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

Grandparent Rivalries: The social media effect

When we have grandchildren we can be tugged into a competitive frenzy with out co-grandparents:  If our grandkids see their other grandparents more often than they see us, does that mean they'll love them more?  Is the bond between grandparent and grandchild dependent on gifts the other grandparents bring or favors we offer?

A Carolyn Hax reader raised a variation on that worry: Can social media posts reflect our relationship with our Grands vis a vis the other grandparents. Here are two Carolyn Hax anecdotes that circle around that question.

Complaint one: A daughter-in-law posts regularly on social media about her parents and what terrific grandparents they are. The posts are full of photos of the grandparents playing with their grandchild. The grandparents live in the same West Coast town as the young family does. The daughter-in-law never posts about her in-laws and how great it is of them to fly across the country to visit every few months and to take the whole family on vacation in the summer. She never posts photos of the East Coast grandparents on visits or vacations with the family.  The East Coast grandma feels under-appreciated by the lack of balance in the social media attention and resentful of the social media love showered on the other grandparents. 

It may be that the daughter-in-law is more comfortable talking about her parents on social media than she is about her husband's parents. Or she's addressing friends who know her parents. Or something else totally benign. As Carolyn Hax noted, there can be a host of non-negative reasons for being ignored on social media and the East Coast grannie should free herself from worry by coming up with a benign reason for the uneven coverage. Beyond that, Hax's bottom line is this: "It's social freaking media. Ignore, ignore, ignore."

Complaint two: The other variation on this social media theme comes from a daughter-in-law who writes to Hax to complain about her mother-in-law's social media misrepresentation of her relationship with the grandchild. She frames herself as an active, involved grandmother when she is not--she wasn't before Covid made visiting difficult and once the quarantine set in, she refused zoom or other Internet visit options. On social media, the mother-in-law paints herself as a poor-me victim of the pandemic and her loss of closeness with her granddaughter. The daughter-in-law resents the general injustice of the misrepresentation.

Hax's reaction follows along the lines of her previous ignore, ignore, ignore and advises the daughter-in-law: "Stop following her on social media. It is not oxygen; you can cut it off completely, immediately and forever, and still not die."

Both of these episodes made me think of a line from Lisa Carpenter's first book, The First Time Grandmother's Journal (my blog post on her book is here)  that taps into the core of finding your footing as a grandmother. She writes of her own journey and says, "I just needed to be true to myself and define the role on my own terms, in my own way." To which I would add this update: No need to let social media do that defining for us. 

painting: Family, Romare Bearden

 

Money Matters: Grown children and the financial intelligence gap

A letter to a financial expert asking for advice about an inheritance was not your usual request. The question came from a woman whose father-in-law left her 29-year-old daughter---his granddaughter--a sizeable fortune in a trust that was currently being managed by her daughter's father. When the daughter reaches 30, however, she is eligible to manage the trust herself. Few of us are in the situation of being the parent of a child who is inheriting a fortune.  And yet, though the sums of money may be significantly substantial, the issue this parent faces is one many of us worry about: Will our grown children be able to handle financial responsibilities if we're no longer around to help them. How do we prepare them?

If you're interested, you can read here the expert's advice on helping the daughter understand her financial challenges and choose an adviser to manage the money.

But the expert's advice on preparing a child to be engaged in and understand how to handle financial responsibilities applies more universally. Here are some points Quentin Fottrell, who writes as the Moneyist, makes:

Encourage them to ask questions:

Unless your daughter builds enough financial confidence to ask questions and learn about how she can invest her money, and trust her instincts and establish her own risk tolerance when it comes to investments, she is vulnerable to another person stepping in and filling your husband’s shoes, particularly when he is no longer around to help.

Let them make decisions:

Trusting your daughter to make the right decisions is part of her growing up....The best you can do is to lead by example, and — I’m with you — part of that is allowing her to make her own decisions, as you and your husband have done with your own lives.

Talk things over with them:

Bottom line: You want your daughter to become an active decision maker, even if the answer is to do nothing for now; learn the basics of investing so she knows what questions to ask; and not hand her fortune over to one person to make decisions without her knowledge or understanding. It’s her money, after all.

The first step is for you both to sit down with your daughter and include her in these conversations. You will discover that you will all learn from one another.

painting: Marinus Van Reymerswaelle, 1539

 

 

How inclusive should we be when our kids bring home new romantic partners?

It's a tap dance we do when our kids bring a new romantic interest home. If it's for a weekend or overnight, do we assume they'll want to be in the same bedroom or sleep on the same sofa bed? (I wrote about some of those challenges here and here.)

When the relationship is new but "serious" we need to take care to neither warmly over-embrace nor coldly underplay the relationship. If we lean too far from neutral we're sending a message we may not want to--or shouldn't--send. Since we're just barely on the far side of the holidays, many of us may have grappled with this when one or more of our children brought new romantic-interest guests to our family gathering. (If so, I would love it if you would leave me a comment on how it went.)

For many of us, the issue behind the guest-bringing is whether it signifies a ratcheting up of our child's relationship and, if so, should we adjust our welcome mat accordingly. If our child has intimated that the relationship is "serious," how does that translate into family moments.

Here's a case in point: A reader who signed her question "Carol" asked Philip Galanes at Social Qs what to do about formal photographs that would be taken at a birthday celebration for Carol's father's milestone birthday. One of Carol's daughters, who's in her late-20s, was bringing her serious boyfriend of six months to the gala. Carol asks: "Should he be included in the family photos?"

