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

The Homecoming: Rising to the challenge of the generation gap

When our kids were in the pre-teens and early teens, they started to question our wisdom. When they were old enough to go off to college, they came home with even more questions: deeper ones about our beliefs and how their thoughts now differed from ours--on politics, life style, religion, culture. It's the generation gap, and it tends to widen. They may never return to our way of thinking.

All of this is in the natural flow of things--they're becoming independent and that's what we want, isn't it?  In a recent post on the subject in Psychology Today, psychologist Carl Pickhardt noted that "the generational differences should become more clearly pronounced as the young person is now more committed to seeing and living life on more independent and individual terms. In consequence, she or he can be more critical of where parents stand and what they stand for."

The question Pickhardt raises is how do we--and they--deal with these differences and still stay close. That is, how do we not let the differences rock the basic relationship, even when we're attacked for being politically incorrect, stuck in our traditional ways or otherwise "ye olde fogies."

Part of his answer starts with this observation: "The mistake parents can make when confronted by revisionist thinking... is to take offense." Rather than try to change the grown child's point of view or attack his or her ideas, he suggests that it's better to treat their ideas with respect and worthy of discussion--even if we find those ideas offensive or they run counter to our basic beliefs. By being "unwilling to change themselves but demanding change by the other, the generational difference is allowed to become a barrier to contact instead of a bridge to further knowing."

His "solution": Rather than focus on change--better to keep the discussion about ideas just that: a discussion--we as parents should focus on what needs no changing: "our commitment to stay connected as age and experience continues to grow us apart. How we live our lives, or believe about life, does not exactly have to match for our relationship to stay closely connected."

It's an important issue to tackle when it first rears its head. As those of us whose children have moved beyond the post-adolescent years have experienced, pretty soon it won't just be ideas picked up in and honed by college debate. They'll marry and come under the sway of another family's ideas. They'll start to raise children and have child-rearing philosophies that are very different from ours--as ours were from our parents.

Here's Pickhardt's parting shot--and one worth hanging onto: "As your adult child grows older and further differentiation between you occurs, your tolerance for these changes must grow as well if your relationship is to lovingly carry on."

The End Game: What our grown children say--and think--about us

I was reading an interview with Janai Brugger in the New York Times. Brugger is the 28-year-old singer who entered the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions and won. Then won Placido Domingo's Operalia competition. And then was offered the ultimate and most amazing of prize: an offer to debut at the Met in Puccini's "Turandot" on October 30.

What a whirlwind of wins. Of course it was built on hard work. She started voice lessons in high school--at the urging of her mother. Her preference was musical theater but classical music was good training for any direction her career took. Meanwhile, her opera-obsessed mother had been taking her to see Aida, Madama Butterfly and all the other grand and lesser operas since she was a small child. But evidently she didn't push opera on her child whose career evolved in that direction serendipitously--if I read the interview right.

Why am I writing about this in a blog about parenting adult children? Because at the end of the interview, Brugger was asked how her mom felt about the sudden turn of wonderful events in her child's life--not just the competition wins but the turn toward opera. And Brugger's answer struck me as the definition of the end game: of what we, as parents, would like our children to say--and more importantly, to feel--about us as parents.

Here's Brugger's comment on her mother's reaction to her sudden fame. Reader alert: I almost teared up at the last line--hoping my children feel that way about paterfamilias and me.

"My mom is like a kid in a candy store. She has to know every detail. How was rehearsal? What happened? Who did you meet? And she knows more about these things than I do. So it's great that we can share that. She'd be proud of me for anything, but this is extra special.

Grown Children and Their Families: Feeling the need to feel needed

I have a case of parent/grandparent envy. My friend Jo has her work cut out for her in the next few weeks.

Her daughter (the mother of Jo's twin grandsons who have just started kindergarten) has to leave on a business trip. She'll be gone for three weeks--a first for the young family. Jo already has plans to entertain the twins on the weekend--she's thought of lots of fun things to do with them that will take their minds off their mother's absence. Even though her daughter and son-in-law live almost an hour drive away, she plans to perk up the twins' weekdays with several drop-by visits late in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, Jo's son and daughter-in-law are expecting their third child. Last week, her DIL was put on bed rest--her blood pressure has been soaring. The baby is due in six weeks and the third-time mother-to-be now spends her days lying on the living room couch, laptop on her belly, telecommuting to and from her job. The two older kids--both in middle school--need to be picked up from various activities. Jo and Larry--grandma and  grandpop--will help out there. Jo also has been cooking meals and delivering them.

