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

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

Grandparent Interference: Mind the intergenerational gap and the boundaries our children set for us

Are our adult children too tough about what their children can and cannot eat or drink? It's especially annoying when we are guilt-tripped out of offering them our just-baked chocolate chip muffins or handing them a cold, individual box of apple juice.  We have been asked not to provide such malnourishment. So we offer what's allowed--or we cheat and indulge our grandkids.

It's not easy being a grandparent. Nor, evidently, is it easy being a parent with parents who don't mind the boundaries they have set for us. A NYTimes article painted the dilemma our children face this way:

"Parenting can often feel like trying to survive amid barely controlled chaos, so having a wise, experienced grandparent to help out can be lifesaving. But if that grandparent has trouble adhering to basic boundaries, it can feel as if the chaos has maddeningly multiplied."

The list of prime triggers for this maddening multiplication starts with religious practices and goes on to include disciplinary styles, technology and diet.

The article has a quote from a clinical psychologist who has a name for some of us. To wit,

“I would place ‘intrusive grandparents’ in the general category of challenges that adults and couples face in managing relationships with their respective families of origin, and with parents in particular.”

The article is aimed at advising our adult children on how they can kindly, gently but effectively deal with the 'intrusive grandparent.' One point of that advice contains a nugget of truth--a reminder--for all of us, even those of us who tiptoe politely around the boundaries our children have set for us.

"Bear in mind that child-rearing advice often changes from one generation to the next, so there are bound to be some ideas that a grandparent subscribes to — most likely ones that you were raised with — that you find outdated now."

I'll close out this post with an important, feel-good nugget from the article:

 “Grandparent love and knowledge is essential to a child’s self-esteem and self-identity. They need to see themselves as part of something larger than their parents. They need to find their place and feel part of a family that has a history.”

art: Rauschenberg

What if we don't like the way our children parent their children? Part 2

A few weeks ago, I posted an observation from Meghan Leahy on the limits we should impose on ourselves. That is, we should not offer our adult children advice on parenting their children--unless they've asked us for it. In that post, a grandmother was concerned about the chaos of her grandchildren's bedtime. In this post, it's mealtime issues and a 2-year-old's tantrums. Like the grandparent upset about bedtime routines, the mealtime-worried grandmother is dealing with an adult child whose marriage is falling apart.

So here's Megan Leahy again, this time in answer to a grandmother concerned about the way her son is handling his 2- and 5-year old children. The grandmother has an up-close view of the family dynamic because her son is getting a divorce and has moved into her and her husband's home where, a few days a week, he has custody of and takes care of his two small children. The grandmother complains about the son's lack of parental discipline at mealtimes--he allows the 2-year-old to have ice cream before dinner or an ice pop for breakfast. The grandmother cannot abide the way this small child throws tantrums "to get her way, and her dad always gives in." She has been holding her tongue but says it's getting increasingly hard to do so. Here's Meghan to the rescue:

"I can feel your grandparenting (and parenting) frustration loud and clear. Many of us have been in situations where we want to yell, “Just say no to the darn kid!” But we don’t, because we know it could embarrass and undermine the parent, make a bad situation worse, divide loyalties or start a heated disagreement in front of the children. Holding this frustration in is you staying mature. And trust me: Many parents can (and do) lament how their own parents nagged, lectured and shamed their parenting choices. It really is a relationship killer, so good on you for holding your tongue."

Is there a middle ground between telling her son what to do and keeping her lip zipped? Leahy thinks there's room to have her say:

"Because he doesn’t have the kids half the time, maybe you could take him out to dinner and just listen to him. Let him vent about the divorce or single parenting or whatever is on his mind. I could be wrong, but I bet he knows that the ice pops, wasted food and whining aren’t great, but he could be too overwhelmed to see it clearly or know what to do about it. By offering a compassionate, nonjudgmental ear, you free your son to put down his burdens for a bit, and when people do that, they are more likely to find the courage to do something different."