As usual, Galanes puts the photo-taking issue into a larger perspective:

Consult your daughter. Tell her you want to respect her relationship, but you don’t want to put pressure on it. Then ask her how she’d like to handle family photographs, maybe including the boyfriend in some, but not others. Err on the side of inclusion, though. You don’t want to hurt her. Your relationship with her is more important than photographs.

painting: by Paul Gauguin

Thank You Notes: Once again into the fray of a failure to acknowledge a gift

We are midway into the Holiday week. The family feasting and gift-giving parts are behind us. Behind us, yes, but those of us who weren't present to see our presents unwrapped by our grown children or grandchildren still want to know that, hey, they liked it, and more importantly that it wasn't lost in the mail. The official thanks might come in the form of a video of the opening of our gift.  Or an email. Or a text. Or even an old-fashioned phone call. Whatever it is, it doesn't have to be pen on paper. A thanks is a thanks is a thanks, an issue I've covered here and here  and here.

But giving a shout-out of thanks can be a complicated issue. What happens when our children don't thank relatives who have sent them gifts. We may try to get our adult child or grandchild to pen a note--or supply them with a text address. But if that doesn't work, what options do we have?

Meghan Leahy addressed this issue in a Washington Post Parenting Q&A. In an online chat a parent wrote that her young adult daughter had received a generous graduation gift from her uncle but had not written a thank you note. "I have tried to get her to do it and now we are fighting," the parent wrote. "I'm ashamed that she hasn't said thank you. Now she is in her corner, and I am very embarrassed. What's the mature way to handle this?"

Here's Leahy's two-step solution:

I want you to write a generous thank-you note from your whole family, and include some beautiful flowers or a yummy treat, too.

Acknowledge their hurt and how ungracious she appears, and let them know that you are working on it and that it isn't personal. Then move on and drop this with your daughter. Work on your relationship with her by finding ways to connect in any way you can.

photo: Maia Lemov

Holidays with Grown Children: Do we expect them to buy us holiday gifts?

Once again, Philip Galanes of Social Qs comes through with an answer to a question that may plague some of us as we navigate the gifting side of the holidays: Is gift-giving a one-way street?

Here's the dilemma a reader posed:

We have a loving relationship with our 30-year-old son. As we prepare for Christmas, though, we’re feeling resentful in advance that our gift exchange will probably be one-sided: We will buy him gifts; he will not buy us anything. Nor will he seem appreciative. He acts like our gifts are his birthright. Help!

The short version of Galanes' advice:

Tell him that he’s old enough to make holiday giving a true exchange. And remind him that the cost of his gifts is irrelevant. He may be stuck in his view of himself as the child in your relationship. Hopefully, a brisk nudge will set him straight.

painting: J Lawrence, Street to MBari

Zipped Lips: Are we still in charge of correcting a social faux pas?

When our kids were young and living under our roof, if they were impolite or said something inappropriate to their grandmother, we stepped up to point out (kindly, of course!) a more polite way to do or say something. But now that they are adults, is it still our job? Are we still in the social-correction business? Here's why I'm thinking about this:

A friend, let's call her C, was grousing about her son (let's call him D) who's 34, married and dad to a toddler. He was invited to an old friend's wedding--a friend from childhood whom D sees only occasionally but who came to D's wedding three years ago. Now the friend is getting married in his bride's hometown. The pandemic being a disrupter, weddings may come with all kinds of new limits and adjustments. In this case, spouses were not invited to the wedding. Going to the wedding would mean that D had to fly to a city one time zone away and be there for the weekend while his wife stayed home with the baby.

D opted not to go. He told his mom that his wife had nixed the idea.

C was livid. The wife being the nixer was only part of it. The groom's mom was C's old friend and had mentioned to C that her son had been disappointed that D was not at the wedding.  So C wrote her son an email telling him he should have gone to the wedding, that his old friend had come to his wedding, that she and the grandpop would have helped D's wife with the baby while D was away.

Although her son has not responded, C has no second thoughts about shooting off the email. She tells me, "I'm still his mother and it is still my job to call him out when he does something wrong. No one else will do it."

Is she right?

painting: William Chase, "A Friendly Call"

 

Walking on Eggshells: Our children and their grooming habits

Friends have returned from a two-week visit with their daughter, her husband and their twin sons. We are having a dinner debriefing on the trip--the tales about the warm weather (the daughter lives in Florida), the sunshine and the beach plus, most importantly, their daughter's hospitality and the chance to spend time with their grandsons every day. They have returned home looking refreshed and relaxed, the visit coming after 18 months of confinement in their home in the northeast where the wind chill is threateningly low.

As we drift past the positive highlights of the trip, they start joking about how they, as parents of adult children, have to keep their lips zipped and not express disapproval at some of the choices their children make. When we get down to specifics they seem almost relieved to tell us about their major zipped-lip challenge. While their middle-school grandsons marched off to school clean and neatly dressed every morning, the parents were, sigh, disturbingly ill groomed--at least from our friends' point of view. Their daughter hasn't had her hair cut since the pandemic hit; it is now down to her waist with the grey growing in above formerly dyed hair. To our friend--the mom--the hair makes the daughter look a decade older than she is and ill-kempt. The son-in-law hasn't cut his hair either, or shaved. His beard is long and straggly and his long hair is tied into a topknot but only when he's working outside.

It's partly a generational thing. Many of us aren't as comfortable with the half-shaved look or the full beard or the long, long hair. And the pandemic has readjusted the younger generation's aesthetics. Our friends, fortunately, kept to the high road during the visit: "I kept my mouth shut," one of them tells me. " I didn't say a word about it, but it was killing me."

She is exactly right. It may be killing them to say nothing, but there is nothing to be gained by alienating a child by commenting on their appearance--whether it's weight, or dress or hairstyle. We may be mortified about the way they look but better to suffer in silence and live with that than risk a fractured relationship with an adult child. Bottom line is, our children have control over their bodies--we don't.

painting: Romare Bearden

Holiday Traditions: A change in family customs

Let me not count the many ways the pandemic has changed the way we live our lives--the holidays chief among them. Last year was the outlier when the pandemic was a full-blown menace--we hope never to repeat a Zoom-only family Thanksgiving again.

