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

Money Matters: Another way to look at lending money to adult children

Scratch a financial adviser and you get this answer: If you can afford it and you're going to lend money to your adult child, put it in writing. Sign a contract that lets your child know what the repayment schedule is, when you expect to get your money back. That makes it more of an arms length operation.

While I was doing some research on the topic for USA Today's The Best Years, I came across a financial planner whose advice took a different tack--one that resonated with me. Personally, I could never see myself asking one of my children to sign an IOU. It just doesn't fit or sit right with me.

If you can afford to make the loan, what did Marty Kurtz, have to say? "I'm not real crazy about lending kids money. It's okay for smaller amounts. But why would you loan for bigger amounts? It puts you in the position of being a debt collector and that’s going to impact your relationship." As Kurtz sees it, big loans are what banks are for. If credit ratings are a problem, you could go to the bank with your child and co-sign the loan. Yes, you're on the hook if he or she defaults. But as Kurtz points out, if you made the loan yourself and your child failed to pay you back, you would be in the same position. At least with a bank, it can put the repayment screws to your kid.

There is the option of making a gift of the money. If you want to "teach the virtue of diligence," Kurtz says, you can make it a gift with strings. That, Kurtz says, is kind of like a bribe, but it can be very effective.

 

Grandparenting: Getting some respect for being silly

I've never thought of myself as a blithe spirit--a wish-I-were-a-kid-again kinda gal. There doesn't seem to be a little kid inside me pleading to get out. Never was. So imagine my surprise to find myself in my son and daughter-in-law's basement playing the part of a pizza-eating monster to my four-year-old Grand's pizza pie on the run. (script by 4-year-old; sound effects by 9-year old sister). Not only did I have to seek to find the gobble-able pizza pie, but I was playing the role in front of an audience. Well, okay, it was just uber son and Paterfamilias. But still.

Was it fun? Sort of. Did it win me brownie points with my Grands? Maybe. DId it win me major credit with uber son? Absolutely.

The link I posted a few weeks ago on 10 ways to be a fabulous grandparent, mentioned not being afraid to be silly. But here's what I'm thinking: When we get "silly" with our grand kids, they don't think that much of it--it's business as usual: they're silly with each other and their playmates and what are we but a big, overgrown playmate?

But to our grown children, we're someone willing, able and clearly happy to enjoy their children and take pleasure not just in their accomplishments but in the pure delight of being with them at their level. 

When I think of it that way, I don't feel so silly.

Emerging Adults: Putting the burden of student loans in perspective

A few days ago I posted a blog on the heavy burden our college students carry in loans. It's hard for me to get my mind around $1 trillion--the amount of outstanding student-loan debt. I found these charts on NPR's Planet Money. They give some perspective on the bubble-like growth of debt college grads are currently saddled with.

1. Americans now owe more on student loans than they owe on their credit cards.

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPR

 

2. The amount of student debt being taken on every year has been rising rapidly for years now.

Source: College Board

Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPR

 

 

Parenting Grown Children: When a daughter and family plan to move far away

A friend is in a state of high distress. Her 39-year-old daughter--the mother of 6-year-old twins--is talking about moving half way across the country in another year or two. The daughter's husband--a man who started his military career at a young age--will be retiring from the army with a pension. The young family is looking to the future. They want to live in a place where the cost of living is lower and where there is easy access to the great outdoors. 

"They won't have all the free babysitting they get here," says my friend, who provides 99 percent of that babysitting. They also won't be leaving Sunday dinner at my friend's house laden with enough "leftovers" to last a week. And the daughter and husband won't have those get-away weekends when the Grammy and Gramps take the boys and entertain them for three days at their house.

When my friend retired this winter, she joined a health club--not necessarily the one she liked better but the one that came with an indoor pool where small children were allowed to be guests. She's already had the boys over for swims four or five times.

It is hard for her to fathom why her daughter would voluntarily move away from all this loving support. It threatens her peace of mind. She is very attached to the twins--after all, she's helped nurture them since they were born.

So what's a mother or father to do? We don't really have a say in what our children decide to do with their lives--beyond advice, if we're asked and occasionally, advice even if we're not asked.

But the bottom line is that we won't be around forever. Maybe that's part of what is so disturbing about the threat to move away: when our grown children make plans for the future, we are neither central to that future nor a major factor in it. Plans are made to carry on without us. Ultimately, isn't that how it should be?

Once again, it is matter of our "letting go." It comes in various forms at different stages of parenting. It never gets easier.

