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

Boundary Lines: Asking too much of our grown children.

When our kids were young and living under our wing, parenting had a lot to do with setting boundaries. No, you may not go outside without me. Yes, you can have the car but you must be home by 10.

Now that they're grown up and living under their own powers, parenting still has a lot to do with setting boundaries--but this time it's all about our respecting those boundaries. An example of a worst-case scenario is in a recent column by Carolyn Hax. A woman in her mid-20s who lives in her own apartment and supports herself, complains that her parents "insist they are entitled to know my every move because they are my parents." If she doesn't respond to a phone message within 24 hours, they threaten to call the police. If she tries to withhold details of her Saturday night, "they become very angry and claim I'm disrespecting them."

If it sounds overboard and overly intrusive, it is. And yet, Hax assures the writer, "yours aren't the first parents to have boundary issues."

That's some of us she's talking about. The solution Hax suggests is for the daughter to employ a non-confrontational approach. She should answer general questions about how she is but if demands are made for "a transcript of Saturday night," the daughter can tell her parents that she's "not going to answer questions about tracking my movements." Another way to handle it, Hax says, is for the daughter to answer the question she wishes her parents had asked, as in "I'm doing great, thanks. How's work, Dad?"

When we find our kids evading our questions with that time-honored ploy, it may be a heads up that we're asking stuff that's over the boundary line. Hopefully, they'll tell all we need to know when they're ready.

Grandparenting: How many grandkids visiting can you handle at once?

"I'm no longer doing the gang-bang visits with my grandkids," a friend tells me. "I'm staggering them."

She and her husband have retired to a home near a lake in the mountains. What she is talking about is having all five of her grandchildren--three from one daughter, two from another--in her house at one time for an extended visit. "Having all of them together for a meal is fun, but anything more than that is stressful."

This has nothing to do with the children's behavior or ramifications from the variations in her daughters parenting styles. It's more personal than that. She's established a special relationship with each child--a relationship that she pursues and recharges every time she visits her grandchildren in their homes or when they visit her as part of their family's outing. "Each one has something special going on with me," she says, "and I can't replicate that when they are all here."

In other words, her stress comes from worrying that any one of her grandchildren will wonder just how special he or she is to grammie, that the feeling of being special or of having a special bond will break. If you have a special way of reading books with one child and of working on art projects with another, of playing "hit the bat" with one and poring over baseball statistics in the newspaper with another, does it diminish that bond if you dilute your attention and shower the gift on all of them? Do they notice?

On one all-one-big-happy-family visit, I realized that, past the age of toddlerhood, maybe they're oblivious to it. The cousins--my son's and daughter's children--don't live near each other, so on those few occasions when they are together, they are plain-old happy to see each other. They tend to run off to play, leaving Special Grammie and Grumps to fend for themselves. But that's a whole different stress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandparenting: How to talk to an 8 year old.

It's the issue that rises every time we pick up the phone or Skype to talk to our grown kids and their kids--our Grands: How do you start a conversation with a child old enough to sort-of hold a conversation? Asking, "How is school?" leads to a monosyllabic answer, as does the equally deadening, "How do you like school?"

A few days ago, I posed this question on a grandparenting blog.Susan Adcox, who runs the site, answered that question with some solid advice. (You can link to it here). For starters, she refers to a source who's done a lot of thinking about the issue: Selma Wasserman in her book,Grandparenting by Long Distance. Wassermann suggests that you keep questions specific ("What toy are you playing with?" is better than "What are you doing?"), assume the burden of keeping the conversation going (small children don't yet have the hang of small talk) and, for small children, come up with questions or statements that you use over and over.

Susan, a grandmother with several years of practice, says she's had success talking to her grandkids about things she did with them, asking about movies or TV shows they both may have seen and about any major events coming up--holidays, birthdays, competitions. She also recommends asking about friends:  "If you can remember some details about your grandchildren's friends and ask about them, your stock will go up considerably. Friends are so important to older children."

A reader on the grandparenting blog brought up another point: understanding the words the young children are saying.Wildncrazygrandmas says she gets particularly frustrated when she cannot understand them over the phone or Skype. "I have to ask them to repeat what they just said, and I lose them!"

Been there, experienced that.

Checked in with my son-in-law who's a pre-school teacher. He suggested asking kids fun questions that they can answer on their level: Would you rather play in sand or snow? Would you rather be Batman/girl or Luke Skywalker/Princeses Leia? Would you rather be able to be invisible or to fly?

Anyone have any other ideas? Click the comment button and write on.

 

Vacation Togetherness: In tough times, our grown children travel with us.

"In a shaky economy," SmartMoney writes, "young adults are taking more trips with Mom and Dad--who are footing the bill." The travel industry even has a name for the new togetherness: multigenerational or intergenerational vacations.

While the downturned economy may foster more of it--so many well-educated young adults; so few jobs--the mom-and-pop financed vacation isn't anything new. Many of us have been doing it for years and for other reasons--from habit or the desire to indulge our children or for the simple pleasure of their company. But now the travel industry is responding with discount packages that foster family togetherness. The SmartMoney article mentions hotels with special deals [such as grandparents stay free] or tours that cater to intergenerational activities.The most popular: wildlife safaris, Alaskan cruises and trips to the Galapagos.