This year we would have liked to return to our usual family traditions--some of us traveling by air (we the parents/grandparents) or by three-hour car ride (our daughter and her family of three) in order to pile into my son's house (family of five) for 48 hours of turkey, tofurkey and togetherness. But additional needs surfaced (an increasingly frail 92-year old cousin who doesn't live near any of us needed to be included somehow); traditions had to be adjusted.

Our family is not alone in changing holiday rites and passages. A friend who usually spent Thanksgiving with one of her nieces and their small children got squeezed out when each of the nieces went to their in-laws and the in-laws wanted to keep the gathering small. 

If the first post-quarantine Thanksgiving is a precursor for the other big holidays of the season, here's what we learned about what "new approaches" worked and which didn't.

In order to accommodate everyone, our family split up: Paterfamilias and I went to our son's house for three days, including Thanksgiving day. The next day we took a train to the city where our daughter and her family had spent Thanksgiving with our cousin. We had a day-after dinner with our daughter, her family and our cousin.

On the plus side: Both dinners were festive, celebratory and full of goodwill and laughs. They were small enough (six people at each one) that we could have inclusive conversations (and those with hearing challenges could hear everyone). We the parents/grandparents were able to spend in-person quality time with each of our adult children and our grandchildren--something that's not always possible when all three families are together.

But: By splitting up, the cousins didn't get to see each other nor did our son and daughter get to spend time together. A brief FaceTime visit on Thanksgiving day helped but not much. And I sorely missed watching inter-family interactions and connections.

The other Big But: We were overly ambitious about travel, especially during a holiday weekend. In order to see everyone we wanted to see, we spent time in two cities within five days, taking one airplane flight north and two train trips south.  We are fortunate that we could afford the extra train fare to buy reserved seats and avoid the hustle of boarding a sold-out train and dragging our luggage while we searched for two seats together or at least near each other. We are aging out of that difficult train ritual.

Bottom line: Our post-pandemic planning for holiday get-togethers is a work in progress. New traditions take time to evolve, but splitting up--well, I don't like it.

painting: Carl Larsson

Holidays and Adult Children: The seven stages of Thanksgiving traditions

We are on the cusp of setting a totally new tradition for our family's Thanksgiving. It's time. We are no longer young parents. Our kids are middle-aged adults; they have children who are young adults. Extended family members are growing frail and need special attention.

I, who usually embrace change, don't like the changes that are coming our way. Yet, when I look back and see how our family's Thanksgiving holiday traditions have morphed, I take comfort in life's cyclical pattern. Like other families, ours has no stasis; the balanced becomes unbalanced.

We move through our Thanksgiving customs as we move through life--in stages. My family and I have moved through seven of them. Other family's particulars are inevitably different from mine, but for all of us, there are make-overs and take-overs over the years.

Stage 1: Loosey Goosey:  Our children are very young. We have moved to a city 4-hours away from where we grew up and where our parents live.  We keep the holiday simple and small--as small as the little townhouse we are renting. Two pre-school children less than two years apart in age focus our minds on day-to-day needs rather than elaborate holiday meals.

Stage 2: Friends and Family:  When we move to a bigger house and our children are in the prime of their primary school years, we have Thanksgiving dinners with another family. We share the cooking and meal planning, scanning our memory banks to remember which surprising new dish from the previous year our families liked and which should never ever be repeated. Thanksgiving dinner is always at our house: They have dogs; we have allergies.

Stage 3: New Attachments: Our kids leave for college, start independent lives and put down roots in other cities. They form romantic attachments, some of whom appear at Thanksgiving dinner. Attachments became spouses and now Thanksgiving is more than a meal. It is a weekend during which the refrigerator has to be stocked not just for a turkey dinner but for three meals a day and additional guests. The house expands to accommodate bigger beds and pillows as well as more seats at the dining room table.

Stage 4: New Beginnings:  Grandchildren transform our Thanksgiving get-togethers into a wild weekend at our house. Blow-up beds and portable cribs accommodate sleeping babies and toddlers. Those in charge of the kitchen have to keep straight our grandchildren's sipping and eating patterns and what their parents permit them to have and what is verbotten--for one family but not necessarily the other. There are multiple trips to airports to pick up and drop off a son and his family and a daughter and hers. By Sunday, we are as flat on our backs as the now-deflated blow-up beds.

Stage 5: Passing the Baton:  Our children's families grow bigger. It makes more sense for the two of us--the parents/grandparents--to travel to them than to have eight children/grandchildren moving through airports and highways to arrive at our house for Thanksgiving. Our son and daughter-in-law who have the largest family and house take on the mantel of hosting Thanksgiving. Our routine now is: We arrive two days in advance to help--and to avoid the height of airport congestion. We assist in the kitchen, run errands and set tables but we are no longer in charge.

Stage 6: Zoom. The pandemic is a game changer. No one is going anywhere. No hugs. No sneaks into the kitchen to pre-taste a side dish. No idle chit-chat. We make do with Zoom. Our son emcees the family get-together with photos from the past and a fun quiz about what's happening in those photos, i.e. why have the parents (that's us) let their 10-year-old daughter wear a sweater advertising Joe Camel? Fun stuff. But after an hour, we click off and the goodwill of being together online dissipates. Is Zoom or a hybrid mode going to be the future for family get-togethers?