Emerging Adults: Their burdens are bigger than ours were at their age

A little--perhaps a lot--of sympathy may be in order here. Our kids--the young adults coming out of college and graduate school--are drowning in debt and a lot of other woes that ripple out from that. "It's a very different world than 20 yrs ago" says Nancy Molitor, a clinical psychologist who practices in the Chicago area. "Parents in their 50s and 60s don’t have any idea of the stress their children are under."

There's some $1 trillion outstanding student debt floating around out there. Molitor, who's also Public Education Coordinator for the American Psychological Association, saw the face of that debt up close and personally when she was a speaker at a seminar for graduate students in psychology. She asked the 150 students attending the seminar for a show of hands: How many of them had debt from college and graduate school? All hands went up. She then broke it down: How many had debt of $50,000 or less. Roughly 1/3 raised their hands. How many had debt of $100,000 or less? Another 1/3 raised their hands. When she upped it to $150,000, another 1/3 put up their hands. When she asked about debt above $150,000, ten hands shot up.

That's a lot of money to owe when you're getting out of graduate school and can't find a job--or can't find one that pays enough to start whittling down that debt. But psychology isn't the only field where young people are under stress. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, opportunities for college and graduate school graduates have tightened and are almost at a point of diminishing return. It is no wonder, Molitor says, that a lot of the young adults she sees feel "bamboozled." And a lot of them, she adds, turn their anger on their parents--for sheltering them from the harsh realities, for leading them to believe that doing well in college would mean a good job, a worthwhile career, a house and a life style similar to their parents. "They feel let down, she says.

It's also one of the reasons they're delaying marriage and are unwilling to start their own families. "These young adults feel like the debt is saddling them," Molitor reports. "It affects every decision they make. When you have debt you can’t take risks."

It's a point Daniel Burrus, futurist and author of Flash Foresight, riffs on as well. As he sees it, kids aren't being guided properly. They're going to college and majoring in things, like philosophy, that will never lead to a job. His solution: better guidance counseling, better education about school debt versus level of diploma versus job opportunity.

So where do we parents come into this? Certainly, we can help with the guidance and whether our particular children need to give up philosophy and concentrate on accounting or whether they--make that we--can afford to have them study disciplines that will enhance their critical thinking skills but not  necessarily outfit them for a job in today's market.

Is there a parallel between the present crisis Burrrus and Molitor have observed, and a decade ago when the post 9/11 economy threaten to tank? George Bush famously offered his solution to the problem: Go shopping. Would that the solution to today's economic woes and job collapse were as simple as that. But maybe the fix is a variation on that theme: If we and our 401k plans can help our college and grad students reduce that debt, go pay it.

 

 

Grandparenting: A how-to list on creating a loving bond with the grandkids

Came across a post on a parenting blog that listed 10 ways to be a fabulous grandparent. Some of it is the usual--have fun with and don't be afraid to be silly around the grandkids. But two key in on issues that are far from silly and can effect our relationship not only with the grandkids but their parents:

 Take the lead: It's your job to stay in touch with your grandchild or grandchildren. If you expect them to do it, you'll be disappointed and frustrated. "It's age-appropriate for kids to be thoughtless about staying in touch. If you want the relationship, you have to be willing to do the work," says New York therapist Sharon O'Neill. Remember birthdays, but celebrate other special occasions as well.... Ask if you can bring artwork home to put on the fridge. Attend sports games, plays, and dance performances. Cheer loudly, bring flowers, and take everyone out for ice cream afterward. "

 Beware grandparent rivalry: Avoid the trap of keeping up with Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josie – this will only lead to hard feelings....A close relationship with one set of grandparents doesn't detract from your importance – unless you let it.

Money Matters: The stats on how we help our kids buy a house

Yes. It's yet another survey on how generous our generation is to our children. This one comes from Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate and keys in on the ways in which we help our children buy a home.

According to its December survey, nearly one in five self-identified baby boomer couples had assisted at least one adult child in a home purchase. This help came in the form of down payment assistance, outright purchasing or mortgage co-signing.

How do we do it? The survey found that many of us are digging into our savings or we're dipping into emergency funds or retirement funds in order to come up with the average $10,000 to $30,000 down payment for an American home.

Do we expect to be repaid? The survey doesn't say. For some of us, it's repayment enough to see our children living in a nice, solid home that someday--should the housing downturn ever turn around--will appreciate and bring them a modicum of good fortune. If they eventually flip the house and make a killing (those days may never return but....), they might share the pot of wealth with the ones who made it possible.

Few of us can count on that one. 

Grandparenting: When rivalry with the other grandfolks morphs into resentment

When their daughter-in-law became desperately ill--sick enough to be in the hospital for a week--Alice and Edward went into crisis mode: picking up and delivering the two small grandchildren to day care and bringing them home at the end of the day; feeding them; playing with them and putting them to bed. Their son--the dad--was around but he was also working and shuttling back and forth to see his wife and her doctors. It was a difficult time for everyone, especially since Alice and Edward work full time.

