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

On Estrangement: Joshua Coleman's counsel on reconciling with an adult child

What could be more painful than a deep and long-lasting rift with one's adult child? How does one bridge that gap?

 Joshua Coleman, a practicing psychologist who also researches estrangement preaches reconciliation. A key point he makes for parents in search of such a solution is for the parent to step up and make amends:

Parents are often confused by this recommendation, believing that making amends is the same as completely endorsing the child’s perspective. While sometimes that is required, more often amends should be viewed as a starting point; a frank recognition that there is something deeply wrong in the relationship with the parent that needs addressing.

How to go about it? Here's what Coleman advises his patients:

I encourage them to write a letter stating, “I know you wouldn’t have cut off contact unless you felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do.” I say this because it’s true from the adult child’s perspective — even if not from the parent’s — and because it communicates the parent’s wish to understand and heal the distance.

...Yet, even if the cause of the estrangement lies more in the child than the parent, amends are still necessary from the parent to begin a conversation of repair. You don’t have to agree with your child to make amends. It’s about humility, not humiliation. While I don’t presume that a child’s perspective on their parent is accurate, I also don’t assume that a parent’s perspective on their child is either. We all have our blind spots.

For those interested in Coleman's line of thinking, his newest book is  “Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict.”

credit: painting by Bonnard

Observation: Living within the limits of being a mother-in-law

I was lucky. My husband didn't get along with his mother but I did. She didn't interfere (as my mother did) and, unlike most women of her generation (my mother, again) she never had a negative word to say about my pursuit of a career.  Not that I sought her out as a confidant. But neither did I see her as an enemy or rival--or someone to be avoided. I was fortunate and so, I guess, was she.

What happens when we're not so lucky? When our child's chosen life partner doesn't like us--or makes themselves scarce whenever we appear at the door. Or sets limits on visiting hours. Or keeps us at a distance in myriad ways small and large.

This was an issue for a Carolyn Hax reader who wrote that his wife, who had had a challenging relationship with his parents (who were difficult and needed to be kept at a distance) was now struggling with boundaries set by their son and his wife. More specifically, as the reader/writer put it, the young couple were "limiting contact, contacting her on their schedule, etc. My wife ... complains incessantly to me that she does not hear from our son and daughter-in-law as often as she’d like, which would be multiple times a day. We do hear from them every week or so."

Hax beat right to the heart of the matter. What was past with the reader's parents was past. Today is what matters. Yes, the reader and his wife may feel hurt that the son and his wife don't call as often as they (the parents) would like--but they call. Maybe contact with the couple is circumscribed. But--and here Hax lays it on the line--it's up to the parents to comply with limits their adult children set. As Hax put it:

If you are on the cold side of a boundary, then there’s no better argument than to Back! Off! ....Respect for the couple’s space is the only answer.

credit: L. Saint Fleurant, Mother and Children

(I'll be addressing this issue again, in particular when it goes from the relatively benign (our adult child doesn't call often enough) to the truly malignant (our adult child no longer speaks to us). Psychologist Joshua Coleman has a book on the topic, "Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict.”  I'll  sum up some of his points, but I can tell you--reader alert--that we the parents don't get an easy pass when it comes to the healing part.)

 

 

 

Grandparenting: Fun and games with grannie names

When I first learned I was going to become a grandma, I panicked. I told myself, "I'm not old enough to be called that." I was. I had already passed into my 60s. 

Much of my discomfort was with the aura around the name Grandma. This was also true for the person who was about to be called Grandpa. That's why we designed our own names, and we—and our grandkids—have lived happily with them. (I'm PenPen; he was BaPa.)

Recently I came across a piece by Linda Wolff that had fun with the names we grandmas choose to be called by our grandkids. Here's a taste of what she had to say (and a link to the rest of it):

Mimi: The name originates in the south though it oozes with French flare. Closest to mommy and might be confusing , but that's what therapy is for. Essentially Meemaw, but with more “Je ne sais quoi.” Mimis will have everyone (the kids, the dog, the neighborhood stray cat) eating out of your manicured hands. Shopkeepers will keep you on speed dial when your little Ella’s mini G-wagon rolls in.

Gigi: You’re not a regular grandma, you’re a cool grandma. You prefer Peach Bellinis to Kale Smoothies and relish the fact you allow the kidlets to nom nom chicken nuggets in your bed. You can be found prancing around town behind one of those new-fangled strollers. You dispense all your Gigi wisdom to future grandmas during mahjong and are famous for developing a Genovian accent every time you return from summers in Positano. You never turn on the white noise machine for the kidlets when you babysit. Who needs it when you’ve got the dulcet tones of Fluffy, your snoring Goldendoodle?

Yaya: Like a warm summer breeze, you’re probably sunning in Mykonos instead of watching your baby’s babies. That’s ok, this will remind them to accept your offer to vacation together the next time you offer them a plane ticket. First class only, of course.

Lili, Lala, Cookie, Babka: You’re wise beyond your years and have come to the conclusion that the baby will call you whatever it damn well pleases based on whatever they can pronounce. So you just keep bringing tins of cookies and whisper “I’m your favorite” as you rock little Ceecee into sweet slumber.

painting: Frida Kahlo

Empty Nest: Support for the college-dropoff blues

My yoga teacher is a single mom. She dropped her only child off at college a few weeks ago. The daughter is a freshman and this is the first prolonged time away from home. My yoga teacher came back a day after the drop-off with bouyant tales of the move-in, the roommate, the campus. This week she and a student who'd been absent from class for several months--a dad who dropped his child off for freshman week at college two weeks ago--commiserated with each other after class. I was busy rolling up my yoga mat and putting my props away but I overheard talk of the sadness each felt. "We--you and your wife--should get together," my yoga teacher said. "We have to support each other."

There has always been a sadness--mixed with positive excitement--when our kids leave home and the nest is empty. And now, it seems, there's a lot more reaching out for support--or acknowledging that we need support.  Is it different from the days--a generation or more ago--when we dropped our kids off and came home to an empty and eerily silent house? Evidently it is today in that we the parents are not keeping our woes bottled up inside and at home.