Stage 7: Frailties: We are negotiating Thanksgiving in a post-pandemic world. It is also a world in which time has been marching on. Grandchildren are taking a gap year abroad.  Elderly relatives who live alone in other cities are growing increasingly frail and in need of attention, especially during the holidays. We, the parents/grandparents, are not as spry as we once were. We will make the trip north this year but our three families will split up in order to accommodate the elderly cousin who is alone. It's not just the cousin who's feeling his age. Our children have already raised the question of whether they should come to us. We could, they suggest, rely on store-prepared turkeys and sides instead of cooking a meal for ten or more.

We are on the cusp of something completely different--and not completely welcome.

painting: Norman Rockwell

 

 

Observation: Philip Galanes on our role as parents.

When our children were young we were on the frontlines: Hyper-vigilant when it came to keeping them safe and confrontational when we feared others posed a threat. Even as our children grow into young adults, we have our super-protective swords at the ready.

But it's time to back off. At least that's what Philip Galanes in his Social Qs column advised a distraught mother. The column's headline and deck spells out her dilemma:

My Ex Risked Our Daughter’s Health for … a Photo Op?

A reader asks for permission to scold her former husband (and his current wife).

Galanes did not go down the scold road. (The dad behaved badly: He took his asthmatic daughter on a vigorous hiking vacation without telling her that's where they were going; the daughter became ill.) What Galanes advised the mom applies not only to her situation but is a reminder to all of us:

Your role is to prepare your daughter for the world, not to fight her battles for her.

 

 

Empty Nest: Letting Go of our college kids.

Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and for some parents, that means more than turkey: The freshman they dropped off at college just a few months ago will be returning home for a few days. Probably for the first time since they left in September.  My experience with this happened years ago and yet I still remember the poignancy of that "first Thanksgiving." How stunning and joyful it was to be reunited with our eldest child and to have her sleeping in her room on the third floor again. I also remember how excited she was to be off to visit her friends. A reminder, if we needed one, of how our adult children are moving away from us.

More recently, Kelly Corrigan  wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times of the emotional experience of dropping off her daughter at college and of her excruciating awareness of the split path. Corrigan tells us that before she drove her child to campus she (and all other parents of incoming freshmen at her daughter's college) received an email from the campus psychologist. The message: limit contact with your child, including texts; this is a time for your child to "individuate and separate."

In grappling with this dictum--and coming to terms with her sudden awareness that she doesn't "own" her child--Corrigan writes that even though shegave birth to her child and she could trace many of her daughter's features to parents and grandparents, "I didn't have any ownership over her. Wherever she came out of and whomever she looked like and however much she needed from me, she didn't belong to me."

Corrigan turns to psychologists to square this realization. Here is what she says she learned from Ariel Trost about "letting go":

“If we can let go of this notion of ownership and see us as our own and them as their own, it can create a space to marvel,” she said. “Ownership is not closeness.”

Borrowing from Buddhism, Dr. Trost suggested aiming for a compassionate detachment. Not detachment from our children but from the outcome of who they are becoming. “We are working toward a place where we can enjoy each other,” she said.

painting: The Ferryman, Ivan Canu

 

Grown Children and Their Romantic Partners: Are we allowed to express an opinion?

As our young adult children move through their twenties and onward, chances are they've had at least one romantic relationship. And chances are that we the parents have met at least one of those romantic partners.  I look back at those years when my children were part of the dating scene (it was a while ago; my children now have children who have romantic partners) and remember that not everyone they dated (am I dating myself by using that word?) was my cup of tea. I found most of them wanting in one way or another.

At a time when our children are ranging far from home and tribe to make friends and meet possible mates, it's not surprising that they came home with people we weren't comfortable with, disliked or found inappropriate. When that person looms as a possible life partner, is it okay for us to share our misgivings with our child? When we don't like their choice, is it okay to say something?

The quick answer--and almost every advice column I checked backs me up on this--is no. The only exception is if the relationship is abusive--physically or emotionally.

But what if we see trouble ahead for a variety of reasons--the person seems adrift or is too young or too old for our child.

Here's what Amy Dickinson had to say to a mom whose daughter was in a serious relationship with a man 17 years her senior.  "I am wondering," the mom wrote, "whether I'm negligent as her mother by not pointing out the possible challenges, should this relationship continue."

Amy's answer is one for all of us:

Unless there are mitigating circumstances, which you don't mention (he is married, was married, has children or a previous unhealthy history with relationships), you must trust that your daughter will make her own way, as we all must.

A child's job is to grow up. A parent's job is to let them.

A friend of mine found an indirect way to make his concerns known. He not only disliked the man her daughter was seeing, he also found him inappropriate. He and his wife made it a point to encourage their daughter to bring him to all family events; they invited the couple out to dinner often. "We wanted her to see how poorly he fit in with that part of her life that was her family," my friend says. It worked. The daughter broke up with that partner.

Post Pandemic Planning: Let the Thanksgiving negotiations begin

I have a moment of hesitation every time I step up to do something I used to do before the pandemic: Fly on an airplane; ride the subway;  eat in a restaurant; have a dinner party with several friends.

Now Thanksgiving is on the horizon, and with it inter-family negotiations over what it will be like this year. Last year, our family "feast" was virtual. We had fun via zoom with my son and his family and my daughter and hers. We posted old photos and held a family quiz over captions for the photos. We laughed a lot and everyone participated.  (Here's my post on how we and other families did Zoomsgivings.)

Now we are free to move about the country and be together in person. I feel that momentary qualm of hesitation. Yet even Doctor Fauci says it's okay. The deeper issue for our family is, will we return to Thanksgiving the way it was before we had to quarantine? How will we adjust to new family circumstances and year-old issues that couldn't get worked out last year? Since our grown children live traveling distance away from us and from eachother, who's going to brave the highways or the congested airports? Will we have to create a brave, new "Build Back Better" holiday?

