grand: A 14-year-old is not a toddler; it's unlikely she would welcome an intrusion by granny and gramps even if it came in the form of chicken soup. She took care of herself. She had her laptop to pass the feverish hours and books from me for her Kindle.

I've had to re-think the ways in which I can be helpful or useful to my grown children if they become ill. When my husband and I were sick with Covid at the very beginning of the pandemic, my son and daughter checked in on us several times a day and ordered stuff to be delivered to us. We felt cared for. That, I remind myself, is the way things are now. I called and texted my son and his family; I ordered stuff for them. But I did not travel anywhere. As our doctor told my kids when we had Covid and they wanted to drive here to oversee our care, "All you can do if you come here," she said, "is get Covid."

They stayed home then. We stayed put now. It's the new normal.

painting: "Repose" by John Singer Sargeant

 

Our Children, Our Bosses: A change in the dynamics of who's taking charge of whom.

Friends of ours just returned from four weeks in Italy. Days of sunshine. Mornings with una tazza di caffè. So delightful. They stayed at a four-story house their son and his family have rented: Their daughter-in-law was appointed to a prestigious job at an international agency headquartered in Rome and so the family relocated. What that meant for my friends, who have been plagued by health issues these past few years, is that their son is no longer available (as he had been) to help them out when they have a health or house-maintenance problem.  The son, in his turn, is gently insisting that his parents move to Italy--the four-story house has a suite for them and he will be able to take care of them as needs arise.

A week after our friends returned from Rome, we had dinner together. "No way," they said. "We are not moving to Italy." Language issues aside (It's not a minor aside when you don't speak Italian and live in Italy.), they were not, they said "ready" to make such a move, a move that would make them totally dependent on their son and his family. How would they make friends? Have any kind of community life? Be able to talk to anyone outside of the house?

The question that hung in the air: When is one "ready" to pull up roots and move near one's grown children? Italy may throw a slightly romantic cast on such a decision, but whether it's Rome or Miami or Chicago (or wherever a grown child now lives), it's disorienting to leave a "life" behind and start over. Should we do it when we're young enough to join communities and build a new life? Or do we wait until we're deep into our dotage and don't have many good choices left?

Even more to the point: Should it be our children who are telling us (gently insisting) what to do and when to do it? During Covid, when those of us over 65 were told we were at greater risk than everyone else, many of us found our children got bossy: Telling us to stay home and keep ourselves under strict quarantine.  I posted about that phenomenon here and here. 

Within my own family, my children have brought up the "relocation" subject in a less insistent way. Their dad and I are without major health problems. We may no longer be taking bicycling vacations in Brittany, but we're still leading active lives. Our children want to know what we'd want to do if/when the time came that we couldn't manage on our own. Would we want to move to a supportive living facility near them or where we are? So hard to imagine not being able to take care of oneself. But who knows what lies ahead?

My daughter put it this way: "It's hard to imagine this most ordinary thing."

That said, the seed has been planted--by them for us. The issue is not front-of-mind but it's back there somewhere, ready to be addressed when we're "ready."

photo: Maia Lemov

Family Harmony and Holidays: The stress is baked in

The holidays are coming. Maybe you've been distracted by the disastrous hurricanes or the sudden outbreak of winter weather. But Thanksgiving is not that far away. That dinner often sits on the back burner because, unlike multi-generational family get-togethers around Christmas, it's supposedly free of stress and anxiety.

Don't you believe it! Thanksgiving may not mean gift-giving and big get-togethers at grandma's house; it may not have religious overtones or problems with someone drinking too much eggnog. But it still creates demands on family togetherness. 

One friend, whose son and daughter are both married with teenage children, is navigating a path between Thanksgiving "suggestions" from her children. The siblings had a falling out this summer and now their proposals for Thanksgiving dinner, though based on rational reasons, exclude the other one. A compromise has been hammered out: The grandparents (my friend and her spouse) will spend Thanksgiving Thursday dinner with their son, who lives nearby and travel to Boston on Friday to have a second Thanksgiving feast with their daughter and her family. It's not that the compromise is an unreasonable solution. In fact, many of us who can't be in two places at once, have doubled down (doubled up?) on Thanksgiving dinners. We did so last year.  For my friend, though, the double dinner makes it clear that the animosity between her children has not cleared up, and that's what's making her miserable about Thanksgiving.

There's another stress that may surface around holiday visits--especially when they include an overnight or two at our house or theirs. Some of our kids may be worried about spending too much time with us! This issue was posed and answered in a New York Times story with the provocative title: Your Mom is destined to annoy you

The column handed out suggestions to help our grown children survive a holiday visit with us. Since visits are a two-way street, here's the "sanity-preserving advice" they're getting that may apply to us as well.

Prepare for your inevitable regression. From our children's persepctive, "It’s not a question of if the regression is going to happen, it’s when."

Our kids are advised to ask themselves where there are "particular topics of conversation or physical places that tend to send your family into a tizzy" and then try to avoid those topics and places.