A recent Axios newsletter reported the following tidbits about the current state of empty nest adjustment:

Many first-year college students from different states, backgrounds and majors have one thing in common: stressed-out parents struggling with the separation.

Parents are using tech to track their kids, micromanaging orientation week and even having dorm sleepovers.

As to the support side of the equation, Axios reports:

Parents' stress is on display in online forums and Facebook groups, where parents are asking questions and offering emotional support to one another.

On these online groups and forums parents ask about minute-to-minute details of orientation, for advice from other parents for advice on their kids' roommate woes and where to shop for basic toiletries.

The "good news" on this support network: If we're turning to Facebook groups or making dates with friends to talk about our worries and separation issues that may mean we're not bugging our kids. Go Class of 2028!

painting: Renoir, "Oarsmen at Chatou"

Vacation Togetherness: Seven tips to keep a get-away with grown kids running smoothly

'Tis almost the end of the season to revel in summer vacations with our grown kids and possibly grandkids. It's also the start of thinking about next year or a winter-holiday getaway with the kids.

So, here's an underlying truth to think about. Whether we're paying all or some of the tab, traveling to an exotic place, staying put in a beach or ski house or setting up tents in the great outdoors, we go into our vacations with high hopes: Everyone will enjoy being with each other. Everyone will be on their best behavior--we're all relaxed and on vacation, right?

We know there's a flaw in the logic. Everyone--our kids, their significant others, the grandkids, the whoever-elses included in our family vacation--brings themselves not some new iteration of themselves. Grownup brothers with gripes going back to their childhood may still get ticked off at a minor slight; boisterous grandkids may be irritating as 5:00 rolls around and we're ready to nurse a glass of wine.

We can't control others. We can, though, take some tips from various experts on how to keep the family togetherness as pleasurable as possible.

Space Out: Buy as big a tent (or several), rent as many hotel rooms or as capacious an Airbnb as you can afford. That leaves everyone--and I'm thinking of myself here--room to escape from whatever irritant is around.

Lower the Temperature: Steer clear of touting the vacation as the greatest opportunity to see the world or to have a fantastic family reunion. Keep expectations on the down-low. This is especially true if you're splurging on a pricey vacation. As one clinical psychologist put it in a NYTimes story, we may feel like our family members are "going to reward our efforts and our money spent with good behavior." They are not.

Build in Alone Time: Although we love our children, grandchildren and assorted relatives, we also need downtime without them. Many of us are no longer used to being surrounded by lots of people all day long. We need to take a walk, go out for tea or a beer, or find a quiet place to read or just plain think.

Spread the Planning Around: Check with everyone--including the grandkids--on what they'd like to do on any given day (or in planning the vacation). Even if their wishes can't be met, everyone is likely to feel better if they've had a voice in a plan.

Opt Out: As we get older we may have to be more realistic about what we can do physically. As the NYTimes story put it, "Halfway up a steep set of cathedral stairs isn't a great time to realize some travelers should have passed on the outing."  Not that we have to be stay behind. One friend who's recuperating from a pulled hamstring says she went with everyone to the foot of a mountain trail her kids and grandkids were going to climb. But she brought along a book and found a shaded spot to wait for their return and tales of their adventure.

Be Prepared: It's not just physical limits that need to be taken into account--so do such realities as stroller policies, the availability of bathrooms and alternative transportation. That is, check on the availability and costs of cabs, Uber/Lyft and other means of making a side trip easier on and more comfortable for everyone.

Account for Costs: Before anyone steps into their car, onto a plane or hauls themselves onto a cruise ship, all adults should know in advance who's paying for what--or, if we're picking up the tab, what's included in our largesse.

This is not my first post on vacation togetherness. I've written about these and similar issues here and here and here.

painting: Travel Jetty at Trouville, Eugene Boudin

Money Matters: Who's picking up the check?

Many of us have been here: We've fallen into the habit of picking up the bill when we take our grown child out for dinner. If we're not struggling to pay our own bills, we feel good about indulging a child who's just starting to make their way in the world.

Even as our kids establish themselves--pair up with a significant other, start a family, earn a stable living--we continue the pick-up-the-check routine. Old habits die hard. But we also reach a point where it would be nice if they pulled out their credit card (or phone with its digital wallet) and paid for dinner or just a share of it.

For some of us, the gesture occasionally happens. For others, getting stuck with the bill is frustrating. We may worry that our son or daughter has succumbed to a sense of entitlement. We may feel frustrated about the expectations of our seemingly oblivious child. How to break the cycle and keep resentment of our darling child from creeping in? Philip Galanos' Social Qs. has the almost perfect answer. It's short, it's sweet and it's just a line to tag onto an invite to meet up for a dinner out. Any variation of it will do:

“Bring your wallet. Dad and I think we should take turns paying the bill.”

As Galanos notes, many adult children need a nudge into grown-up arrangements with their parents. I pass this along as a non-threatening and perfectly pleasant nudge.

painting: Pierre Bonnard, The Conversation

Emptry Nests: Do we want our adult kids to live at home again?

Emotional Misery. That's what I remember about those first few months of becoming an empty nester. After we sent our youngest child off to college, my husband and I had the blues all through that September. There was a sadness in coming home from work to a house that was too quiet--no music seeping through the walls, no basketball being bounced indoors. I missed the excitement and tension my children injected into the house.

Then I got used to it. My spouse and I started building a life that no longer centered around being responsible for the everyday lives of our children.

After a few years of living this less stressful way of life, our oldest child, the one who had been living on the other coast for a while, came home for the summer with a boyfriend in tow. Her dad was thrilled. Of course he was. He had helped get her a summer internship with a Congressman and now he, who had worked for the Congress for many happy years, would be able to see her experience unfold before his eyes.

I did not feel the same way. Here's what I wrote in my journal:

 "I am filled with ambivalency. Mike and I have this quiet but very pleasant life together. I'm able to pay close attention to his needs; there's no competition for my time. And it is not half bad being detached from your children's concerns on a daily basis, being off the roller coaster. Susan [a friend] has similar concerns with her two sons coming home this summer."

