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

Grandparenting: Helpful hints on how to talk to a teenager

When they were babies and toddlers, conversation with Grands was babytalk. Easy to manage. As they hit their stride as youngsters, we began to have more challenging but interesting conversations with them-- chats about ideas, family history, life, school, friends. They didn't sit on our laps anymore, but we could have heart-to-hearts.

But oh those teen years. Their parents--our grown children--are having their own difficulties communicating. One friend whose Grands are in high school said she has a better relationship with them now than when they were younger: she is now the place they come to complain about the parents and, since this woman doesn't get along with her daughter in law, find a "us against them" camaraderie.

Most of us, though, just want to keep the lines of normal communication open, without getting in between our grown children and their children. Some of us find the car a perfect place to chat--with eye contact only through the rear view mirror. Seems to free them up to chat more freely. Or for us to eavesdrop on conversations they have with their friends.

But that doesn't address the real issue: How to have a meaninful conversation with our Grands and to reassure them that we are there for them. A site called babysitting.net recently posted ten tips on how to talk to your teen age child. Most of the tips are for the parents, but a few are helpful for those of us floundering around and trying to figure out how to talk to our verge-of-adulthood, hormone-driven Grands.

Here are a few of the tips, which I've amended for grandparents:

Ask open-ended questions. Stay away from asking questions like, “How was your day?”  The answer will most likely be a one word answer.  Instead, say something like, “Tell me about your day.”

Talk about topics your Grand likes. Sports, if he or she is into athletics. (Brief yourself on whatever sport they're into.) Or movies. Or, if you're really brave, music.

Listen more than you speak. You don't have to fill every idle moment with chitchat. Leave some silence to give them a chance to fill it with conversation.

Don't try to fix them. Don't jump in and offer advice until it's asked for. The only thing you should do while your Grand is talking is nod and say the occasional "hmmm" or "I see" to indicate you are actively listening.

Only offer an opinion if your Grand asks for it. Telling your Grands what you would do isn’t going to help. If your Grand asks for advice, start by asking what they've considered so far.  This will give you an idea of where their head is and you can act accordingly.  Lectures? Don't go there.

Parenting Adult Children: The checklist for how pleased we are with our kids

Thanks to Susan Adcox and her blog on grandparenting, I've come across a transcript of a 1996 This American Life show with the theme of "Adult Children."

Part I is a conversation between Ira Glass, host of This American Life, and his mother, a family therapist who, at the time of the conversation, has been asked to lead a discussion of a women's group on the subject of adult children. She called her children to help her key in on advice they would give to the group about communicating with your children and about having a good relationship with your adult children.

in the transcript of the conversation between Ira Glass and his mother, Shirley, there's this little gem:

Ira Glass: ..if you had to characterize in a phrase people's relationships with their children, would you describe them as being very good, somewhat OK, generally kind of yucky? I mean, how would you describe it?

Shirley Glass: I would say that there were a lot of people whose dreams haven't been realized, whose expectations haven't been met. And so there's a sense of disappointment, although there were some people there who were pleased with all aspects.

 As the conversation progressed, Ira's mother shared a checklist she had come up with for gauging how satisfied parents were with their adult children. Her findings:

• Is married.
• Lives near the parents
• Has children (grandchildren for the grandparents)
• Is successful
• Is married to someone the parents approve of
• Appreciates the parents.

Susan wondered, as do I, if anyone has come up with a similar checklist our grown children might have in their heads to gauge their satisfaction with us. Would it include such items as

    *Listens well

    *Likes my spouse/significant other

    *Is independent

    *Has stopped pressing my hot buttons

    *Will babysit anytime, anywhere and play by my parenting rules

    Got any more generic gauges to add? Write on......

 

Money Matters: A friendly dispute over who's picking up the dinner check

I asked a friend: When did you stop picking up the tab for your kids--for their flights home for the holidays [her sons and their families live on the other coast], for dinners out and for tickets to go to the movies. Her answer was definitive and simple: "When they started earning more than I do."

I was thinking about that on a recent weekend visit to Uber son. Usually we fly up on a Friday and my daughter-in-law makes dinner for us all. On Saturday we offer--come close to insisting--that we take everyone out for dinner. If the family is too tired or one of the Grands too restless to sit in a restaurant, Paterfamilias will go out and pick up take-out food. A fair enough division of labor and a nice balance of the costs of feeding a family of seven--five of them, two of us.

On this particular weekend, we flew up on Saturday. We were going to spend all day Sunday watching two of the three Grands play in soccer tournaments and then fly home on Monday. Saturday being Saturday, PF as usual insisted, cajoled, requested we go out for dinner. Everyone was in the mood for it and off we went to their favorite Thai restaurant. But when the check came, Uber son grabbed it. PF fought him for it. A friendly tussle but Uber son was adamant--and his arms longer. PF fell back to his second line of offense: Let's split it. But Uber son was having none of it--not even when PF made a dash for the cash register and tried to add his credit card to the one our son had proferred in payment.

