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

Insights from Experts and Others: A Perspective on Helping Out

So a friend asked, When does the shlepping stop? [See below]

It's a broader question, of course: When do we stop doing all those little things for our kids that they ought to--could?--take care of themselves? It's partly an instinct to make life easier for them--as they struggle to find a footing in the adult world. In her book, "Your Kids Are Grown," Francine Toder, psychologist at California State University when she wrote the book a dozen years ago, doesn't answer the question so much as give it some perspective. "Each stage of life and decade between twenty and fifty," she writes, "is significant and provides unique challenges and events. The way a parent demonstrates support to a twenty-five-year-old daughter will be markedly different from the caring shown to a forty-five-year-old son."

Raising Questions: When Does the Schlepping Stop?

A Vermont friend’s daughter has been to college in New York, to a first job in Boston, to a stint in Africa in the Peace Corp, to a university in Michigan to get her master’s degree, to an internship in Ecuador. Now she’s back home, 30 years old, and job hunting--here and abroad. For each move, my friends pack up the car, attach a trailer and move all the daughter’s stuff to the next place or to storage in their basement.  The daughter’s career has been wonderful and exciting--for the daughter as well as my friends. They’ve gone to visit her in Africa and Ecuador, in Boston and Ann Arbor. But they are getting tired of carrying beds and a well-worn couch up flights of stairs and in and out of a trailer.

When, my friend asks, does the shlepping stop?

Insights from Experts and Others: Getting Beyond the Empty Nest

Here's a light but trenchant observation by Nora Ephron on the adjustment to the post-college era, when the kids finally move out and are on their own--or trying to be. [Paragraphing is Ephron's.]

“But eventally college ends, and they’re gone for good.

The nest is actually empty.

You’re still a parent, but your parenting days are over.

Now what?

There must be something you can do.

But there isn’t.

There is nothing you can do.

Trust me.

If you find yourself nostalgic for the ongoing, day-to-day activities required of a modern parent, there’s a solution: Get a dog.”

Nora Ephron, “I Feel Bad About My Neck”

I've filed this one under one of my Notes to Self: Keep Up Your Own Interests

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