For all the sadness we go through when our children move out, are we ready and willing to go back to the old routines if they return? Clearly, I wasn't sure. We hadn't repurposed our daughter's room--she could move right back in. But my summer would now be filled with responsibilities--for regular meals, for advice (or making sure we didn't butt in if we weren't asked), for observing up close and personally what was going on in our child's 20-something life.

Of course, she was now an independent young woman. She didn't want to be coddled or treated as the teenager she was when she first left home. Within days of her arrival she went to work for six weeks in a Congressman's office and the boyfriend, who hoped to become a winemaker, had gotten a job at an upscale food emporium that sold high-end wine. The summer of a refilled nest looked promising. And in ways it was positive. My daughter and I were able to take long walks (and talks) and we got to know the boyfriend (they had talked about marriage) better.

So here was the downside. The internship turned out to be a mini-disaster. She hated the job with good reasons. The Congressman was an old-school sexist and she found many of the demands of the job demeaning.  She wasn't political; what she liked was going to Congressional hearings (and taking notes for the congressman). But she was often called out of the hearing to drive a constituent to the airport. There were other bumps in the road. She received word that a master's program at Stanford had turned her down, although she admitted the program was designed for those who already had advanced degrees and she didn't have one. Nonetheless, she was disappointed and we felt it.

The bottom line is that, after a year or two of being an empty nester, I had gotten used to it. Liked it. And I didn't want to be so close to the roller coaster again.

painting: House on a Hill by Edward Hopper

 

Competitive Grandparenting: The deep-seated drive to outshine the other grandparents

My children don't live near me. Which means my grandchildren don't either. Which means the gramps and I have never been able to go to every soccer game, piano concert, or other event our grandkids participated in. The other grandparents don't live nearby either. All of which means I have never had the impetus to think about how much time the other grandparents were spending with my grandkids as opposed to time I was spending with them. We did what we could to see the grandkids as often as possible, as did the other grandparents.

It's been a blessing. We aren't particularly close to our co-grandparents, but there's goodwill between us. And yet, I have friends who don't feel as similarly blessed. One doesn't live near her grandkids and worries that the other grandparents, who do live nearby, will be more beloved because they spend more time with the grandkids.  Another is concerned that the other grandparents will be favored because they are wealthy and take the grandkids on grand vacations and buy them lavish gifts.

I've heard my fill of complaints along these angst-ridden lines but never one quite as raw as one in a Carolyn Hax column. A mother wrote in to say her mother-in-law treats being a grandmother like it’s a competition and keeps track of her time with the grandkids, as in “the other grandparents got them for two nights last month, we only got one!” and “I saw that your Mimi got you three books last week! Here’s four and a candy!” 

Hax turned to her readers for answers on understanding the bean-counting grandma and what dangers lay ahead for her. Here are some points from those wise readers:

Answer One

We grandmas can feel insecure sometimes about how important we are to kids and grandkids when our lives are no longer as full of other things. And, really, we know how brief the young years are for kids and the looming end of our own active years.

Are there ways to support the annoying grandma in feeling okay in her role, emphasizing how she interacts with the kids, and de-emphasizing the gifts and all?

 Answer Two

No way around it, you’re going to have to sit down and confront your mother-in-law. Point out that her obsessive behavior is hurting her child, her grandchildren, you and your parents, and it has to stop... Create a list of what is and is not acceptable and stick to it.

Answer Three: 

I had a grandmother like this! I don’t think she anticipated how quickly we kids would get wise to these dynamics; her complaining and one-upping drove us away, too.

The real risk is that your mother-in-law inadvertently alienates her grandchildren as they grow. If you want to broach this with her, .... explain that her complaining may make them feel like they did something wrong, or put them in uncomfortable positions.

I have been giving this dynamic some thought as well. There's no real accounting for why our grandkids favor us with their love. They may respond to our unconditional acceptance, unrushed time or willingness to read a story dramatically. I only know that, in my family, the gramps (my spouse) was not a roll-on-the-floor kind of granddad. He rarely joined in board games or played a part in a skit. But on one of his Big Birthdays, when the grands were asked to say something special to him, one of them (an 11-year-old) said this: "Bapa, what I love about you is the way you ask me interesting questions and you always listen to my answer."

Do we need any more than that?

painting: Emma Amos, Two W0men Standing

 

Observations: How to deal with rude comments or questions about our loved ones.

Our grandkids are the best--precious, smart, beautiful. But what do we do if someone sees their photograph and makes an unflattering or rude comment about them? Or asks why they are so "wild" at family get-togethers?  Or makes a negative rhetorical statement about someone we love. A friend who met my family for the first time at a social gathering told me later that she was surprised at how "ugly" one of those family members was.

People say the oddest and rudest things. (My friend was on her third glass of wine, which may explain why she felt free to share her observation.)

How to respond to this sort of commentary? In her column, Ask Sahaj, the columnist dealt with a grandmother whose friends often made intrusive or rude remarks about the racial makeup of her 7-year-old granddaughter's appearance. Sahaj's advice applies to a multitude of rude commentary situations: 

When someone says something that is rude, sometimes the best response is to not respond to it at all. Simply, you can redirect the conversation. This may sound like, “She’s really sweet and loves …” Or, “I really love how she …” By redirecting the focus on your granddaughter’s personality or interests, you demonstrate that it’s not important to focus on her racial identity and that there are far more interesting things about her.

The NYTimes carried a column that promised "a magic phrase to defeat nosy questions," which some of their professional experts referred to as "predatory curiosity." The kinds of questions in question were ones like, "Why don't you have grandchildren?" or "Why doesn't your daughter have a second child?"

What was the magic phrase? Well, there were two, plus a reminder that you do not have to respond to personal and intrusive questions or commentary.

1. In a calm, neutral tone, simply say, “I’d rather not talk about it." It's a phrase that can be used in many different settings.

2. Say firmly some variation on, "“Thanks for your concern, I appreciate it. I’m doing just fine.”

The intrusive questions may never stop. One psychotherapist--a woman who is Sri Lankan American--tries to see the humor in the family prodding.