Discussions and adjustments are underway. The heart wants to go back to the way things were for the past decade or so, but can we? Our families, like most, are in flux. One granddaughter is in Italy--she won't make it home for Thanksgiving. A 92-year-old cousin, who had not been part of our Thanksgiving revelries, lives alone and has grown frail. He's in need of a holiday pick-me-up, but he doesn't live near any of us. How do we bring holiday company to him? Do we, as my daughter put it, "abandon tradition." Logistics are such that we may have to split up who goes where and change the day of the week that we celebrate the holiday and with whom.

It's a delicate situation. So many moving parts, so many possibilities and so many sensitive feelings. We have to take care. We could so easily end up with a family misunderstanding or rift. But there's no turning back to yesterday--make that, the year before the year before. 

“The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on..."  Or so Omar Khayyam reminds us.

I'm hoping that our moving fingers will write a plan for a Thanksgiving we'll all enjoy, where everyone can participate one way or another and where we'll find lots to laugh about. Let the hesitancy end; let the diplomacy begin.

painting: Norman Rockwell

 

Legacy Planning: Update on dividing up the non-monetary stuff

Last week I posted Philip Galanes advice to a mother whose daughters (two out of three) coveted the pearl necklaces the mother no longer wore. His suggestion: Ask the daughters if they wanted heirloom pearl necklaces--or other items in her jewelry box--as a way of dividing up the mother's estate.

Since that post, Galanes has heard from another reader who says she's been asking her daughters for years if they want various family heirlooms and all she gets is, "I don't care." What to do, the second reader wants to know.

Galanes' answer is a reminder to many of us who have been rightsizing, downsizing or just facing the frustration of trying to place family treasures with the next generation.

Unless you have reason to believe your children are not being forthcoming  (it can feel creepy to say "I want that after you're dead!), take them at their word.

painting:Paul Cezanne

Legacy Planning: How to apportion the non-monetary stuff

Our treasured goods may be stuffed in boxes under our beds, sitting in clear view on our coffee tables or hanging prominently on our walls. Aside from whether or not our kids will want the stuff, the question is how to apportion the bits and pieces that we've accumulated over our lifetimes and, for some of us, the lifetimes of our parents and grandparents as well.  Not just the stuff that has monetary value but the sentimental stuff as well.

If we leave it to chance--that is with, say, a reminder to our children and heirs to share fairly--we won't be around to suffer through a fight over the needlepoint cat pillow or the diamond earrings Poppy gave Nanny. But we shouldn't rest easy over the idea of missing the battle. We don't want our family falling apart just because we're not there physically anymore.

I've written here about how some friends have tackled the issue: making lists of who should get what, of holding "auctions" in the here and now for who gets what later and of tacking labels onto the bottoms of furniture and pictures. Into this morass comes the ever-sensible Philip Galanes and his Social Qs column. He addresses a query on this issue from a reader whose three daughters are squabbling over her two pearl necklaces that she no longer wears. The youngest has asked to borrow a single-strand necklace to wear occasionally; the oldest feels the mother has unfairly given the necklace away to her younger sister. The middle daughter could care less. There is also a triple strand necklace that no one seems interested in. The mother's plea to Galanes: "Help."

His kernals of wisdom, one of which points to the legacy the pearls represent:

Ask the daughters "if they’d like an heirloom pearl necklace. If all three say yes, remake the triple strand into two necklaces. If your middle daughter remains indifferent to pearls, give her first choice on another piece of jewelry to be claimed after you die.

Then let the girls take turns choosing from the remaining items in your jewelry box and keep a list. It may sound macabre, but letting heirs pick from personal property can be a sensible way to allocate it, in advance and without conflict.

painting: Cezanne. Peppermint Bottle

Parenting Memories: Stolen moments with our grown children, and they with theirs.

My daughter is aglow. We are on a FaceTime call but I can see the happiness radiating from her face. Her daughter, who started college this year, came home for a day. They took a drive into the country, went on a short hike, stopped to book shop, had lunch out. They talked about everything and nothing. No pressure, no agenda. Just a stolen day together.

How I remember--and still feel--the joy of spending a day or even a few hours alone with a grown child. Usually, when I see my grown children they come encumbered. In their young adult years, it was with friends or by papers to write or places to go. As the years flew by there were spouses and children. To have a grown child to myself for a few hours is a treasure that's hard to describe: A special warmth, a comfort, a feeling that all's right with the world--or will be. It's not a mom thing. Their dad guards his moments alone with his children as well.

To hear my daughter last night--and a few weeks ago my son--bask in the glow of spending time with a child who no longer lives under their roof is to relive those companionable and spontaneous moments. The cycle of life is repetitious and reassuring. With so much in the world collapsing around us--our weather cycles,  public discourse, ability to compromise--this is one small thing to feel good about: Our grown children will treasure these moments with their children as much as we did and still do with them.

photo: Maia Lemov

 

Money Matters: When sibling rivalry crosses the helping hand

Many of us take great pleasure in helping out our children financially. If we have the wherewithal we're likely to help them with a downpayment to buy a house. (Roughly 20 percent of U.S. homeowners received gifts or loans to help them buy a home, according to Money Magazine, and most of that money came from us--parents of grown children. Money Mag tells us that if the “Bank of Mom and Dad” were a true business, it would be the seventh biggest mortgage lender in the country.)

There is at least one hitch to all this Mom and Dad banking. If we have more than one child, they can get ensnarled in bad feelings--toward us, toward each other--over money we've given one child and not the other or others. The business of giving them what we might call "an advance on their inheritance" can be trickier than writing a will. With the 'advance on inheritance" we're still around to feel the sting if one child feels favored over another.