When Jo and Larry, who both retired a few months ago, laid out the coming weeks, I felt a twinge of envy. Not about the additional time they'll get to spend with the grandkids--though that's a nice benefit. It's more about the feeling of being needed.

Of course, my children don't live close by--both live in other cities that are a long drive or a one-hour+ plane ride away. And I'm still working, albeit with very flexible hours and the ability to grab my laptop and work anywhere. When my children have had emergencies [a daughter-in-law in the hospital] or a known need [my daughter and son-in-law both traveling for work at the same time], I've managed to get there to help out, happy to do so.But if there were needs like Jo and Larry's grown children have, it would be hard for me to do all the nice little things--bring over dinner; cheer up the twins--without making it a big trip, an expensive one, too.

When we parents live far away from our grown children, our children find other ways to cope. Friends pitch in. Their help may not come with the loving care ours does, but it fills the need and our children help their friends out in return. It's what Paterfamilias and I did when we moved away from our families.

There are times when being so far away from my children leaves me with an empty feeling. There is something profoundly comforting to feel needed by your grown children and to be able to do something about it.

 

Parenting Adult Children: We no longer get to make their important decisions

When our children were young and living in our house, we made decisions about their lives--where they would go to school, how they would dress, whether they would be allowed to drive our car. As parents of adult children, that's no longer our terrain, and that can be painful when our children make decisions that run deeply counter to what we would do.

It can be especially hard to take when the decisions involve our grandchildren. A friend told me about a man in her memoir-writing class. He talked about how his daughter's only child, now 13, was gifted in math and science. To the grandfather, his granddaughter's mind worked in the same way his did and he enjoyed working out problems with her. When she applied to and was accepted at a competitive school for math and science, he was thrilled--his beliefs in her potential were confirmed and he could see the school as a launching pad for a brilliant career.

His daughter saw things differently. She thought it was more important for her daughter to continue at the religious school she had been attending since kindergarten. There was no argument the grandfather could present to his daughter that would persuade her that the math-science school was a golden opportunity, that religion could be taught at home--how much more of it did she need after eight years of it?--and that it was foolhardy to throw away this chance of a superior education. 

And yet, there it was. No was no. He was helpless to change the course of his grandchild's schooling--he who had always put a premium on education and seen it as the way he, as an immigrant, had been able to make his way in the world. 

It's a tale of frustration. Maybe the writer's workshop will be cathartic, help him work through his feelings by writing about the offending events. One thing that can't be reworked, however, is that he doesn't have the standing to make the choice. And that's what can be so anxiety provoking about being a grandparent. We may see our children making a mistake in the way they are bringing up our grandchildren, but they are the parents and all we can do is hope to be kept in the loop of what's happening. If the stake's are high enough--and the grandfather in this case thought they were--we can double down on persuasion and reason. But in the end, we have to limit the amount of conflict we take on.

A few days after I heard this story, I came across a  metlife survey that asked grandparents about the values they hoped to pass down to their children and grandchildren. Not too many surprises here: most of us--88 percent--want to pass along honesty, then came good behavior (82%), self-sufficiency (70%), higher education (69%), and good health habits (68%). We may have more input in these values than we do in day-to-day decisions. So maybe we're not as helpless as we think.

Vacation Time: Finding the formula for a stress-free family vacation

Midway through our family vacation in Vermont, the Grands put on a magic show. As dusk fell, we adults--Paterfamilias and I, Uber son and wife, Alpha daughter and husband--sat inside and nursed our wines and hot teas. The Grands were outside on the lawn plotting and putting together a grand extravaganza for us.

As darkness fell, we were called outside.

The opening act--courtesy of my son-in-law--had the four kids (11,10,9 and 4) running around with tiny sparklers flaring, their whoops of excitement filling the night air. Then came the main event, with each Grand parading before us with his or her trick. They had, for props, a magic set that one Grand had gotten for her birthday. While we had been sipping our drinks, they had worked together to teach each other the tricks and practice them. They coached the four-year-old on the "disappearing ball" trick and supported each other in ways large and small for the more complicated tricks. When a trick didn't work the first time out, they re-grouped, talked it over, re-read instructions and came back for a second try.

The cool Vermont night, well-lit by a starry sky, was the perfect stage. This was our Norman Rockwell moment. I can report--and not just because I'm the grammie--that the Magic Show was brilliant and heart warming--not for the sleights of hand or "amazing" tricks, but for the way the Grands worked together and helped each other without adult interference.