She notes that Sri Lankan aunties "can be ruthless."At family gatherings, they constantly asked her when she would marry — and after she was married, the pregnancy queries began. After her fourth child,  “they were like, ‘When are you going to stop having kids?’”

painting: Picasso

 

Grandparenting: That "feeling ignored" feeling

Sometimes we're upset at our grandkids over the unwritten thank you note. or the failure to acknowledge a birthday or a special visit. Or forgetting to answer a text or phone call--or initiate one. When our grandkids (or adult kids) seem oblivious to our existence, we feel like we aren't part of their family and we're annoyed at and frustrated with those we love.

This ignored or left-out feeling tends to worsen as our grandkids morph into teenagers and young adults. Just as they're marching toward independence and pushing their parents away, we might be stuck in that wake.

Should we say something? Do something? And if so, what?

Here's some tough advice on that question from askingeric who's responding to a widowed step-grandmother who visits and sends money or cash cards as gifts to the step-grandkids regularly.

[T]urn off the ATM, at least temporarily. You’re showing love and care by sending money, but because it’s not reciprocated, it’s become commodified. It’s not your fault, but it’s easy to feel like you’re not getting a return on your investment. Removing money from the equation will clear the way for you to have a conversation with your grandchildren individually. It doesn’t have to be long or overwrought. Say to them, “I love you and I miss you. I need you to call me once a month” (or whatever cadence feels right to you). “Put it on your calendar. This is the way that you can show me that you value me.”

Hold them to it. Sometimes the best way to show someone that you love them is to say, “This relationship isn't working for me; here's how we can make it work together.”

painting: Emile Bernard, Breton Woman with Red Umbrella

Tracking Apps: Young adults need to grow into independence. Tracking them blocks that.

"Almost all my friends track their college-age kids." This is my daughter-in-law speaking, though she is not among the trackers. She lives in a medium-size city far from the perils of major urban hubs. But her fellow parents, she says, want the reassurance that their young adult child arrived safely at wherever it is they are going--whether they are traveling by bike, a friend's car or an Uber, whether they are away at college or in a workplace.

A few posts ago, I wrote about a mom who was worried about whether she should still be tracking her college-age kids (by air tags, as opposed to smartphone app to which her children objected); she had a friend who was still tracking her married 24-year-old daughter.

I am of a generation that is less familiar with and less attuned to smartphone's abilities to keep tabs on one another. So I was stunned to hear about all this tracking, which is why I blogged about it, why I mentioned it to my daughter-in-law and why her answer was equally surprising. Then I came across an issue of Axios, a newsletter that is usually about politics. This time it was about "parents' unprecedented ability to keep tabs on their kids."

How many parents do it? A lot. A survey by a cybersecurity company (Malwarebytes) found that 84% of U.S. parents use some form of tracking to monitor their kids.  One of the most popular apps lets parents know when their child walks into a friend's house, whether they're driving too fast and a complete history of their movements over a weekend. Some apps let parents of college-age kids know whether their child made it to their math class.

A bit of tracking may be useful with young children and even teens, but for young adults going to college or starting off life outside the parental home, leaving is a major step toward independence. By tracking the minutia of our adult children's daily lives we're taking that away, or as Axios put it, "the opportunity to make mistakes, skip  class and feel the repercussions and figure it out for themselves."

I asked a 22-year-old about the tracking of young adult kids. "One needs to learn self-regulatory skills and you aren't going to if your parents are monitoring you all the time,"  she told me, adding, "If you can't get to class without your mom checking on you, you'll never want to go to class and never know how to make yourself do something."

I'll end with the Axios newsletter's concluding quote:

"You're providing your child with training wheels. They're going to have to come off."

painting: "Red Dance," Kenneth Young

Rebalancing Acts: When our kids become our social advisers

I was invited to a pool party.

It was last minute. Casual. A text read, "You are invited to pool dip and also dinner tomorrow Saturday night here. Come anytime afternoon. Cupla folks you'll like."

I went into panic mode. I would know no one but the host--an editor I'd met years ago during my freelance days and maintained a pleasant on-and-off friendship with over the years. He'd been especially kind when my husband was ill--taking me out to lunch; emailing me jokes. But I didn't know his wife, no less the "cupla friends."

Although I was now a widow, it's not as though I'd never navigated socially on my own. During my days as a reporter and editor, I went to receptions and cocktail parties on my own. It wasn't scary. The people there would be connected to the beat I covered; it would be easy to start a conversation. But this was different. I wouldn't have the anchor of a friend, co-worker or husband to seek out if I was floundering socially.

My first thought: I can't do this. How do I say no nicely? I went for a walk with a fellow widow to see how she would handle declining the invitation. "You have to go," she said. "You shouldn't lock yourself up in your apartment." We came up with a strategy that I thought I could handle: Go for the swim but find an excuse not to stay for dinner.

I got back to my apartment and called my daughter-in-law. She and my son have a pool as do several of their friends. She would know pool party protocols and whether I needed to bring a host gift. Her advice: wear your bathing suit under a skirt or dress; stuff underwear into your purse. If you're not staying for dinner, don't worry about a gift.

I was still uneasy. I FaceTimed with my daughter. She keyed in on why I was so stressed, on what was provoking my unease and what did I see as the worst-case scenario of being at a pool party. It was the usual social anxiety: I would know no one, have no one to talk to, be a loner paddling around in a swimming pool full of jolly people who all knew each other.

Then my daughter put on her daughter. My 21-year-old granddaughter is into clothes styling. I asked her what to wear and if I should bring a towel.

Her answer was definitive. "PenPen," she said, "no one goes into the water at a pool party! There won't be any swimming. Wear a loose dress that looks like you could be wearing a bathing suit under it or wear a bathing suit under it. You will not need a towel."

I tell you the long version of this episode (minus the full-blown anxiety attack on Saturday afternoon; the first few months of being a widow are not easy) because it struck me that, after years of being an adviser to my children, that world had turned upside down. I was turning to my children for advice--on what to wear, how to behave and, most importantly, how to get on top of my anxieties. They were, in effect, parenting me.

