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

Brain Change: How we--and our grown children--measure up.

Here's food for thought: the confluence and trajectories of "maturing" that we experience (the graying hair, the flabbier muscle tone, the forgetfulness) and the "maturations" our grown children are undergoing. Put in Gail Sheehy terms: The Passages we're experiencing vis a vis the Passages they're experiencing. If we had more understanding of what natural changes or passages they and we are going through, would that give us insights into our approaches to parenting our grown children? Would that help us with the challenges we face in our role as advisory parents in our adult children's lives?

I'm not sure Barbara Strauch has the answers, but her new book,The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain may offer some clues. I say "may" because I haven't read it yet. I've been clued into it by Susan Adcox who blogs about grandparenting . In writing about one of the big points the book makes--the mature mind may be more forgetful but it compensates with other strengths--Adcox notes, "Middle-aged people who find themselves 'on the foggy planet of lost keys and misplaced thoughts' may have to learn new ways of coping, such as list-making and note-taking. But they are rewarded with minds that see the big picture, that are capable of flashes of insight, that can solve problems of enormous complexity."

The book has just arrived on my doorstep. I'll be reporting back on what I learn that has relevancy to our roles as parents of adult children. You may find those reports offer insights into your relationship with your grown children--unless you choose to read the book yourself.

The Appreciation Factor: Where have all the Thank You's gone?

A friend has a complaint: Much as he and his wife do to help their daughter with the daily hassles of rearing three children, they rarely get a thank you. He doesn't mean the rushed "thanks, bye" sign-off at the end of a visit. He means a more formal gesture that suggests Grammy and Poppy are doing something special to help out their daughter--a more acknowledged appreciation for all that they do: lending the daughter and her family their beach house for summer vacations and fall weekends, babysitting every Friday night so the parents can have a "date night," picking up a child at school when the parents can't get there, driving one child to weekly soccer practice and the other to twice-a-week swim lessons.

"When she just says. 'Thanks, Bye,' I feel, Is that all?" he says. "I want to feel more included in their lives. I'd like to be invited over for dinner or given some token gesture that suggests how important a role  we play in her family's life."

Another friend talks about having her children and grandchildren vacation at their summer house--a house near the beach where she and her husband spend the summer. It isn't a matter of the grown chidlren thanking them for using the house, it is more about the babysitting. Almost every afternoon, everyone [two grown children, three grandchildren] traipse off to the beach while the baby sleeps--everyone except the grandparents. Pops spends the time fixing things around the house--he enjoys puttering; Grams sits and stews and wishes she were at the beach, too. But at no point was there "an acknowledgement of the effort. No Thank you." When she took everyone out for ice cream, there was no thank you then either. "You do these things because you enjoy doing them, " she says. "They're family and of course you do things for them. But it's that taken-for-granted feeling."

We do things for our grown children because we love them, because we want to ease the way for them--take a little sting out of the overwhelming experience that child-rearing is. And yet, we'd like those random or regular acts of kindness acknowledged.

This was the point in a recent Family Almanac column in the Washington Post. A reader wrote columnist Marguerite Kelly to complain that she sends gifts and a little money to the children of her grown step children --even though she's retired, money is tight and her husband (the father of the two grown children) died several years ago. Two of the teen-age children "have only sent me one thank-you note in the last five years." The writer doesn't want "to abandon these children, but I do feel as if I am wasting my time and my money." She asks Kelly, should she stop giving them presents?

Kelly's answer: Send presents because "they are your grandchildren, you love them and they love you too." At the same time, it's time to write to them and "say, kindly, and gently, that your feelings are hurt because they don't thank you." They need to know that the gifts are "one way to show your love for them, just as thank-you notes are a way they can show their love for you."

Thank you notes are, as Kelly notes, far, far from a teen-agers mind, what with all the turmoil they are going through. A similar case could be made for parents of young children--the everyday pressures of raising children, holding a job, keeping house, being a spouse can keep the thank-you to parents out of the conscious part of the brain.

Explanation is no justification. Sometimes it helps to let those you love know your feelings are hurt--and that the remedy is as simple as a heartfelt Thank You. The friend whose son spent his vacation at the beach house wrote the son a post-vacation email suggesting a thank you would be appropriate. She and gramps got a nice note in return.

Empty Nesters: Dealing with the feelings of loss--and gain

When it comes to our children--grown or otherwise--strong emotions roil through us, especially at points of passage: their birth, the first day of school and their leaving home for college. Whether we admit it or not, the latter is a big deal--the last big event that takes place under our protective roof, the transition from child to young adult, the end of our tenure as hands-on parents. It's hard to put in words just what and how much it means to us. And that's what I was looking for when I picked up Andre Aciman's recent essay in the New York Times, "The Day He Knew Would Come."

