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

Money Matters: Teaching your kids about taxes

Back in the day when her kids were pre-schoolers, Enid did their taxes--her parents had set up education trust funds for each of them. She kept on doing their taxes for as long as they lived in her house and while they were in college. Now, the funds are spent, the kids are working, own homes, have investments and their own bank accounts. But old habits die hard: they still come home for help in filling out their taxes. "My goal," Enid says now, "is to get all my children to do their own taxes."

She's closer to that goal than most of us would be. She may have "done" their taxes while they came of age, but they had to be at the dining room table with all their papers organized while she loaded Turbo Tax onto the laptop and plugged in the numbers. "I made them sit there with me, and we did it together."

Now that they are on their own, they still come home for help with their taxes. But they come home prepared. "They know what stuff to bring," Enid says. "They know what to collect. They organize it. They really don't need me anymore."

And yet they do. Independent though she would like them to be, she likes to review their final filing. "Everyone needs somebody--a friend or parent--to check that you haven't missed anything."

This year, she recommended that one of her children take his tax form to the next level: to an accountant. The reason: The son bought a condo, sold stocks and had some other complicated financial dealings. "I told him to get an accountant but to sit down with the person and let him walk you through things so you can do it yourself next time."

I can only sit in awe of the way Enid's children have been prepared for their tax futures. I had no such help as a young adult, and I am embarrassed to admit, neither I nor paterfamilias gave our children such guidance--though we did offer the services of our accountant. They chose to muddle through with Turbo Tax.

All I can do now is share with them (and anyone else out there who wants to guide their young adult children through their first few tax seasons) a piece of tax advice Enid swears by. It comes from her father. "If you really work on an issue in your tax form and it's still not clear, decide on a common sense way to deal with it--and then write an accompanying letter that says, in effect, 'I found this hard to understand so let me tell you what I did.' What you don't want to be accused of is fraud. if you come across as straightforward and tell the IRS what you did and why, you can't be accused of fraud."

 

Brain Power: Adjusting to a different--but still vibrant--mindset

As our children grow up and away, our parenting skills adjust to the new reality--the recognition that they don't need our hands-on advice and guidance anymore, unless they ask for it. And yet, here we are, able to see and assess situations and challenges more clearly. We kind of feel in our bones the rightness of the old adage that age brings wisdom.

It turns out, age brings a lot more than that--a shift in perspective. Carl Jung put it this way: "We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie."

Something to bear in mind not only in the living of our lives but in the advice we give our children. What seems to us like a mighty hill for them to climb today, we saw as an easy climb in our prime.

Here's another observation on a similar point, this by Nicholas Delbanco, author of Lastingness: The Art of Old Age. In youth, he suggests, "it's the reception of the piece and not its production that counts. But to the aging writer, painter or musician the process can signify more than result; it no longer seems as important that the work be sold." A reviewer of that book, Brooke Allen, sees this as a profound observation: "with time and age, the act of showing becomes increasingly subordinate to the act of making and gratification turns ever further inward."

If this is how our outlook is evolving, we might want to inculcate it into our mindset when we offer our grown children the benefits of our wisdom.

 

Helicopter parents: How not to talk to an 18-year-old

A few weeks ago I posted a blog on how to talk to an 8-year-old. It got a lot of response, and I learned a whole litany of questions to use to get a conversation going, questions that were not conversation stoppers. (Case in point:  "How's school?")

It's a little more complicated with an 18-year-old, but here too there are conversation blockers. Stephen Emerson, president of Haverford College and the father of a college-age student, sees these 'stoppers' as "Have you thought about" and "Here's how to do it," and, the most egregious of all, "how about if I call..." He calls these the sins or signs of helicopter parents.

In a recent op-ed piece, he had some sage thoughts for parents who tend to hover over their children, even as those children age out of living in the parental home and of being under their parents' advise-guide-control regime. But he also raises a basic question about hovering: what if helicoptering is, he asks, "our generation's greatest cultural sin, in that it could have lifelong effects on children taught to believe that they are incapable of autonomy?" Helicoptering or hovering--our inability or refusal to allow them to make their own way--could cause our children to develop a sense of inadequacy.

As a parent, he does not see himself growing distant from his daughter as she acquires independence "but that we are realigning. Before, when we were on a clear grown-up/child path, I probably--yes--hovered above. Now I find myself at  her side....as our journeys continue, we parents will see our position relative to our children shift yet again. We will be behind them, and they will be leading us."

And that's an issue many of us struggle with--letting go and letting them take the lead.

 

 

 

 

The Happiness Quotient: Does happiness theory hold insights for parents of grown children?

Does parenting grown children or grandparenting their offspring bring happiness? Certainly, we do it whether we get special joy out of it or not, but when I looked at some happiness studies--it is a hot research area--I found a lot of potential in there for a resounding, "Yes, it can."

The issue came to mind while I was reading a blog by James Kwak on Baseline Scenario. HIs discussion is about the effect of happiness on economic issues, but the happiness measures he talks about also apply to parents of grown children (and the grandparents). Here are some of the points that offer insightful into our particular human condition:

"...We know some things that make people happy: Short commutes. Predictability. Control over the environment (random noises are bad). Eating, but only until satiation. Sex, but only until satiation. Money—but only to a point; once your basic needs are met and you don’t face constant insecurity, more money no longer buys you more happiness. Participation in social groups. Marriage, usually. (Children, not so much.) Being appreciated by your boss. Generosity toward other people—even if the generosity is not observed by anyone. Work that is challenging but not overwhelmingly so. Physical contact with other people. And finding quarters in pay phones.** "

If I haven't already lost you, the point is that many of the factors that feed into happiness are part of the parenting/grandparenting condition. Being with our grown children and their families certainly brings participation in social groups. We have unending opportunity to be generous to others--small children are so winsome--and to have physical contact with them. And then there's work (i.e. babysitting grandchildren) that is challenging but not overwhelmingly so. As to being appreciated by the boss--well some grown children are better at saying Thank You than others--though spoken or not, there is an assumption of appreciation. Of course, some of the items in the list--control over environment, for one--mitigate the other way.

I can't speak to the quarters in the pay phone. We've all got cell phones now.

[The ** on pay phones refers to a study that found that if people find a quarter in a pay phone, afterward they will report they are happier than people who didn’t find the quarter. This effect persists and also affects people’s reported happiness about unrelated parts of their life, like their family life.]

On Vacation: Feeling the pull of home

We are in Budapest, traveling around, seeing the world, sending home emails to our grandchildren. We understand they have opened their maps, are tracking our trip and, hopefully, gaining a sense of the world from the details we provide. We tell them that Budapest is a very bicycle-friendly city--even the traffic lights have little bicycles on the red and green orbs to let bicyclists--not just pedestrians--know when it's safe to cross the street and when to stop. We also write about the stone lions that stand guard at one of the many bridges that cross the Danube and of the gold-gilded interior of the opera house.

View this photo

An email from one of the grandchildren--a 9-year-old--comes back at us. It is filled with chatter and questions about the details we've been sending. But at the end of the note is an addendum: from our grown son. The 9-year-old has broken his arm playing soccer; the mom is down with a migraine. There is no hint of a request for help. And yet, there's a pit-of-the stomach feeling: Part of me would like to confirm their well-being by being there. The old protective, maternal feelings kick in: Am I needed? Should I be there? And then there's the current reality: They are a family that can take care of itself. They know how to cope with these minor ups and downs and challenges. Stay where you are and enjoy the violins and the music that seems to float up from the Danube. Email the grandkids the photos of the bridge lions so they can enjoy them while you are.