I have written about this rebalancing of roles before. I saw it happen during the pandemic, to friends and even to my husband and me, although we weren't asking for advice so much as receiving it. Our kids would try to tell us what we should and should not do to stay safe. When my husband and I got Covid (this was pre-vaccine and our cases were not life-threatening), they conferred with our doctors, sent medical supplies (oximeters, blood pressure cuffs) and tapped into their suddenly-acquired medical knowledge to advise us.

Maybe because we're over 65 and of an age where we are considered especially vulnerable to the flu, a heat wave or whatever else is going around, our kids now worry about us the way we did about them. And when we have social questions--what to wear, how long to stay at a party, what kind of gift to bring--we turn to them. They are the experienced hands, the folks who are up-to-date. All of a sudden they've acquired the know-how to advise us.

If you're interested in a pool party update: The editor's wife was welcoming, kind and charming. There was only one other couple ("cupla" was literal) and they were delightful to talk to. We sat on the edge of the pool, dangled our feet and had a drink. I left before dinner.  There was no swimming.

 paintings: top, Renoir, The Boating Party; bottom,  Kay Hibbard, Beachcombers

 

Leaving a Legacy:The Great Transfer of Wealth from us to our adult kids. Is it for real?

Here's what the headlines tell us: The greatest wealth transfer in history is here and we are the source of those assets. Yes. Some $84 trillion in our investment accounts, wallets and collectibles are set to change hands over the next 20 years, according to various economists whose job it is to run the numbers and make forecasts.

As far back as history goes, parents have passed on--transferred--to their children their acquired wealth. But something different is going on today. First off, there's exponentially more accumulated wealth involved thanks to a booming economy that started gaining traction after World War II and has continued to make gains. In 1989, for instance, total family wealth in the U.S. was $38 trillion (adjusted for inflation). By 2022, that wealth had tripled to $140 trillion.

Along with that, there's a large base making that distribution. Some 73 million baby boomers are aging and are beginning to reach the end of their life cycle. So there are a lot of us who are about to spread that wealth around via our wills and estates, such as they are.

Not all boomers are equal of course. Some of us will leave our children a few thousand dollars, a home or not much at all. Inequality reigns. But plenty of us may be able to pass along thousands if not a few million dollars worth of assets. The recipients will be our adult children and our grandchildren, that is Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980), millennials (1981-1996) and Gen Z (1997-2012).

The transfer is already underway, thanks to how generous many of us who have the wherewithal have been.  As I've noted in previous posts, we have been sharing our good fortune in the here and now--helping our children with a downpayment on a house, paying their way through college or gifting them money for an entrepreneurial venture. As a New York Times  article on the Great Transfer put it:

Heirs increasingly don’t need to wait for the passing of elders to directly benefit from family money, a result of the bursting popularity of “giving while living” — including property purchases, repeated tax-free cash transfers of estate money, and more — providing millions a head start.

Similarly, with a headline that read, "What does it take to buy a house? Increasingly, Mom and Dad," the Washington Post reported that "nearly 1 in 5 young adults said their parents have helped with rent or mortgage payments in the past year."

More specifically:

In 1994, 1.6 percent of first-time home buyers under 35 had a co-borrower age 55 or older. By 2022, after a pandemic-era spike, that figure had more than doubled to 3.7 percent, matching a high set in 2015.

A separate analysis of federal mortgage data set by Redfin suggests the trend in co-signers above 55 years old on younger home buyers’ purchases picked up even more in 2023.

But is the Great Wealth Transfer for real? Will we be able to pass on the enormity of our assets? I have my doubts.

I'm no economist and one anecdote does not a dent in an economic forecast make. But I know from my recent personal experience, it is jarringly and horrifyingly expensive to care for an infirm spouse and/or for a frail and ill us. We are not necessarily dying at 80 (as the economists figure in their forecasts) --we're living into our 90s. Not all of us will get there, of course, but more to the point, will we age into our 80s and  90s with our minds and bodies intact. I can tell you, the costs of caring for a spouse who has had a debilitating stroke or is suffering from dementia or Parkinson's disease--to name three of the top health debilitators among the elderly--can wipe out savings in a flash.

But that's a blog post for another day. Meanwhile, let's just be grateful if we are among those who benefitted from an enormous economic expansion. It helped us pull together a small pot of wealth with which we can help our adult children now and, if we're lucky, boost our grandkids later. Let's hope our kids are able to benefit from the Great Wealth Transfer.

painting: "The Ferryman," Ivan Canu

 

 

 

 

 

 

The App World: Should we be tracking our grown children?

Am I showing my age and my app ignorance? Well, I certainly felt the former and learned a lot about the latter from a Carolyn Hax column. The column dealt with a reader's query about tracking her young adult children--children who are in college and no longer living at home.

The parent wrote that "EVERY single one [of her friends] still tracks their 'kids'! Including one with a married 24-year-old daughter."

The tracking is done via a phone app and/or by airtags (I had to look it up; in case you do too, they're the tags you can use to track where your keys, laptop or lost airline luggage are hiding.) The Hax correspondent writes that when her oldest child (now 20 years old) went to college, "we took the app off their phone but could see where they were through AirTag/item trackers." Now the 18-year-old wants their phone to be tracker-free. The parent's question for Hax:

"I rationally agree and would have been horrified to be “tracked” in college by my parents. Am I in a bubble with my other midlife anxious friends who are parents of newly launched adults? I will deal with getting rid of the app, but I wonder if we are outliers with this technology."

Readers, am I the only one shocked by this tracking of adult children, of being able to see where they are every minute, of this intrusion on their independence and privacy?

Evidently not. So was Hax. The opening sentence of her answer was this:

I don’t care whether you are outliers with this technology. Or inliers, downliers or fierypantsliars. Stop tracking your kids. It encourages more anxiety than it eases, at the cost of their independence and your trust in one another. And yourselves.

She also makes this important point that underlies almost everything we do vis-a-vis parenting our children:

The part of child rearing where you control your kids starts ending in utero and ends-ends when they’re 18. It just does. Your job thereafter is all relationship, which is equally at your and your kids’ discretion.