Aciman did not let me down. Written as his boys--twins and an older son--returned to college after the Christmas break, he ruminated on the stillness of his household. "..when you wake up in the morning, the kitchen is as clean as you left it last night. No one touched anything; no one stumbled in after partying till the wee hours to heat up leftovers, or cook a frozen pizza, or leave a mess on the counter while improvising a sandwich. The boys are away now."

He also takes note of the up side of life as an empty nester. "All things slow down to what their pace had been two decades earlier. My wife and I are rediscovering things we didn’t even know we missed. We can stay out as long as we wish, go away on weekends, travel abroad, have people over on Sunday night, even go to the movies when we feel like it, and never again worry about doing laundry after midnight because the boys refuse to wear the same jeans two days in a row."

One point that had especial resonance for me was his realization that he now had time to reacquaint himself with himself. "Months after they'd left, I finally realized that the one relationship I had neglected for so many years was none other than my relationship with myself. I missed myself. I and me had stopped talking, stopped meeting, lost touch, drifted apart. Now, 20 years later, we were picking up where we’d left off and resumed unfinished conversations."

I had a similar epiphany--not as well or deeply articulated perhaps--but, like Aciman, it came a few months after my children left the nest. It was a sudden realization that I was now number one, Numero Uno. Decisions on what movies to see, what to prepare for dinner, where to go for a vacation--I could now afford to think of myself first. Twenty years of child-rearing tends to drop you to the bottom of the "what do you want" list. During the years my children lived at home with paterfamilias and me (and even now, when they return for a visit), I was happiest when everyone else was at peace with whatever decision had been made. It wasn't all that easy readjusting to the new reality. I had to, as Aciman put it, pick up where I left off and resume unfinished conversations.

Let me end with another comment from Aciman: "The best thing is learning how to give thanks for what we have. And at Christmas I was thankful; their bedroom doors were open again."

 

Grandparenting: Showing the love

I am crocheting a baby blanket--just like I did for the birth of each of my grandchildren and as a birth present for the children of other people who are special in my life. This time, though, the blanket is much smaller. It is for a granddaughter's doll. It is not so small that it's for a Barbie, but it is big enough for her American girl doll.

This is not an expensive proposition. I am using yarn leftover from the presents for real babies, and yet time and effort go into this thing. My granddaughter, living in Berlin for a year, checks out the progress every time we Skype. She helped pick out the colors from the assorted leftover balls of yarn and now I hold it up to the Web cam to show her how long it is getting and how I am putting striples into the design. She is quite excited about it and has already told me "it is big enough for Felicty"--Felicity being the American girl doll she has. In a few weeks, when I bring it with me on a visit to Berlin, I'll bring a crochtet hook that 8-year-old fingers can use and teach her how to crochet.

While I sit and work on it--squeezing time in between work and making dinner and going to yoga classes-- a piece of me says, 'It's crazy to hand-make a mini blanket for a doll. What a waste of time.' And then I remind myself, this is what grandparenting is all about. This is what no greater love means: giving something of and from yourself to a precious child. 

This posting is one of several featured in About.Com's blog on parenting. You can read these takes on showing love to your children or grandchildren here.

 

Vacation Togetherness: Letting the kids make the plans

When friends headed for a vacation in New Zealand, they had a two-fold purpose. One was to see the country but the other was to visit a daughter who had been living there for three years. The plan was to travel around the country with their daughter and one of their sons, who came along for the family togetherness of it.

What made the trip unusual was that the parents had nothing to do with the planning of the trip once they landed in New Zealand. They let their grown kids do it. "This was a country where my daughter was living for three years. So I wanted to see it through her eyes," says the mom. "She knew what she wanted to see. My son is a naturalist so he knew what he wanted to see. We let them plan it." They followed their kids' itinerary and sat out hikes or climbs when they felt uncomfortable doing them. "I wasn't going to climb a glacier," says the mom, who waited at the foot of the climb while her children made it to the top. And that was OK with her. They saw many of the natural wonders of New Zealand. When they got to a stupendous waterfall, the kids climbed a trail to the top of it; the parents waited below. When there was a chance to swim with dolphins, the kids got into wet suits; the parents didn't.

But that doesn't mean they didn't love the trip--and the uniqueness of traveling the way 20-somethings travel. "If we were leading it," she says, "we would have had a culture clash--we would have just gone to see sights."

Although there were uncomfortable moments, the trade offs made up for it. They stayed in hostels--the kids in dorm rooms; the parents in a private room ("bare bones but clean"). They had to make the beds and bring their own food. Not the way they usually travel, but the hostels were an entree to meeting a lot of young people who were backpacking their way around the world.

They found it easy to give up the control over planning since they had done this once before--letting a son who was living in Israel be their guide on a two-week trip. "He planned everything," says the mom. The main difference between the trips? "He got us nicer accommodations." 

Money Matters: A calculus underlies loans to adult children

The question was as abrupt as it was surprising: "Do you help your kids out?" It came from a friend we've discussed money matters with before. Our answer was as brief as it was open-ended: "We do, but it depends."