Leahy acknowledges that these parenting "mistakes" are unfolding under the grandmother's roof, and doesn't that give her a say in how to deal with her grandchild's tantrums? Leahy suggests the grandmother make herself scarce when meltdowns are going on.

"Go for a walk with a friend, go to another floor or put on some headphones. Do anything to make yourself feel less provoked.

Some people may read this and feel affronted: “It is their house, and the grandparent needs to hide?” Well, yes and no. I am suggesting that judging, critiquing and losing your cool in the moment are not going to work out well for any relationship in the house. Instead, stay out of it (in the moment), and find another way to support your son. You can keep your boundaries, just don’t do it during the tantrum or while eating."

painting: Renoir

Leaving a Legacy: Passing on the passwords and other digital conundrums

Pity our poor adult children. When they meet the love of their life and decide to commit to each other, they face an ordeal we didn't: Whether to and how to merge digital accounts. If newlyweds decide to save money by using one Spotify account--rather than each having his/her own--will Spotify's algorithms let one person's Latin beats seep into the other's country music vibe?

Well, that's their problem to solve. But we play a role in some of their other digital account mergers. A son may be using our Netflix account while his bride may be using her parents' password. Do we kick him off? Should they elect to leave their home bases and start a new account that's their own?

Hitting even closer to home: Many of us still carry our grown children on our cellphone family plan. Do we kick them off once they marry or are in a committed relationship? Shouldn't they start a cellphone plan of their own? After all, one day they may be putting their own children on a cellphone family plan.

There is one digital issue that affects us more directly: How do we keep passwords to our financial accounts to ourselves and yet make sure, as a matter of estate planning, that our heirs have access to them?

One expert Erin Lowry, put it this way in a Washington Post story, 

"It can be painful to talk about estate planning, ...but if one partner dies, the other will need access to important digital accounts. Adopt some sort of password manager, choose beneficiaries and set up “transfer on death” designations for your primary accounts. Even Facebook has legacy contacts who can access accounts if the holder dies."

Now that I've put that excellent advice into a blog post, how long is it going to take me to act on it? Don't ask!

photo: Maia Lemov

 

Observation: Meghan Leahy on parenting and grandparenting 101.

Are we ever 100 percent pleased with the way our kids are bringing up their kids? There's always something we think they're getting wrong. That's what's behind Meghan Leahy's  observation on our role as parents of adult children and as grandparents within their family dynamic. (Her comments are in answer to a  grandmother who is spending the summer with her daughter's family and is worried about her grandchildren's chaotic bedtime routine.) 

"Your daughter and grandchildren are very fortunate to have you for the summer. The most hopeful statement in this letter is, “My plan in being here was to help my daughter and accept things as they are, and to establish a trusting relationship with the children.” That is a worthy goal, and if you can do that in your time there, that’s enough. In fact, accepting things as they are is one of the most powerful ideas a person can aspire to: to not be feckless, but to understand how little we have control over. Keeping a stance of humility is the best way to be of true assistance. You won’t force your notions, opinions or judgments upon your daughter and grandchildren, and instead will be of true service.

painting:Renoir

 

 

Money Matters: Can we control the gifts rich relatives give our kids?

We're a protective species. When it comes to our kids, we want fair play in all things, even when it's only a matter of gifts from family members. Or maybe I should say, especially when it's gifts from family members and even more especially when those relatives happen to be rich. We may not want them to give our kids hefty high school or college graduation checks for fear of our kids feeling "entitled." Or we may appreciate their being generous but we want them to be even-handed--making as big a fuss over one child as the next. (I posted on this issue here.)

Beyond fairness, we may have high expectations that a wealthy uncle or sister will shower our child with a lavish wedding gift when that child marries, a gift that might help set them up in life.

That was the issue raised in Social Qs. The complaint a mother of the bride sent to Philip Galanes was straightforward:

My daughter got married last month...My sister and her husband came with their two children. They are extremely wealthy — like, flying-on-private-jets-to-expensive-vacation-homes wealthy! (We are not.) I assumed they would give my daughter a generous cash gift to be used as an eventual down payment on a home. Instead, they gave her five place settings from her gift registry that cost $500. I am hurt and angry about their lack of generosity. My mother thinks I should talk to my sister about this so it doesn’t affect our relationship. Your thoughts?