Hax summed up her long answer (which tackled the role the reader's anxieties play) with this bit of perspective:

Yay to trackers for wilderness adventurers, solo travelers, at-risk minors, people with developmental, cognitive, memory issues that make wandering a serious risk. When trackers help families in hard circumstances, great.

But a typical launch isn’t a hard circumstance. It’s life. So please stop grasping for access on an it-won’t-help-to-know basis. You all will be fine, or won’t, and it 99-point-whatever won’t hinge on this.

Hax is a sensitive writer attuned to her audience. I picked up a similar sentiment on an impersonal  Q/A post about tracking apps.  It, too, said all there is to say about tracking our adult kids.

AirTags Can Negatively Affect Parent-Child Relationship

Things can also get tricky when it comes to older kids and teens. While it can reduce your anxiety as a parent, tracking without consent can erode trust.

painting: Emma Amos, Self Portrait

 

Living Our Legacy: Keeping our kids and grandkids up to date on our past.

 

I recently found an essay I wrote about five years ago about sharing--or failing to--my life story with a granddaughter, of finding out she had to Google me to learn more about my career. Our lives reflect the history of our times and that's reason enough for our grandkids--and our adult kids--to know how the two (our lives and the times we lived through) intersected.  Here's my essay (updated from a previous post), warts and all, plus lessons learned.

My Granddaughter Googled Me

Given the teen preference for texting, an email from a granddaughter in Massachusetts to me in Maryland was a surprise. The subject line even more intriguing: Is this You? it read. The body of the message held links to articles I'd written. A click and I was reading a piece I'd penned for the Washington Post in 1978; another in 1983.

I emailed back: “Unless there's another Penelope Lemov alive in this land, yes. that's me.”

More to the point: Why was my 15-year-old granddaughter sending me links to long-ago and far-away articles? Why, in short, had she Googled me?

The prosaic answer was this: She was applying to a summer program in journalism and had to write an essay about her interest in the arts of communication and the media. One paragraph was about her grandmother (that's me) being a journalist, and she evidently checked that out--looked for proof--by calling up some of my stories.

I am still a journalist--part-time now. But when my granddaughter was born and until she turned 11 I was a full-time editor at a national magazine, having worked my way up from staff writer. 

That being so, the question nags at me: Why did she have to Google me to find out about my standing as a journalist? When I asked the grandfather (aka my husband and a lawyer who once worked for the U.S. Congress) what he thought, he reminisced about all the legal and political issues he had shared with this granddaughter once she was old--or interested enough--to understand.

I had not. My granddaughter knew I had had a career but she had no idea what that was all about. I never talked to her about it. When I went to visit her or she came here, I kept my grandparenting focused on the quotidian. I was observing, getting a feel for what she cared about, thought about, was interested in and how I could add background, anecdotes or information to her concerns. I didn't bring my world to her.

I must have shared a funny story or two--when interviewing sources we journalists are a riot. Sometimes. But I hadn't discussed what I wrote about or the many climbs and plateaus, hurdles and low points I faced--from my first job answering letters to the editor at Time magazine to ending up as an editor and as a columnist on municipal finance at Governing magazine.

"She absorbed some of it by looking around," my daughter said when I brought up the missed opportunities. My home office, which doubled as my granddaughter's bedroom when she came to visit, had various memorabilia hung on the wall for my own viewing pleasure--a plaque for a journalism award, a fake Washingtonian cover with my face on it.

If I ever finish the memoir I'm writing about my years at Time Inc (an aggressively sexist time in the work place in general, in journalism in particular and at Time Inc especially), my children and grandchildren will know more about what this grannie did with her life and what life was like when she did it. It's an important part of the legacy we leave. The life choices we made reflect our values and give our children and grandchildren at least one road map--hopefully among many others--about what paths there are in life and ways to deal with some of the stickier issues life can throw at you.

The written version may be where I'm heading in terms of explaining myself and my world to my grandchildren, but in the meantime, the idea that one granddaughter had to Google me to learn about my career is a reminder (note to self) to share the past--the good stories, fun anecdotes, and rich experiences--with our family in the here and now. It's an on-going story, even if we capture it in a final form some time down the road.

painting: Lesser Ury

Grandparenting: Advice about giving advice

He may not have been writing about parents butting in on their grown children's housekeeping or spending habits or the way they parent their newborns, but Bob Dylan was of the minute on the basic concept:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’

In a rundown of new understandings of old practices--science has made some of our standby child-rearing standards irrelevant or even questionable--an article on Katie Couric Media hands out lots of advice on looking beyond "the way we did things." It also speaks to how we can be supportive grandparents who don't undermine our children's confidence in their parenting, especially during that fraught first year.

While the suggestions come with specifics (pacifiers have proven to be a lifesaver not a detriment), the author Mary Agnant , a young mother, also steps back to address us--the grandparents--directly:

Nobody knows better than you how hard being a parent is, and what we want most is to know that you think we’ll be great ones and that you’re proud of us. Having faith in us means not questioning every decision we make.

After writing that,  she leans back on Bob Dylan (see above).

painting: Pierre Bonnard, Bowl of Milk

 

Social Media Etiquette: It's a no-no to post grandkid photos

Lives there a grannie or gramps so dull who is not at the ready to pull out their iPhone and show off photos of their Grands--videos and stills, group shots and solos. We're all a little besotted when it comes to sharing the adorableness of our grandkids.

But it's one thing to let friends hold our phone and watch our precious toddler pulling a truck through a puddle--so cute. It's another to post that video or photo on Facebook or Instagram or another social media platform.

Here's a summary of advice I read on Katie Couric's Media site about posting photos of children; it applies to us and our grandkids especially: 

Even if you have strong privacy settings in place on your accounts, don't post photos of the grands unless and until you know the parents' social media rules and, should your grands be a few years older than toddler, ask them for permission as well. "It helps teach them how to respectfully use social media in the future," writes author Mary Agnant.

The rules do not apply to grandpups. Here's one of mine.

photos: child, pexels; puppy, Palo Coleman

 

A Sad Post

Mike:  1935 to 2024

Dad to two grown children, BaPa to four Grands, chief behind-the-ear scratcher to two grandpups and my favorite husband.