The friend who asked the question, says he does not. "I believe in fostering independence. They have to stand on their own two feet." And yet, it's more complicated than that--for him and for us.

The issue that prompted his question was a recent request by his married daughter--a mother of two and a lawyer who has opted not to work full time. She had called dad and asked him for $1,000 to cover the costs of a trip to Los Angeles to be with her best friend whose mother had just died. Dad declined. "It would be nice for her to go," the dad told us, "but this is something she should pay for herself. My wife and I worked hard for our money"--dad and wife retired a year ago--"We're comfortable but we don't have that much."

Paterfamilias chimed right in. "It's not an emergency, it's not something she absolutely needs. I can understand turning her down."

The dad then went on to say he had just lent his son money to buy a boat. A boat! The son is prospering in his job and has long dreamed of owning a boat. He asked his dad for a loan so he can buy it now. A boat may have more physical substance than a trip to L.A. but it's not exactly a necessity. And could clearly fall under the category of something he should pay for himself. And yet, dad said yes, no hesitation. Why? The son has borrowed money from dad before; he has always paid it back--on time and in full. The daughter, it turns out, has also borrowed money from dad--and never paid it back. Her requests for money come with a sense of entitlement--at least that is the way dad interprets the requests.

In effect, dad is applying a business-like calculus to his children's requests for financial help: A loan, yes, but only if the credit rating has been maintained. A gift, maybe, depending on what it's for and how good the credit standing is.

Our calibration is slightly different: different children, different situations, different attitudes. Ours don't ask for help. It's only when we learn about a need that we pitch in. And we try to do it subtlely. Sometimes it's couched as a loan; sometimes, as an outright gift. But beneath it lies a similar calculus: How responsible are the life choices they've made? They may take a financially risky course but a responsible one in terms of doing something worthwhile. If that creates a fiscal need along the way, we'd rather help them out now then leave it to them later. But the bottom line is similar to that of our friend's: We need to feel they have a sense of responsibility and accountability. We wouldn't feel good about lending or giving our children money if we felt it would be frittered away on, say, a sports car or a Prada purse. Not that grown children don't have a right to those things--they do. But only if they can afford them on their own.

The conversation reminded me of a scene from a PBS version of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park: A married daughter runs off with another man, to the shock and opprobrium of her family. The father--wealthy man, of course; this is Jane Austen country--is livid. He refuses to welcome her into his home--but he will see to her comfort. For him, as for many of us a century later, however much the calculus swings against a grown child, we aren't going to let them face life's crueler side if we can afford it. Unless letting them face it is the only way they'll grow up.

Re-nesting: When the grown kid moves home for the long haul

The tough economic times keep on coming on. If the downturn hasn't hit us directly, it may have hit our kids. They may need a safe harbor while they job hunt, reassess their life's plan, pull their post-college lives together. No one has the magic formula for making the move back home work. But here's some realistic advice--most of it the usual stuff-- from a recent blog:  

Starting with attitude, there's this reminder: "When the kids come back home, there's no doubt that there's an adjustment for everyone. Parents suddenly have a full nest. Kids don't really want to be back home, but need to be - at least for awhile. Individual roles shift and conflicts occur."

Seven Tips to Remember:

Recognize that the situation is only temporary (if it is).

Set some mutually agreed upon guidelines and parameters for successful cohabitation.

Share chores and expenses.

Consider each other as friends / roommates and behave accordingly (as much as humanly possible).

Spend some quality time together to build on the positives in the relationship.

Share your lives with each other to build trust and understanding.

When conflicts and/or resentments start to build, talk them out in a cool and rational way. Above all – treat others as you would like to be treated."

Anticipating the Empty Nest: A poet says it best

Some parents say they stand and cheer when the last kid leaves the nest. Some of us get a bit testy. Even weepy. Here's a poem I read recently that brought a huge lump to my throat--and my kids left the nest years ago. It's by Mary Leader and I read it in Garrison Keillor's "Good Poems," a book, fittingly enough, given to me by my daughter to mark my most recent birthday. Here it is:

HER DOOR

There was a time her door was never closed.

Her music box played “Für Elise” in plinks.

Her crib new-bought—I drew her sleeping there.

The little drawing sits beside my chair.

These days, she ornaments her hands with rings.

She’s seventeen. Her door is one I knock.

There was a time I daily brushed her hair

By window light—I bathed her, in the sink

In sunny water, in the kitchen, there.

I’ve bought her several thousand things to wear,

And now this boy buys her silver rings.

He goes inside her room and shuts the door.

Those days, to rock her was a form of prayer.

She’d gaze at me, and blink, and I would sing

Of bees and horses, in the pasture, there.

The drawing sits as still as nap-time air—

Her curled-up hand—that precious line, her cheek…

Next year her door will stand, again, ajar

But she herself will not be living there.