In a letter to Philip Galanes and his Social Qs column, a reader was feeling that kind of slight.  Her parents had let her know that they had given her sister "a chunk of money to help with a down payment on a house." They told her she wouldn't be receiving a matching sum and for a rational reason: The writer and her husband already owned a house, which they were able to buy with a generous gift from his parents. "My parents aren’t wealthy, so I understand their decision. Still, it stings!" From her perspective, the money they gave to her sister signifies that the parents love her sister more than they love her.  The writer wants to know whether to raise her grievance with her parents.

Galanes reminds the reader and all of us that the parents’ money is theirs. "Whether they are fabulously rich or just squeaking by, they can spend it however they like. And adult children have no entitlement to it."

Over and beyond that, Galanes acknowledges that "sibling rivalry for parental love can be painful" and that the writer should talk to her parents about their decision. But his final reminder in this family drama is one we should all take into account at gift giving or will-writing time:

And for parents: If you intend to make unequal gifts, it can be helpful to discuss the issue in advance. Feelings about parental gifts can run strong!

We are free to do with our money as we see fit. We don't owe our children anything now or in the future. But that's not really the point. What we do owe them is a sense of fair play--an explanation of why we've chosen to do as we have and why, especially when we choose to help one child and not another.

painting: Rothko, Untitled

Grandparenting: Do maternal Grammies have an edge over paternal Nanas?

When I first got into the business of being a grandparent--PenPen to my son's and daughter's children--it was at a time when, not surprisingly, many of my friends were starter-grandparents as well. A common topic of conversation--or should I say stress--was the worry that the "other" grandparents would be favored, would be more "loved" than they, would have more say in their grandchildren's lives.

Some of this rivalry seemed to be driven by proximity or the lack of it. One friend who lived in New Hampshire and had three grandchildren (her daughter's children) living in Atlanta was convinced that the paternal grandparents who lived in Georgia were more beloved. They were available to babysit in a pinch and offer summer swims in their pool. Although my friend and an indulgent step-granddad visited often, my friend lamented her second-place position.  Her exhibit A: Her daughter had texted her a photo of the granddaughter's newly refurbished room--puffy pillows, bouncy curtains and a sateen bed quilt that hosted a Noah's Ark of stuffed animals.  The other grandma, who had a key to her son and daughter-in-law's house, had surprised the family by re-doing the room while they were away on vacation.  How, my friend worried, could she compete with that.

Now comes research that should give my friend comfort. There is a  “matrilineal advantage” and it gives maternal grandmothers an advantage over the paternal ones. There are dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships, of course, but in general mothers and daughters have closer ties than mothers and daughters-in-law, and that, the research contends, leads to warmer relationships between the grandchildren and the maternal grannie.

“The mother-daughter dyads engage in more frequent phone contact, more emotional support and advice — more than mothers do with sons or fathers with daughters.” This is what Karen Fingerman, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who has published studies on this topic, told Paula Span of the NYTimes.

As to a mother's ties to her son's children, it's all about the relationship to her daughter-in-law.  Dr. Fingerman reported that she has found that parents’ rapport with a daughter-in-law — “a key figure” — significantly influences their bond with her children. The mother--whether she's a daughter or a daughter-in-law--is the gatekeeper and she can help or harm grandparental closeness.

As to my friend from New Hampshire, she can rest easy for another reason. Her daughter (and her granddaughter) were less than pleased that the other grandma had taken it upon herself to redecorate on her own and without consultation the child's room. There is a matter of overstepping boundaries and that's where proximity can be a negative.

painting: Red Dance by Kenneth Young

Labor Day's Labor: Dr.Pangloss checks in on the year's transitions

Labor Day Weekend is a chance to step back and take stock as our kids and grandkids make their way through various transitions. "Summer" is over. The worst of the pandemic and its quarantines is behind us and yet it lingers.  Young-adult kids and grandkids are starting their school year with masks, social distancing and Covid-testing part of the daily routine. But those unpleasantries are dwarfed by this: They are back in the classroom, mixing with friends and meeting their teachers. Their parents--our older adult children--are returning to offices where their work-life is being transformed in ways that may make their personal lives easier.

Many of us more senior parents feel, as I do, like we are sitting on the sidelines watching these moments unfold. If we've retired, our transitions may be less marked. Maybe that's why I am using this weekend to sop up the signs of positive growth as my grandkids inch toward independence and my children reap the results of effective parenting. There are worries that one child is disappointed about their dorm, that another will become homesick living so far from home or that the youngest and smallest won't make friends at a new school. But I'm not their parents. I'm not involved in the quotidian work of parenting. I'm a silent observer--and if asked, a friendly consultant.

Right now, the year that gets kicked off by the fall season looks full of potential. There's a world of possibilities out there for our kids and us. With my inner Dr. Pangloss activated, I've luxuriated in a weekend of focusing on the good stuff. That's a grannie's prerogative.

painting: Au Coeur de la Vie by Baillargeon.

The Pain of Parting: Lessons in Letting Go

Our son sent his oldest child back to college and his oldest daughter off to Roma for a gap year of study abroad. He still has one child at home but his heart is aching. As his two eldest headed off, he managed, he tells me, not to tear up in front of them.

He also tells me he has come to appreciate how we did the same for him and his sister. "I had no idea," he says, "how hard it is and how hard it must have been for you and dad." I am not violating his privacy when I repeat the following words since he posted this wry take on his Facebook page: "Two of my three kids are leaving in the next few days, starting this morning. If I'd known how hard their leaving was going to be, I never would have encouraged all of this "go to college" business when they were little."