One solid piece of advice we can act on as well: "if the family dinner table always devolves into chaos, try going out to eat one night and see if it improves relations."

Get ready for parenting criticism. Our adult children--particularly our daughters--are on knife's edge waiting for us to criticize their mothering skills. How grandchildren are being raised is a major trigger for this dynamic. 

Our daughters are advised to “try to remind yourself that it feels like criticism, but it is an expression of caring. Your mother just wants everything to go well for you, and she’s trying to help (even if it makes you want to scream into a pillow)."

We are offered advice on how to keep that screaming to a minimum: "Bite your tongue, because even the most benign (to you) suggestion may be perceived as criticism." 

Make space for yourself. You will need an escape hatch from time to time.

Our kids are advised to create space in order to "get some emotional distance from your family." This could mean hiding out in the bathroom for 10 minutes to cool down, structuring the length of visits or springing for a hotel rather than staying in our guest room.

What works for them should work for us as well. It's not as though we aren't feeling similar tensions and need breathing room as well. Just don't let that bathroom get too crowded.

Don’t expect change. The holidays are stressful. "There won’t be a magical solution to your family trauma over the holidays."

This is not, our kids are advised--and we are too--"the time to bring up old baggage and expect to work through it."

Forewarned is forearmed. On with the holidays. Let joy be unconfined.

painting: "Concert" by Gerrit von Honthorst

 

Togetherness through Technology: Making up for a canceled visit.

Our bags were packed, boarding passes downloaded and shuttle to the airport confirmed. The night before we were to leave to visit our son and his family for the weekend, a text arrived. Our DIL just wanted us to know she wouldn't be home when we arrived but our teenage granddaughter would be. Then the long back-and-forth text conversation got underway.

Readers, I won't bore you with the details, but our DIL, an only child, has a lot of "sandwich generation" stuff on her plate: A hospitalized aunt (never married; no children) who lost her hearing aids and smartphone; parents (one with cognitive issues) in mid-move to a house near her where there was a "construction" emergency there while it was being readied for their arrival. Nothing was going smoothly for either her aunt or her parents.  She assured us we should come; she might be distracted but we were welcome.

We opted not to go, in part because we didn't want to be an additional burden but also because we were weary from a tiring trip the previous weekend. It was the right decision to make. That's what I kept telling myself when the blues over not being able to hug our son, grandchild and DIL set in.

That's when technology stepped in to take some of the edge off the disappointment.

We were supposed to watch a soccer game together on my son's big-screen TV. My older granddaughter,  a freshman at a small college in the midwest, made the soccer team and the game was available via a link to the college's website. Watching together couldn't happen but we followed the game on our iPad; they watched on their TV and we texted back and forth about every pass and move our granddaughter made while she was in the game.  It was almost like being together and being there (except that the players are teeny tiny on an iPad).

That evening, we had a date with the at-home granddaughter who's just starting high school. We  FaceTime chatted for almost an hour--what the first week of high school was like, what classes she was taking, what books she was reading, how her ninja classes were going. The leisurely one-on-one chat, with some asides for family commentary, made us feel like we had a good visit with a teenager who, like many kids her age, spends most of their time on their iPhones and in their bedrooms.  

The granola I baked to bring to them is in the freezer (old technology). Our bags are unpacked. But so is some of the funk I felt when we had to cancel. That's the upside of technology: It can put us in our children's homes, virtually and for a moment. It's not as warm as a hug but it's not as removed as a phone call.

photo credit: Palo Coleman

Money Matters: Raising cash to help your kids fix up their house

If I were to survey my friends and their friends, I'm pretty sure I would find that almost all of us who could afford it helped our grown kids buy their first home. As a generational trend, it's kind of what we did and do. For some of us, the help is a loan and we expect to be repaid. For others, whatever chunk of the downpayment we give them is a gift, no strings attached beyond an expectation of a few invites to dinner.

But what happens when we retire and feel less flush--especially today as the financial markets are eating away at our savings. Our kids may already own a house but may need substantial help to update or add on to it--for a growing family or even for a suite for us.

Should we tap our IRA to help them out? Or just say no? For one set of parents whose daughter needed a loan to renovate her house, the answer was yes, and with good reason. Once the renovation was complete, they planned to sell their house and move into their daughter's home. They couldn't sell their house to raise money since their daughter and her family were living with them while the renovation is underway.

So, how to finance the help for a daughter who's very much part of their future living arrangement?  The parents wrote to a Washington Post real estate columnist to ask whether they should tap their IRA for the $300,000 to lend their daughter or if there is a better way to borrow to finance the renovation, which is slated to take about a year. The parents plan to use the proceeds from the eventual sale of their home to boost their retirement account or pay off any loan they may incur.

Using IRA funds may be the simplest way to tap into money--interest-free cash! no closing costs! no bank fees! But it would be the worst of all possible options. Withdrawing such a large amount from an IRA would trigger a huge tax bill.