We know we're supposed to let them treat us from time to time, to be graceful about letting them know they are growns up now. But this seemed awkward. After all, we had insisted on going out for dinner and now here was our son stuck with a dinner check for seven.

The saving "grace" came right after dinner when we drove over to ye olde ice cream shop and Uber son allowed as how the dessert treats were on PF. Reversal of fortune, and  tip of the balance--or re-balancing-- between father and son.

Grown Children and Grandchildren: Taming the gung-ho inside us--at soccer games and elsewhere

I had lunch recently with a friend whose youngest son is house hunting--only he doesn't want to live too near his older brother. He worries that the older brother--the father of three athletic boys--will pressure his family (he's got one toddler son) to go all-out for soccer and other sports. He's worried, in other words, that gung-ho will be contagious and too much pressure on his small child.

I know what he's talking about. Our grown children and our friends' grown children have expressed similar concerns, only it was about what we might say to their children as they start to play organized sports. One gramps I know is a gung-ho kind of sports guy, and soccer is his go-get-'em sport of choice. His son made it clear how he was to talk to his 5-year-old grandson about sports. When he comes to see a soccer game, there are well-defined boundaries about encouraging words and negative comments and some subtle points in between. There seems to be a concern that the gung-ho of the grandpa would turn off the grandchild--make him lose his love for games and sports, turn a positive into a negative, be a confidence-burner.

I see it all around me. Parents of grown children are being told to follow a family line about how they talk to their grandchildren about events taking place outside the home. It's not necessarily part of the 'everybody's a winner' attitude. That is, everyone on the team gets a trophy, even if the team was in last place. Or an attempt to shield children from the realities of competition. It seems to be more of a 'bring 'em along slowly' attitude. Sometimes we grandparents forget how young our grandchildren are when we take to the sidelines to cheer them on.

But more to the point: our grown children--our grandchildren's parents--are in charge. And like it or not, Young Father Knows Best--even when, in our heart of hearts, we don't think he does.

Money Matters: The final arbiter in helping our kids out financially

When our grown children need financial help and we have the wherewithal to make it happen, our decisions generally fall into one of two camps: Either "Yes! I'd rather help my child now than leave it to them later. " or "No! They're independent adults. They need to stand on their own two feet."

But real life has a funny way of coming along and moving us somewhere in the middle. The "no way" parents may see a well-conceived business plan and be asked by their entrepreneur-to-be to invest in the venture. Or the "Yes" parent may be asked to fund a dream-come-true trip around the world and demur, reasoning, "This is something my grown child should finance himself."

Readers of this blog may remember my friend Dick who refused to lend his daughter $1,000 to visit a friend whose mother had died but lent his son $10,000 to buy a boat. His calculus, he said, was not so much the use of the money but the fact that he had lent his daughter money on several occasions and she never repaid it. His son often borrowed money from his dad but he always repaid it. Clearly, the son's credit standing was higher than the daughter's.

Then there are friends whose 40-year-old, divorced son is struggling to gain traction in a creative field [filmmaking] and whose neighbor's son [food photographer] is going through the same hard time. When I blogged about that situation, I pointed out that my friends wanted to--and continue to--support their son's "dream," even though their son tells them he doesn't want to take their money and is not above taking on low-paying temporary jobs to help make ends meet. But they look askance at the neighbor, who supports his son, even though the son refuses to take temporary gigs and the son's wife, now pregnant with the second child, doesn't work outside the home, either. My friends thought the neighbor was being an enabler and should give the son a dose of "tough love" since he seemed to be making no effort to support his growing family.

When we decide whether or not to help support our kids or lend them money, there may be ostensible reasons for saying yes or no--an unworthy cause versus a desperate need. For many of us, though, our decision may hinge on whether we smell a sense "entitlement,"--that is, that our children expect us to open our wallet no matter the reason, request or need.

There's at least one more way to think about whether to loan or not loan.

Barbara Nusbaum, a New York-based clinical psychologist specializing in money psychology, says she sees nothing wrong in wanting to share the wealth with grown children—especially if a family can afford it and it’s done with “a spirit of loving generosity.” But she also notes that when it comes to parents and their grown children, money has many meanings to it. “You can give money in a generous way and it’s about support, love and generosity,” she says. “But it can also be about control or about creating dependence.”

When parents are invested in giving their children money, Nusbaum continues, “they will expect something back and want to control the decisions of their adult children. They may give money for one purpose and the children may spend their money in a different way, and then the parent feels resentment.”

So, when is it time to snip the financial strings?

For Nusbaum, a good test for parents is to ask themselves whether the financial support is something that will lead to their child’s independence. By way of example, she says a child who hasn’t been able to get a job might ask for money to go to graduate school, hoping it will lead to better job opportunities. “That might be a worthwhile,if it will allow that young adult to become independent,” she says. But if the parent is supporting a child and there is no movement in terms of finding a job or career, it might be time to tell the child “I can’t do this for you anymore.”