It will come as no surprise to anyone who follows Social Qs that Galanes sees the situation through a different prism. He reminds the mother of the bride that she is not entitled to "commandeer other people's money."

Galanes then adds a sound observation and solid piece of advice:

"Where I come from, $500 is not a chintzy wedding gift. And you didn’t say anything about your daughter’s relationship with her aunt and uncle. So I disagree with your mother for now: Don’t talk to your sister about her gift until you have made peace with the fact that it was hers to give."

photo credit: Maia Lemov

Covid Seniors: Are our adult kids still trying to be our parents?

Some of us whose adult children are now of sandwich-generation age--meaning their teen- and 20-something kids are becoming independent while their parents are evolving toward ancient--have a "take control" attitude toward their parents. It may be a hangover from the Covad pandemic. Back in those bad old days, a good number of adult kids, seeing their parents as vulnerable, set down rules for us--as though they had become our parents. What I saw among my friends were dictates like these: No shopping even if masked; no outdoor visits with friends (even if masked); no indoor visits with grandkids (only waves from the window).

Now that the pandemic has eased--or at least, the way we live with it has evolved--some of us are finding our kids haven't taken the foot off the controls. Again, I see it among my friends, especially those with health problems. But now I have news of it from afar. Well, as afar as Philip Galanes and his Social Q column

In the Galanes instance, a reader/letterwriter is a middle-aged man who is alarmed because his partner wants to move his 80-year-old parents who live in a distant city into his and his partner's home. The partner wants to remodel the home to accommodate his parents but the reader is looking for another solution--say, offering to contribute to a house or apartment for the parents that's in a nearby neighborhood but not in the reader's home.

Galanes's answer looks at the issue from the parents' point of view. He defends our autonomy and ends with a point we might want to make if we feel our kids are getting too, well, controlling. Here's some of Galanes'reply:

....I’ve been the self-appointed savior of an older parent, too! I know your partner is acting out of love (and fear). But his parents are old — not pieces of furniture to be carted from state to state. Your partner should begin this discussion by asking his parents what they would like if they were to need more help.

They may be part of a vibrant community of friends and neighbors who enrich their daily lives. They may prefer to age in place (with appropriate help) or at an assisted-living facility nearby....And all these options avoid the drastic steps of remodeling homes or buying new ones in a state where their son may be the only person they know.

I don’t minimize the practical or emotional complexities of aging. Your partner’s parents are lucky to have a loving son in their corner. And for all we know, they may want to move — at which point, we can take up your concern. But respecting their autonomy has to be the core of this discussion. They’ve seen a thing or two in their 80-odd years! Let them lead the way for as long as they can.

painting: R Bearden

Compassion for Today's Adult Kids, Part 2: Parenting and the fearful world of "canceling"

We more senior parents are somewhat removed from the modern-day stresses our adult children and grandchildren are experiencing. (see my post last week) That list did not include one of the most pernicious stresses: A cancelation and self-censorship culture, particularly on college campuses.  You may know all about it but I had only the vaguest of notions until a recent visit to an adult son and his family brought the threat of "canceling" or public shaming into focus.

During my visit we were talking, casually at first, about social media and its effects, how social media platforms are touted as free speech forums but do some of the postings go too far in that direction? The conversation veered into social media and its role in self-censorship and, in effect, a loss of free speech. Now we were talking about whether the threat of being the object of a social media storm keeps students from expressing non-mainstream opinions.

I asked a grandson, who's a rising senior in college, whether he felt free to express his opinion in classrooms or socially on campus. He answered without hesitation: He did not.  It was too dangerous. It could cost him friendships and his social standing.

Was he over-reacting? Was his experience an anomaly? I turned to Google and it didn't take much of a search to see that he was smack dab in the mainstream.