Money Matters: If there are strings attached to a gift, tie them on in advance

Sometimes we surprise ourselves with our generosity. We give our children a large gift-----enough money to, say, buy a car, put a downpayment on a house or take out a first-rate health insurance policy. But then they use the money in ways we did not intend-- they go on a lavish vacation or buy themselves a designer wardrobe. We end up frustrated and angry.

What's our recourse? Here's an answer from Philip Galanes and his Social Qs.  It's to a widowed mother who offered her only child the gift of the family home. While the gift is a house per se, Galanes' answer covers all the gift bases:

The mother in question wrote Galanes to say she had offered her son and his fiance, who live in another city, her home if they would "come back here to raise a family." The son accepted but when she suggested he build a guesthouse on the site for her, her son demurred. "They assumed," the mother writes, "I would move into a condo. I was shattered! The next day, he said he was sorry if I felt they were kicking me out of my house. I do. I also think if I don’t go along with them, they will stay where they are. "

Here's the gist of Galanes' answer that applies to all of us gift givers. (bold face are mine):

Your impulse to give your home to your son was a generous one. But even with gifts — maybe especially with gifts — it is crucial to express any conditions we have in mind when we make the offer. Here, I don’t think a reasonable person would expect the gift of a home to include your continued residency in it — unless you mentioned that fact.

Now, I also know how natural it is to daydream about happy situations. For you, that may include living in an extended-family household with your son and his fiancée. And it’s easy to assume that other people want the same things we do. That’s why communication is so important: Sometimes, they don’t.

art credit: Hilary Pecis, "Piecemeal Rhythm"

 

Grandparenting: Do our kids want our advice about how to raise their kids?

The question does not call for a "man bites dog" answer. Most of our adult children who are raising their own children do not want to be bombarded with our parenting advice. Not because our advice has no value. It's because they no longer want to be parented. They're the parents now! They'll ask if they have a question.

That said, I was struck by an advice column from Sahaj Kaur Kohli. She's a therapist who focuses on people with immigrant parents and on setting boundaries with parents. Here's what she told one reader who wrote about a parent who insisted on giving advice about how she, the adult daughter, was raising her child.

I'm offering up this commentary in that it may be the other side of the coin for those of us who complain to advice columnists--and to our friends--that our children are pushing us away, that they are limiting visits or not taking our phone calls. It's about how it feels to be on the other side of the relationship where boundaries are not observed or respected. With that in mind, here's an edited version of Sahaj's advice to a young woman (she signs herself "resisting daughter") with a parent second-guessing the way she and her partner are raising their child. She wants to stay connected to her parents but does not want to raise her children the way her parents raised her.

.... It doesn’t matter if you’re an independent adult, and it certainly doesn’t matter if you’re a parent yourself. To your mom, you’re the child and she’s the adult. She raised you, and you turned out fine. She has been through it, so she knows better. ...

This dynamic is incredibly hard to change especially when your mom may wrap her identity around her role as your parent.

So what's the solution Sahaj offers?

.... You may not be able to change your mom, but you can change how you respond and engage with her, and manage how her behavior affects you.

....Instead of trying to get her to agree with all of your choices, you can focus on how long you visit her, or how you respond and engage with her — especially because your kids are likely observing this dynamic, too.

You don’t have to agree with your mom, or do everything she says, to maintain a relationship with her. Instead, consider what you are willing to compromise on and what you are no longer willing to tolerate to help you focus on what is important to you.

Next Post: What we can do if our adult children are pushing us away.

painting: Tryptich by Oliver Lee Jackson.

Adult Children Confess: Here's what we do that annoys them

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as ithers see us!" That's 18th Century Scottish poet Robert Burns sharing his insight that continues to hold true today.

In that spirit, here are our adult children's top two complaints about us, as told to Carolyn Hax in an online discussion.  I am hopeful neither of these top two "annoying" habits apply to me, but I'm self-scrutinizing anyway.

Number One: Offering criticism and unsolicited advice.

Number Two: Ignoring cues and asking highly personal questions when no one is in the mood for sharing.

Hax sympathizes with the adult children who responded to a reader-letter and a follow-up prompt, "What makes my parents so annoying." But she and her readers also have a few suggestions for us on how to "mitigate" their annoyance with us.

Here are a few of them (edited version):

Let your kids be themselves. Few annoyances are as annoying as being parented against one's will.

Keep your anxieties to yourself.

Learn not to feel or act hurt that your kids find you annoying. It's more positional than personal anyway.

Learn to laugh at yourself, and admit when you're wrong.

Don't make them spend time with you. If you have a relationship where they can say no to a visit or that they have other plans, then there's a limit to how much you can annoy them.

painting: Emma Amos, Self Portrait

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandparenting: The food rules when grandkids visit

When I was first introduced to grandparenting I had to adjust to rules my children set for their children's snacks at my house. One family did not want their toddler to eat certain sweets; the other forbade individual portions of boxed juice drinks. I was fine with their decisions; I just had to remember who approved of what lest I offer juice drinks to the wrong grandchild.

My experience was in keeping with what my friends were telling me: Their children were setting down food rules for grandchildren that were bewildering to grandparents. What's wrong with home-baked chocolate chip cookies?

I mention this because a recent letter to Carolyn Hax is a man-bites-dog variation on this theme. The complaint comes from a mother whose parents are serving her children super-healthy meals that the children won't eat. The grandparents refuse to supply snacks that would assuage the children's hunger, which occasionally causes meltdowns.  The mother/reader continues:

"While the food may seem healthier at the grandparents’, I don’t like the amount of control the grandparents hold over the food for everyone else. Isn’t the point of a holiday to eat, drink and be merry? Do you have a food solution for when families of different generations and geographies come together that could help keep everyone sane?"

Here we are with tables turned. The grandparents aren't baking sugar-loaded cookies and letting their grandchildren snack on them all day; they are setting healthy eating standards that are over and beyond those of the parental household. So, is there a way to keep everyone sane about food? Here's part of what Hax has to say. Spoiler alert: Hax does not pour the blame on us:

If your kids are physically, medically or religiously able to eat what the grands serve and simply choose not to, then you have a straightforward path: Recognize that it’s not your place to parachute into the grandparents’ house with pallets of cheesy poofs. If their nutritional orthodoxy strains their bonds with the kids, then that’s a natural consequence the grands can perceive and address for themselves.