And it mirrored the way this, our ninth family vacation together in Stowe, went this year. No flare ups, no mis-communications, no hard feelings, no sour moments.

It hasn't always been so. Over the years, we've tinkered with the right formula to make the vacations refreshing and full of good family will. We've made our mistakes: rented condos that were too small for three families or too far from the swimming holes, mountain brooks, bike-riding paths and wild raspberry bushes. Three years ago, we finally got the physical configuration right--two condos in a community that is walking distance to everything. But families being families, we've also had to tinker with the right combination of togetherness. Two weeks--too much. Friends who have second homes they own or rent for an extended period have long advised serial visits--one family and its grandchildren at a time, with a weekend overlap to give the inter-family Grands time to run wild together.

But even with the seemingly right combinations in place, our vacations were still marred by something or other. And then this year, it wasn't.

Did we get the formula right? The amount of time we spent with each family and they spent with us and with eachother and in the right size houses near the favorite frog ponds and walking trails? Yes, but we had those things in place last year and the year before and we still had our sour moments.

What made the difference? Here's my theory: our grown children. This year both of them were at a good place in their careers. They were still under pressure, still had the stresses and tensions inherent in being in the prime of their work lives. But both made decisions this year about their careers that helped alleviate some of that strain. And the easing of that tension permeated up to us and down to the Grands and made eveyone happier,more adaptable and less remote.

When our grown children were growing up and we took them on vacation [in, yes, Vermont], the success of those trips depended on how well or ill we were feeling about our work lives--whether a black cloud from the office followed us up the mountain and onto the hiking trails. But the center has shifted. It's now those children, grown up with children of their own, who set the tone for the vacation. And it isn't anything we can control by how big or small, convenient or inconvenient our vacation house is. The magic of a great vacation is in their hands now.

Lending Money: The family fund that offers a helping hand and a living legacy

Many of us want to make things easier for our grown children--pave the road for them with a little help here and maybe even a lot of assistance there. That is, if we have the wherewithal to do it.

Recently, the New York Times weighed in on the issue, taking as its news cue presidential candidate Mitt Romney's remark, "I have inherited nothing." The initial point Times writer Ron Lieber makes is that a living inheritance comes in many forms. "It exists along a range from the free room and board for a 23-year-old intern to a stay of years for a 43-year-old single parent who has lost a job or recently divorced. The contribution can be as small as a first month’s rent or as large as the 25 years of payments that many parents now make on college loans they took out so their children would not have to."

The larger point is that the harder a young adult has to work to make the next geographic, career and economic step up, the more difficult it is to make that step. And repayment of student loans--a crisis that is raging among college graduates, both recent and long-time--is one of those hurdles that can keep a grown child from making that next step up. "The lack of any family help can have a compounding effect on the millions of people who have negative net worths well into adulthood thanks to their student loan debt," Lieber writes.

Meanwhile, even as college costs rise, today's economy is marked by a distinct lack of opportunity for college grads to move into career jobs that pay enough to cover living expenses. And that's why so many of us are helping our grown children. Recent data shows that  nearly 60 percent of 23- to 25-year-olds report receiving some kind of financial assistance from their parents--even when it's sometimes a stretch for the parents. As one 70-year-old parent told Lieber, he didn't want any of his three children "to go so far downhill that they’ll never get out.” In other words, those of us who can afford it are, in effect, trying to guard our children against downward mobility.

Lieber ends his piece with a suggestion for providing family funds for college students: a loan pool set up by the family. He noted that George Lewis, an 82-year-old lawyer in Quincy, Ill., along with his nine siblings set up an education fund in honor of his grandmother who "had a strong belief in education." Today, the nearly 50-year-old fund, with holdings of $111,000, lends money interest-free to scores of members of the extended clan. 

SInce that piece ran, Lieber has updated it with other examples of family funds. Some of the examples are of fairly prominent people--Berry Gordy (the founder of Motown Records), for instance--who set up family funds to lend money to the upcoming generation. But one made it all seem within reach to the non-prominent among us. Lieber reports that Suzette Haden Elgin, in a book called “The Grandmother Principles,” offered her own notion of a family loan fund that grandmothers can initiate. She suggests asking for a small deposit from everyone in the family, including children. Having the younger ones pitch in can help give them a stake in the process and a reason to track the fund’s growth and its beneficiaries.

Put that way, it doesn't seem so formidable and even has the frisson of bringing the family along on a daring step toward the future.