On the morning after his daughter flew off to Rome, he called to let me know she had landed safely, made her way to the appartamento she and two other students had rented, registered at the school where she would be taking classes and bought supplies at a nearby grocery store. Dinner will be ramen and nectarines. The other girls will not arrive for another day or two. My Grand and her parents were texting every step along the way--from airport landing to getting a sim card to figuring out the tricky lock on the appartamento door. She did all this with only 4-weeks worth of Duolingo Italian stuffed into her brain. My son is so proud of her for the confident way she figured things out and so happy that she is embarking on this avventura.  But he is heart-heavy. She is now so far away. He misses her.

He wanted to know how we managed to keep the pain of parting from him and his sister. I reminded him that when he left home for college, there was no Internet, no texting, no email. There was only a landline and the mailbox. We couldn't have shared the immediacy of our sadness even if we had been inclined to--which we weren't. Like him today, we did not want to weigh him down with our blues. We only let him see the pleasure we were taking in his launch.

So excuse me while I deliver pats on our own backs. We were able to show our children how to let go gracefully. It wasn't intentional and it may not seem like much. But evidently, it was.

painting: Monet. Bridge at Argenteuil

 

Gifts to Adult Children: No strings attached, please.

I don't have many rules in my life, but one "good deed" I live by is this: When I give my children or grandchildren a gift,  I attach no strings. No rules about how the gift--be it financial, a tangible good or a service--should be used. If I don't trust them to use the gift responsibly, I don't give it.

There's another kind of string some of us may attach to a gift. We may want the gift acknowledged on a regular basis. That is, our kids can't thank us often enough for whatever it is we gave them. Or as a variation on that theme, we may use the gift as blackmail for future favors or requests, as in "This favor is the least you can do for me since I gave you .....whatever."

I was reminded of this second version of "strings attached" by a Carolyn Hax column in which a reader wrote to complain that her in-laws, who had helped her and their son's family by babysitting their very young children--two under the age of four. The young couple couldn't afford child care and both needed to work. The in-laws stepped up, drove an hour each way to babysit the grandkids three days a week for a year. Now that the young mother and father are able to afford good, nearby child care, the in-laws "cannot seem to stop 'calling in' this old debt" even though "they are thanked regularly and graciously." That is, when the in-laws want the couple to visit with their children--during Covid this meant driving 50 miles to stand outside their house and wave--they pressure the young family to make the visit by reminding them of the gift of babysitting for a year. "This has led me to realize that whenever my in-laws want something," the daughter-in-law writes, "they default to reminding us (subtly or not-so-subtly) about that period when we were entirely dependent on them to keep our family running."

Hax's advice to the writer was for her and her husband to remind the parents "that you are both grateful beyond your ability to express for the year of child care." But then "tune out the guilt noise and make your own decisions for your own reasons."

I read this vignette and it reminds me how attaching strings to gifts engenders ill will. The reason I refuse to turn my gifts into debts is totally selfish: I do it to preserve a positive relationship with my children. No one likes a blackmailer, even if the bounty is only an emotional one.

painting: Cezanne, Still Life with Basket

 

 

 

 

Vacationing with Grown Children: Traditions get an unwanted update

Ah, the traditions of summer vacations. We have friends with a home on Cape Cod--no running water in the kitchen sink or the, um, throne room. But that's another story. The house had been passed down in the family for generations. Today, whenever their kids, now grown, bring a friend to the summer house for a visit, there are stops that the visitor needs to be introduced to. The places that represent a rite of the family's summer traditions--the hidden beach where the family built over-large sandcastles till the tide carried them away; the lake where they paddled a canoe at sunset.  

We had no house passed down to us. Nor did we buy one. But starting when our children were very small, we drove to Vermont every summer for a two-week vacation. We would rent a two-bedroom apartment or, as our earning power increased, a townhouse near a ski resort.  We would hike, play tennis, skip stones across mountain brooks, swim at the local swimming hole. Our kids learned to pick wild raspberries and eat them with breakfast. On Friday afternoons a farmer brought a huge plastic trash can full of just-picked corn to a spot near a gas station.  We would buy a dozen. The taste was unlike the city corn we were used to.

When our kids hit their late teens and young adulthood, those trips to Vermont were put on hold. Our children had summer jobs, friends to visit and plans of their own. Instead of heading for summer in ski country, we the parents pivoted: We went on bicycling adventures abroad.

The trips to Vermont didn't start up again until our kids were parents themselves. We would rent a large townhouse--this time within a resort near Stowe and its summer delight of a 7-mile long bike path that ran from town, through forested glens and to the foot of the mountain. Our kids and their young families would join us for the week. Eventually our son rented his own place and made summer vacations in Vermont his family's own. We rented a unit near his but it was at a time of his family's convenience, not ours. After all, they led busier lives and had more moving parts to consider. When they were in Stowe they developed their own traditions--swimming in the rain, climbing the rocks at the nearby brook. We joined them at the swimming pool on sunny afternoons to watch our grandchildren do handstands in the water. Idyllic moments in the bright sun of Vermont.

Time moves on. Children grow up. Our son's two oldest children now have summer jobs, friends to visit and plans of their own. He managed to find a week when all three of his children could come up for part of the week in Vermont.  The older children had little interest in splashing in the pool rain or shine. We were unable to join them.

Vermont family vacations are on hiatus again--certainly for us and possibly for our grown son as well He's at the point we were when he was a teenager and outgrowing the family Vermont trip. But the cycle will likely repeat in another decade or so. If there is a generation of great-grandkids to splash in the pool, we may fly up there for the pure pleasure of watching them.

painting: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, G. Seurat

 

Post Pandemic Issues: Can we close our helping hand to our non-vaxxed kids

The country is riven by the vaccinated versus anti-vaxxers. Infection rates are escalating among the unvaccinated. That's allowing new, virulent variants to thrive, threatening our health and the return to normal, whatever that may be.