“Best-case,” though, and arguably the inevitable case, your kids will learn all kinds of things from the food gap: how different people and cultures express themselves in different homes, how to default to gratitude when someone goes to the trouble to provide them with healthy meals, how to cope when the world doesn’t bend to their will — all previously known as having some manners — and how to eat when they’re hungry.

Meltdowns are bad, but entitlement is so profoundly worse.

Painting: Pierre Bonnard, The Late Interiors

 

Money Matters: Our helping hand is bigger and broader than ever before

It's a trend that's grounded in fiscal reality. Our kids--twenty-somethings and 30s--are living with us, nearly 25 percent of them, according to several surveys. The surveys also find that they've moved into their childhood bedrooms for monetary reasons.

Although many of them are on the first rung of career jobs or are earning decent money in the gig economy, they see how much it costs to live in the world.  They may be carrying sizeable student debt, buying cars on credit or face a rental market that's unfriendly.  The national median for a one-bedroom apartment is currently around $1,500 a month, according to Zumper, but rents are significantly higher in cities like New York ($4,300), Boston ($2,990), San Francisco ($2,970) and  Miami ($2,600), cities where young adults are drawn to live.

For many of our adult kids, living at home isn't a sign of social failure. It's a way to save for a future goal--whether it's to buy a place of their own, start a business or have a decent nest egg before plunging into marriage. Sometimes the move home is transitory. A friend of mine's 34-year-old son relocated from a city in the Midwest to his hometown where rents are high. He's living home while he searches for an affordable place. My friend would like him to speed up the search--she's finding the adjustment to his presence tricky--but he doesn't seem to be in a hurry. For him, the price is right and the refrigerator full.

Whatever their reasons for living with us, we're party to a parallel trend: 65 percent of us (the parents) are providing some form of financial support to our adult children between the ages of 22 and 40. According to a USA Today survey, housing topped the list (either paying their rent or letting them live free at home), after that came help with the cell phone bill, then car payments and more personal stuff like clothing, their takeout bill and entertainment (Netflix and the like). Dead last: health insurance or medical bills.

A good number of us--one in three--report that the support is a strain on our budgets. Nonetheless, we have not set limits. Nor have we let our kids--or ourselves-- know for how long we’re willing to put them up and help out.

painting: Cezanne

 

 

 

Leaving a Legacy: The gift of clean closets and cleared out basements

Long-time readers know how I've ranted about an important part of the legacy we leave our children. That is, besides the assets and the sense of our values we leave our children, we should clean out the mess of papers and junk stored in our closets, basements, attics and crannies of our house. I have friends who don't want to touch the many storage places in their basement: "Let the kids take care of it," is what they tell me. For them, that's 45 years of accumulated stuff they're asking their kids to sort through and disburse.

I won't rant on. I'll leave it to Carolyn Hax to back me up. A reader--the daughter of a "widowed, healthy, vibrant mom"--says her mom refuses to go through her belongings and pare down the massive amount of stuff and old furniture in her house. "She says that 'someone else' can take care of it," the reader writes. The 'someone else' is the daughter who feels saddled with the enormous chore that lies ahead. "I feel trapped, and I can't enjoy the present with my mom without feeling anger over the future."

Here's Hax's answer:

As long as you’re okay with handing over control of where the stuff ends up, you can hire a company to clean out the house: all the paper, all the clothes, all the toxic cleaning solutions, every stick of furniture. It’s not cheap but can be cheaper than you’d expect, especially if the projected sale of some contents can offset the final price. Get a few estimates — ask real estate agents for names — pull those treasured photos and letters out for yourself, then drop the proverbial match.

The practical answer may help the daughter. But is this what we want to happen to our stuff? Are there treasures buried in a closet or photo album or old letters that should be kept ase part of family history? A lot of meaning can seep into small kindergarten drawings or a large old sofa. Do we really want it all dumped? And if we do, why not start dumping some of it--a bag a day--into the trash now. I have to admit I might not have gotten started on my "'piles of papers" and assorted belongings (from our parents as well as us) if I hadn't sold my house and moved to a smaller apartment with no storage space. That was an incentive to get the job done.

Hax notes that, for our kids, sorting through our stuff after we've left this world--stuff that's suffused with memories of us--and "sending it on a dumpster ride is not for the faint of heart." It is, she writes, "a heavy emotional saddle." We can spare them that.

painting: Picasso, Still Life

 

 

Holiday Surprises: What to do (and not do) when your child brings someone special home?

All families have their holiday traditions. For those of us who plan for a full family get-together over an extravagant holiday feast, there may be a surprise in store when our grown kids head for home. They may bring a new love interest, someone who may be a possible new partner in their life. Or they may use the family setting to announce a commitment to someone you've already met.

Amidst all the tumult of various family members pouring through the doors and taking up residence on the sofa, how do we deal with our child and their guest who may become an important person in our lives?

Writing in Psychology Today, Jane Adams has some pertinent advice. It starts with this important point: By bringing someone home and incorporating them into the family tradition, they're not asking for your permission or even your blessing.

Here's Adams' fuller expansion on that point:

The holidays, which often reunite far-flung kith and kin under one roof for celebratory rituals, are a popular season for couples presenting a ring or otherwise committing to a relationship with a future, whether or not an engagement or marriage is formally announced....

Although a blessing would be nice, it's not required. Young adults aren't really asking, they're telling. Their closed circle is opening up enough to admit you, unless you express your doubts, concerns, or misgivings. They don't want your judgments, they're not asking for your advice or opinion, and unless or until they do, keep it to yourself. Maybe you don't see what they see in him or her, but you don't have to, although there's nothing wrong with saying, "Tell me what you love about them," or even asking, "When did you know this was It?" not in a challenging tone but a gently curious one.

Her final piece of holiday advice:

Grab the newest member of your family, get them under the mistletoe, and plant one on them—after all, it's a blessed time to open your heart as wide as you can.