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

Happy Holidays: The torch passes and our kids put their stamp on Thanksgiving.

It is the Saturday after Thanksgiving and I am still peppy. Usually, at this point in the Thanksgiving weekend, I fall into bed in a state of total exhaustion. But I've just spent three days with three families under one roof [paterfamilias and I; uber son and his growing family; alpha daughter and hers]. All three of the "big" grands were there, and all the running around and energy that  a 5, 6 and 7 year-old can expend in their waking hours were expended. Footballs were thrown, dress-up was played; special "performances" were given.  Plus there was all the cuteness, sweetness and smiley-ness of a 6-month old--and all the constant parenting and protecting that involves. A big dinner was served [turkey as well as tofurky and many many trimming] and lots and lots of other meals [both regular and veggie]. Beds were made, dishes washed, stories read, long walks taken. And yet, here I stand, feeling perfectly refreshed.

The difference? This year our family--each of us live in a different city--convened at uber son's house. He, and most especially my daughter-in-law, took on all the responsibilities for shopping and figuring our where everyone would sleep. I helped with the cooking--I made some of my favorites--but I was second mate. New dishes or new variations of dishes were introduced. My daughter-in-law [AKA second daughter] has a real flair for floral arrangements and, with what seemed like little effort, a lovely and appropriately low-key arrangement was created for the center of the table--as opposed to my smooshing flowers into a vase.

It didn't matter how much I pitched in to help, the reality is this: It wasn't my house . Is it that simple? Not really. As usual, I wanted to do everything I could to make things easier for my children--by helping with their kids, running an errand, doing a load of wash or whatever. Still it wasn't that tiring because others were in charge. Maybe it's because paterfamilias and I experienced what my friend Marian, the psychiatrist, calls "flattening of the hierarchy."  At moments, paterfamilias, who is much less involved in making the household work, came close to what my friend Steve calls "feeling irrelevant." Not that either of us felt irrelevant--but we were not the center of the dynamics. Connections were being made between daughter and daughter-in-law; between daughter-in-law and son-in-law. Reconnections were being made between son and daughter who don't see each other very often. Bonds were being forged between pint-sized cousins. We are the original connective tissue, but they are stretching out without us. Which is how it has to be.

I kinda liked passing the Thanksgiving torch. I didn't miss all the shopping, cooking and bed-making that having eight visitors in my home entails--to say nothing of the many trips to the airport to pick everyone up with suitable car seats in cars. But paterfamilias was of another mind. Of course. He likes being master of the house. He likes filling it with his children and his children's children. He likes the routines we had--the zoo on the day after Thanksgiving, the setting up of his old but still-runnable electric trains. Being head of the table and of the family. He is not tredding lightly on any flattening of the hierarchy. On this Saturday after Thanksgiving, he wants to re-think what we do next year and who does it.

De-Nested: When adult kids move back home, politeness is strained.

I'm a sucker for a new phrase, especially when it captures the definition of the moment. Here's my most recent find: Economy of gratitude. It refers to the breakdown in the way we treat each other--we being the parents and ourr adult children who have moved back into the family nest. It's when family members notice only the inconveniences and ignore the nice things that we do for one another.

According to a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, that doesn't have to happen. "Children and parents can peacefully coexist by approaching the new living arrangement as they would if they were taking on any roommate: Agree in advance on how to handle household purchases, cleaning and other responsibilities. Resolve the question of who is in charge and how the house is to be governed, and the situation may not seem so bad after all."

The L.A. Times is covering the issue because California is one of the epicenters of the foreclosure crisis. One of the phenomenons of that tragedy is that people who are losing their homes or in danger of losing their homes, are bunking in together intergenerationally. That is, parents with children or children with parents. But that phenomenon is not limited to the usual--parents and their 20-something children. It involves older children. And here's why

An AARP study--released in September and reflecting 2007 foreclosure woes--found that more than a quarter of the foreclosures and delinquencies in the second half of 2007 involved homeowners ages 50 or older. SInce then there has been the calamity of the plunging stock market and the unraveling of the financial safety net for many midcareer Americans and their parents. No reliable figures yet exist on the number of adults forced to move in with parents because of the financial crises--or adult children moving in with their parents to help the parents--but it's clear this group consists of older, previously well-established homeowners.

The time are a changin' and it's not for the better.

Money Matters: Health insurance for your grown kids is not an indulgence

Paterfamilias and I had dinner with friends the other night--friends whose oldest child is about to graduate from college. They are recovering from the $50,000 a year it's been costing them and looking forward to his independence, particularly his financial independence. He doesn't, of course, know exactly what he wants to do. He's hoping to take a year or two to figure it out.

That brought back a lot of memories for me and the pater. When our kids graduated from college--lickety-split, within one year of each other (talk about recovering from tuition stress)--our daughter headed out to the West Coast : She loved painting and wanted to be an artist. Our son went to New England: He wanted to see if he could make it as a writer. Both of them took part time jobs to support themselves--to pay their share of a shared room in a group house and their share of the spaghetti that they lived on. So they were independent--except that they did not put aside any of their earnings from part-time work for health insurance. Naturally not. What 22-year-old who has had nothing more than some sports-related injuries to deal with, thinks about health care coverage.

But we did. There they were, far from home and on their own. But what if something terrible happened to them--an illness that put them in the hospital or required high-priced specialist care. Naturally, we'd want to make sure they were in the best hospital for their problem and hire the best physicians we could find. There is nothing in life that we love or treasure more than our children. So we took out so-called catastrophic health insurance policies for them. I say for them--it was not something they were going to do. And we didn't see it as an indulgence. We weren't insuring them so much as our assets. A 10-day stay in a hospital and a few visits to a specialist could wipe out our savings.

Our friends at dinner hadn't had the chance to think this little "dependence" issue through yet. One thing that has changed in the past year or two is that several states have passed laws allowing parents to cover their adult children--most set limits at 26 years of ag but in Florida, it's 30.

Insurance for those young adults is something worth planning for. We'll all need our assets for the little luxuries of life for our children's children--when they finally arrive.