Two years ago, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE,  reported the results of a survey of nearly 20,000 undergraduate students from 55 colleges and universities.

60 percent of students have at one point felt they couldn’t express an opinion on campus because they feared how other students, professors or college administrators would respond.

A year later a 2021 survey from College Pulse and FIRE of some 37,000 students at 159 colleges reported an acceleration of a negative atmosphere on campuses:

80 percent of students said they self-censor at least some of the time.

48 percent of undergraduate students described themselves as “somewhat uncomfortable” or “very uncomfortable” with expressing their views on a controversial topic in the classroom.

66 percent said it is acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus, and almost 25 percent said it is acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech.

In a 2022 essay for the NYTimes, a University of Virginia senior wrote that self-censorship at her college was common. Among the points she made about the situation in the classroom were these:

--Backlash for unpopular opinions is so commonplace that many students have stopped voicing them, sometimes fearing lower grades if they don’t censor themselves. 

--Criticism can quickly transform into public shaming, thereby stifling learning.

--She asks: "Is it brave to risk your social standing by saying something unpopular? Yes. Is it reasonable to ask college students ...to solve this problem independently? No."

--Her conclusion: "My college experience has been defined by strict ideological conformity. Students of all political persuasions hold back — in class discussions, in friendly conversations, on social media — from saying what we really think.

As parents, what advice do we have for our college students or our adult children who are the parents of these students? Do we repeat the homilies we believed in our day: Speak up. Be rigorous in debate. Explore the ideas of others. How else can we reach a ground of common understanding? For those of us who've ventured out of our pandemic-created cocoons, we're learning that such words may be true but they no longer apply.

It feels odd to hark back to a U.S.President who failed to rise to meet the moment, but in a 1928 presidential campaign speech, Herbert Hoover talked about  “ 'the American system of rugged individualism' — the notion that America was a place of free markets, individual thought and a dogged skepticism of state-imposed conformity."

Is it safe to say, Good Old Herbert Hoover?

Work of art: Rodin's The Thinker

Compassion for our adult kids who are parenting in today's world

When I first became a parent, my mother would chime in with kid-raising tips. Some of it was helpful; some annoying but for the most part there was little in her experience of raising my brother and myself to clue her in on how to deal with such modern-day (modern for my generation) issues as Saturday morning cartoons on TV and the ads that accompanied them.

I am my mother now. My Saturday morning TV issue pales compared to what my adult children have been dealing with in raising their children: Limiting screen time and keeping them safe from the Internet's pernicious access to pornographic, violent or misinformed material. The pandemic came along and made everything worse. And now comes an unpredictable economy at a time where school shootings aren't rare and classrooms are political battlegrounds. Even if my children wanted my advice on these issues (they haven't asked), I would have no previous experience from which to draw.

"There's almost not a word to express the stress parents are under right now. 'Overwhelmed' doesn't cut it. It's beyond anything we've ever experienced." This is what the founder of the Parent Coaching Institute told a reporter at an Axios newsletter.

The newsletter takes note of the specifics of what may be overwhelming the parents of our grandchildren (Click on the embedded links for more details):

The rising cost of gas, groceries and other daily expenses. These top the list of stressors, according to a March poll

Children have questions about the world's wars.

Sadness about the relationships and opportunities the pandemic is robbing from them.

Fear and anger about the planet warming.

COVID

Clashes over teaching about racism and U.S. history

A renewed debate over gun control

Having issues that affect kids and parents at the center of American politics.

If there is a silver lining, Axios tells us, it's that "hard times can be opportunities to strengthen relationships." That's backed up by census data that reports that parents say they've become closer to their children during COVID lockdowns and that they are eating more meals together; parents of younger children say they are reading to their kids more often.

All of which makes me feel that the pillars of our old-fashioned age of parenting--bedtime stories as a nightly ritual; dinnertime together as a daily tradition--are relevant. Plus, we still have one piece of timeless advice worth offering our stressed children: Take care of yourself. Your children need you rested and ready--or at least somewhere close to that.

Painting: Ivan Canu, Ferryman