The columnist suggested other options. Here are the nuts and bolts of two options: A cash-out refinance of the parent's house would raise money but it would incur interest rates (ever-rising) and upfront fees. A home equity line of credit wouldn't raise quite as much money as a refinance could but would probably mean higher interest rates on the loan--though lower fees/closing costs. The interest rates might not be that much of a factor--if the renovation is finished on time and the parents can sell their house quickly to repay the loan.

Which is a long way of saying, our helping hand is a riskier business than ever.

(BTW: If you want to know more details on how the relative costs of the refinance versus home equity line of credit might work out, check this link to the Post story.)

art: Rauschenberg, Third Time

 

 

Are We Still the Boss? Experts have their say on the wisdom of being advisors to our adult children

Best if we had started when our kids were teens but it's never too late to remember that we have moved from being the boss of them to being consultants to our grown children--even as it's hard to act on that in the heat of a "moment."

This is what Amy Joyce wrote about in one of her On Parenting columns in the Washington Post. Her topic was more precise: It was about parenting teens and how to go about transitioning away from the boss model. She focused on the science-based research of Stixrud and Johnson in their book “What Do You Say? How to Talk With Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance and a Happy Home.”

Stixrud and Johnson underscore the importance of resisting the urge to solve a teen's problems. This holding back can help kids take responsibility for their decisions and thereby let them grow into independent adults. Those adults can in turn look to their parents for advice. They won't need us to tell them what to do. Stixrud and Johnson point out that the stakes during these teen years are high:

"We need to remind ourselves that we’re going to have a relationship with our kids when they are adults longer than we ever did when they were children."

Naturally, the same need to resist problem-solving goes for when our children are fully grown adults. Not that it's easy to keep our views and advice to ourselves, as suggested in this letter to Carolyn Hax from a mother about her 40-year-old son.

The son, who lives in a city 900 miles away from his parents, called to tell them that he is getting divorced. The writer is surprised that the marriage has turned sour and that her son (the father of two young children) is in love with someone other than his wife. The mother/grandmother is "horrified by his behavior" and wants to tell her son how far short he has fallen "in becoming the person" she raised him to be. She wants to, in effect, be the boss and let him know his decision is wrong, that she doesn't approve and he should make things right--or else. The "or else," is that she refuses to meet the "other" woman.

Hax's advice circles back to the ideas spelled out by Stixrud-Johnson. So if we needed one more reminder of the dangers of being bossy, here's how Hax puts it:

  "At this stage in all your lives, "parent" is your title but not your job."

credit: painting by Picasso

Money Matters: When our heirs get ahead of themselves (and us).

We have an elderly cousin. He never married and lives alone in a Park Avenue apartment where the walls are lined with old paintings that may or may not be worth a small fortune. His closest relatives (besides us and some second cousins) are two nephews. One of them has struggled financially, and our cousin helped his nephew when he was in crisis a decade ago. Now the nephew has called his uncle and asked for help again, only this time he framed his request as "an advance on my inheritance."

Our cousin was shocked, hurt and angry--at the presumption of inheritance and because this was his nephew's first contact with him in more than a year. 

Maybe because this happened within our family, we--the editorial we that is-- weren't surprised to read a similar case of entitlement in a Social Qs. This time, it was a grown-up grandson. The grandmother had invited the family, including the grandson and his wife, on an all-expenses-paid cruise to Alaska. The grandson couldn't make it--he and his wife are expecting a baby soon. But the grandson didn't just send his regrets. He asked his grandmother for a cash gift equal to what she would have spent on him to join the family trip. He suggested she donate the money to the baby's college fund.

"I  am stunned," the grandmother writes to Philip Galanes. "I was happy to help them with wedding expenses and part of the down payment on their first home. But I told him this is not how life works. Was I wrong?"

Before I share Galanes' wise answer to the stunned grandma, I'll let off a little steam. What is it with this sense of entitlement to a parent, grandparent or uncle's "fortune" before they have closed out their lives? If a close family member has a financial emergency, why not make the case for a loan, preferably with a payback schedule? Okay. Steam vented.

Galanes was not sympathetic to the grandson's request."You know it's bad when I'm shocked," he wrote.

"I see two ways of reading your grandson’s nervy request: He may be an entitled young man who has grown too comfortable counting your money as his. Or — and this requires some compassion — freaked out by the pending responsibilities of parenthood, he might have made a silly cash grab.

In either event, you were right to refuse him. Your generous offer to spring for a family vacation does not oblige you to make compensatory payments to those who are unable to attend. I would have a follow-up conversation with your grandson to clear the air.

...Tell him he is not entitled to your money and your invitations do not include an option to collect their cash value instead.

But that's not all Galanes had to say:

Let him know, too, that his behavior was hurtful, and risked making you feel like a walking ATM.

Which is exactly how our cousin felt. And why he's taken his ATM out of service.

painting: Marius van Reymerswaelle