"This is what we do," Alice says, when a very tired Alice and I are sitting and having coffee. I agree. We are programmed to put our lives on hold and help out when we're needed--at least we are at this stage of our lives.

Or are we? The daughter-in-law's parents, who had lived many years abroad, had moved back last year to the city where their daughter was living. The father, who was with an international institution, was working full time but not the mother. Aside from visits to their daughter in the hospital, they were no where to be seen at the child-helping end of the equation. What had Alice really ticked off, though, was that her DIL's mother--the co-grandmother--left town in the midst of the crisis to visit another daughter so that the other daughter could take some time off. "If it were me," Alice says, "I would have called the other daughter and said, 'Your sister is seriously ill. I know you'll understand that I need to be here to help out. You'll have to find someone else to cover for you.'"

When the DIL's parents first moved back to this country, Alice was worried that she and Edward would seem dull and oh-so-ordinary--they hadn't lived in Indonesia or Japan; they hadn't entertained high level diplomats and important business leaders. If she felt any rivalry with her co-grandparents, that feeling had now morphed into resentment--that they weren't there to take on some of the burden rippling out from their daughter's illness, especially when it came to bringing aid and comfort to two toddlers.

Who knows why others don't feel compelled to drop everything and rush to the rescue of an ailing child and his or her family. Maybe they were waiting to be asked.  Not everyone has the same code,feels the same closeness or believes they would be welcome and needed. 

As for Alice and Edward, they have gotten their reward: Once the daughter-in-law was at home and recovering, their son took them aside, thanked them for being there and told them they were "really special." That says it all, doesn't it?

 

Parenting Grown Children: The curtain comes down when a family visit ends.

They packed up the van and loaded my three Grands in the back. Six hours later, Uber son, wife and Grands arrived at the family manse for a weekend visit. Within minutes of their arrival, Paterfamilias and I began an immersion into their lives--in the ins and outs of who likes what for a snack and how things are going at school and what's happening with the indoor soccer team. It's exhilarating. Not just in a deja vu kind of way but in a real fascination with how the grown child's career is expanding and how the Grands are growing up--what their concerns are, what their many strengths and occasional weaknesses are. One by one, they plop themselves down at the piano and play. We can hear a growing sense of rhythm and musicianship by the two who are taking piano lessons. They take the Razor scooter parked in our carport out for a spin and we watch how adventurous they are--or are not--in scooting down our steep driveway and along our dead-end street. Soccer balls are kicked around. Basketballs heaved at a rickety hoop at the end of the street. The van disgorges a tricycle for the not-quite-four year old and we get to marvel at her new accomplishment.

All this is a long way of saying that when our grown children arrive at our house with our Grands and they stay for a few days, we are suddenly and deeply absorbed by and into their world. We sop up all the small talk about what they're learning in science class and how the math is going; the challenges of a co-ed versus all-girls soccer team; how limits are set for screen time and games on the iPad. By Sunday, we're rolling along with the plans for upcoming birthdays and summer vacation in Vermont.

And then the van is repacked, kids and tricycle loaded. Their world backs down the driveway and trundles down the road. When grown children and their families live far away, there's a yo-yo like relationship with their lives. So much intimacy. And then none. 

 

Grandparenting: 10 reasons we can be terrible sitters

Reader alert: This could get ugly.The view from the trenches of our grown children is not always a pretty one. There's a blog out there called findababysitter.org that suggests that some of us should not be called on to babysit. I agree. Not all of us enjoy it--especially if it lasts more than an hour or two. And evidently, the feeling is mutual: Not all parents enjoy having their parents do it, even if the price seems right.

You can go to the site to read all 10 reasons. Some of them are cheap shots. See reason 2: "Concessions – For a moment’s peace, and the chance to perhaps recharge their pacemaker batteries, your folks are apt to give anything to your child."

Some are issues we who have grandchildren struggle with all the time. "Discipline – For better or worse, in a lot of ways our ideas about parenting differ from our parents. Your child’s grandparents may not be 100% on board with your own ideas about discipline, and how to raise your child."

But one really hits home. It's #8 on the list, and it gives one pause: "Privacy – Let’s be honest, some parents would just as soon not have their own parents spending any time in their homes unattended. For whatever reasons – and we don’t pry or judge here – you would prefer to have the neighbor’s daughter babysit instead. At least she just raids the fridge."

ooooph. Makes me want to re-read my Notes to Self and see the wisdom in keeping good housekeeping hints to ones self.