What happens when the unvaxxed hits home, when it's not the rogue uncle or distant cousin but your adult child who won't get a shot?

This touchy issue popped up in Kwame Anthony Appiah's New York Times column The Ethicist. The father of an unvaxxed son wrote in with that quandary plus a further complication. Until the son gets a job, the dad is paying his son's share of the rent on an apartment the son shares with his girlfriend. But the son's job search is complicated by his reluctance to get vaccinated. The reader posed this argument and question:

I told him that future employers would most likely insist on his getting vaccinated, and that his unvaccinated state would have financial implications by delaying his start date and income until he could get fully vaccinated. I said that his refusal to get the shot would cost money and that I wasn’t sure I would continue to support him during that gap period between accepting a job and starting work. He became upset, maintaining that he was already compromising by agreeing to become vaccinated if a job required it and that my withholding support was unfair, especially given his willingness to compromise by getting the shot.

Who’s right here? 

Appiah covered the importance of getting vaccinated and then zeroed in on the issue of whether the father, who's nearing retirement and feeling a financial pinch, is right to cut off financial aid if his son refuses to get vaccinated.

Vaccination aside,  Appiah made a point that will resonate with all of us who offer our grown children financial support of any kind. 

If he’s willing to accept an employer’s terms, he should be willing to accept his parental benefactor’s. After all, a parent isn’t generally obliged to provide financial support to an adult child.

Given that you have allowed him to depend upon your generosity, however, you would do well to withdraw that support gently, or with ample advance warning. I know it seems paradoxical to say that a gift can entail an obligation. But in all sorts of circumstances, it can. Suppose your tractor-owning neighbor makes a habit of clearing your driveway every time you’re snowed in. Because of her generosity, you don’t make alternative arrangements. If she suddenly has a change of heart, you’re worse off after the next blizzard than you would otherwise be. That doesn’t bind her to a lifetime of plowing your driveway; it does mean she owes you notice.

In the end, though, respecting people’s agency doesn’t mean you have to underwrite their every mistaken belief. Your son is free to reject your support if he wants to persist in error.

Rebalancing Acts: Following our kids' cultural and health leads

During the pandemic lockdown many of us experienced a strange shift in the balance between us and our grown kids: Instead of our previous parental controls, they were "ordering" us around--telling us we had to stay home, stop going out to buy groceries and order take-out food delivered.

It came, of course, from an overabundance of care that we were in the over-60 group that was prone to deadly Covid attacks.

Well, the pandemic is mostly over. We're vaccinated now. We're able to shop at supermarkets without our masks on--and without admonitions from our children. But as the fog of the pandemic clears, there's still some re-balancing going on. These are of a lower level than the "pandemic orders." And yet, the old order changeth yielding place to the new.

One mom tells me that for most of her daughter's high school years, the daughter borrowed her mom's clothes--appropriated might be a better word. Now her young adult daughter sheds her clothes in a mini-moment of style. The mom picks up the discards and is now wearing them. It almost never happens that the daughter wants to be seen in her mom's sweaters.

Then there's the dad who loved to introduce his pre-teen son and daughters to a beloved book or watch his favorite old movies with them. Now that they're young adults, they are introducing him to music he never heard before, to dance crazes that are part of their world and to poets with whom he is totally unfamiliar. He's happy to learn all about the new world but he's rarely the one who comes up with cultural touchstones anymore.

Among those of us who have kids older than the young adult stage, we may be surprised at how influential their voice can be. A friend whose husband had balance problems but refused to use a cane found the adult daughters sending their dad a handsomely carved, wooden, walking stick. It was better looking than the sensible cane his wife was pushing. And, because it came from his kids, somehow he found it more acceptable. A rebalancing act.

painting: Readers by Theresa Bernstein

Post Pandemic Parenting: Compassion for the anxieties our kids may be experiencing

The pandemic was difficult for everyone. As parents of grown children, some of us couldn't see our kids or grandkids--no hugs, no in-person visits. Infants and toddlers had no "village" to support them or playdates to socialize them. School-age kids--well, the school year was a disaster for many of them. Our grown kids, especially the twenty-somethings, also suffered. Whether they moved back home with us or toughed it out with a roommate or spouse, the isolation of the shut-down disrupted their friendships and romantic relationships as well as their work life. Many of them lost what one clinical social worker calls "the rhythm of living."

Here's what some recent findings show:

--43.6 percent of adults 18 to 29 self-reported that they experienced symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder in the previous seven days between May 26 and June 7, according to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention’s Household Pulse Survey

--34 percent of those 18 to 23 said their mental health has worsened compared with before the pandemic, according to the  2020 Stress in America survey by the American Psychological Association. That number is higher than any other generation.

All of which suggests we may want to offer our adult kids a little extra measure of compassion. This NYTimes article sets out some effective strategies for helping our kids find help if they're struggling.

Avoid lecturing. It comes across as criticism and may shut down the lines of communication. "Start by asking questions that help parents understand how the young adult is hurting, with language like: “How’s your mood these days? You’re doing so much.”

Don't try to solve their problems. Instead, let them know you've heard what they've said. For instance, they might say they get yelled at by their supervisor. Tell them you're sorry they're experiencing that. That might open the door to suggesting they get help, but if it doesn't, let them know you would be happy to partner with them in thinking about possible solutions.

Normalize the situation. Tell your child that many people struggle with their mental health and that it often helps to talk to someone about how they’re feeling. “Let them know that you will be with them every step of the way” and help them get to a better place."

Normalize a decision to get help. That is, help them see that treating mental health is just like treating a physical ailment. "Conveying the message that mental health issues are similarly treatable provides a 'sense of hope.' ”

 

painting: Picasso. Femme au cafe

 

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