The article also quotes me and references this blog and my post a few weeks ago on the Daddy Indulgence Curve, which talks about the transition from treating everyone for everything on a vacation to letting them pay their own way.

 

Runaway Grandpa: Pop-Pop divorces himself from three generations of family

In his 75th year--and 50th year of marriage--a retired, New England professor ran off to California to live with a woman he'd been wooing for a year. It reminded me of a 30 Rock episode where Tina Fey's character Liz Lemon is stunned when her dad comes to New York City without her mom. He's planning to meet an old school chum and "have a little fun." Only this grandpa runaway is real life. And it's not  "a little fun." The New England academic has left behind not only a wife, but two grown children and five grandchildren--in effect, divorcing himself from his three-generation family.

The shock and abandonment are hard enough for his wife to deal with. But there is something else adding to her anguish: The grown children are shutting their father out of their lives. They will not open his emails or talk to him on the phone. When her husband left, the wife says, "the thing that really upset me was that my kids were not going to let their kids see their grandfather. I didn’t see how that followed."

And it hurt. "Grandparents and family relations are important and you try to keep them up as best you can," she says. She knows her grandchildren are confused. Her daughter's 8-year-old wonders, "do all old people just disappear?" And her son's 5-year-old stunned her parents one night by announcing, "You're ruining my life. I'm going to California to live with Pop-Pop." So far, it's been a year since the Pop-Pop has seen his grandchildren.

The grown children are feeling the impact of their father's actions in many ways. They are angry at him on behalf of their mother but also out of their own sense of abandonment. They may be grown up with families of their own, but a father is a father is father. And that leads to another issue: They have been reassessing who they thought their father was and is. The daughter told her mother that it wasn’t just the leaving but the self-centeredness of it. When she finally opened a letter he wrote her, the letter, she told her mother, "made it clear that it was all about him."

The betrayal runs deep. Nonetheless, the mother argues with her grown children. She believes they should let their father see their children. "A year," she says, "is such a long time in a child's life."

She has, she says "tried to make it clear to my children that they should not keep the grandkids from him.  I don’t want things to fall apart because he has hurt me. It's not a good thing he did, but there are other things to salvage."

The children are having none of it. When their mother argues the point with them, she gets "told where to get off on that. They tell me they’re not going to do what I want them to do."

A few months ago, a friend gave her some advice that she admits she is listening to: "At some point, you need to step back and let them find their own way."

In this as in many things.  

Holiday Visits: Are we good guests at holiday meals?

It was a cry from the heart. A loving son--someones grown child--was upset by his father's behavior at his mother-in-laws Thanksgiving dinner last year. In a question to the New York Times' Social Q's, he complained that his father, who had wrangled an invitation to the feast (he had no place else to go), "dominated the entire dinner conversation with stories about himself." He'd prefer the father not attend this year, but how to make that happen?

That was the question he posed but there's the obverse side to it. Is he--and his peers--talking about us? We don't have to be an invitation-wrangler to be on our worst self-centered behavior. We can even be hosting the Thanksgiving dinner and be overbearing. Age may have its prerogatives but letting the evening be all about us is a dangerous place to go--as this son's query suggests. We may do it because we feel a bit ignored or are rebelling against the reality that we are no longer center stage or have the starring role in the family. The Social Q's answer to the upset son might as well be a reminder to all of us who may feel we have the right to impose ourselves as the master/mistress of the evening. 

What Philip Galanes, the author of the column, wrote was a suggestion to the son that rather than trying to exclude dear old dad, he try talking to him along these lines: "Can you do me a favor, Dad? Susie’s family isn’t as gregarious as you. Let’s ask lots of question, to draw them out.”

Always worth remembering. As are these lines that I posted from a poem in this blog. Here's the pertinent excerpt:

"An abundance of opinions will generate heat/but accomplish nothing./You no longer have to comment/on each and every little thing./You can observe events with a detached serenity./When you speak,/your words are gentle, helpful, and few./Your silence is as beautiful as the Harvest moon.

Visiting Privileges: A second opinion on visits with grown children

When our grown children come home for a visit, we juggle many things--from what to cook [who likes what?] to where will they sleep [who gets the guest room, who the blowup bed on the floor of the TV room?]. If more than one grown child is coming home for a holiday or family celebration, remembrance of sibling rivalries past may flit through our heads--and remind us to tiptoe carefully around those minefields.

I recently came across a blog by Cynthia Samuels that gives her take on the highs and lows of such visitations. You can read it here. One of her points is this: "When your kids grow up there’s not a lot you can do for them besides feed them and not pressure them to be around when they can’t."

She also has this advice: "...one of the two [of her sons] is married and that makes temperate, respectful exchanges even more important. The worst thing in the world is to have to choose between parent and spouse. I work hardest to keep that from ever happening, not only about when they come and how long they stay but also about whether we serve beef (nope) or schedule a lot of activity (also nope)."

In other words, those visits are not all about us.