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

Leaving a Legacy: Using tech tools to lighten the load of sharing our wisdom and transmitting our values

 

The latest term for it is Ethical Will. It means passing on to our grownchildren and their children our values and the wisdom we've garnered over the years--or just a sense of the life we've lived and the lessons we've learned. So helpful to have a term for one of the two main parts of leaving a legacy. One, of course, is leaving to future generations and other loved ones an orderly and fair division of our worldly goods; the other--and it's of equal importance--is sharing a sense of who we are, where we've been and what we value. 

When it comes to the Ethical Will, some of us take a traditional route: we sit down and sketch out a memoir or make a list of points we want remembered. But there are lots of tech tools that can help us make it more engaging. One is to create a PowerPoint slide show full of family photos, favorite sayings--yours and your favorite Aunt's--books that have importance to you, poems that bear quoting, audio clips of favorite music, even video clips of TV characters who've said something worth remembering or so amusing it will remind everyone of your delightful persona.

According to a New York Times story, the technical tools people are using to "to put a human touch on their legacies" include videos, DVDs, digital scrapbooks, iPhone apps (such as StoryCatcher) and  Facebook pages.

 

The impact of the tech-enhanced Ethical Will that can be shared and seen by all your heirs has an additional bonus. Estate lawyers, the Times reports, are suggesting their clients use such tech-savvy Ethical WIlls as a means of delivering a strong personal message that can help avoid nasty family conflicts. As one lawyer noted, messages are best heard when conveyed through tone of voice or posture. “Being appropriately emotional in a video adds more dimensions than just words on paper.”

 

That said, Barry Baines, author of “Ethical Wills: Putting Your Values on Paper,” adds these words of warning: don’t use your legacy link to blame or scold anyone by reaching out from the grave.“ It should be a love letter from the heart so people can share who they are.”

There's personal enrichment in the process of putting your life on paper or video. As Baines put it, "Putting together an ethical will early on helps you live life with more intention.”

Besides, who doesn't like to tell their story--and tell it without interruption.

Related articles

Use of Technology Creates New Ethical Will Trend

Retiring: The Ethical Will, an Ancient Concept, Is Revamped for the Tech Age

Gift Giving: Some tips on buying holiday presents for the Grands

Wednesday is link day.

The post on Susan Adcox's grandparenting blog offers eight practical pointers on buying gifts--holiday, birthday or otherwise--for grandkids. That is, gifts that won't tick off their parents, aka our grown children, when we 're spreading the joy to their kids.

As Susan notes, many of us simply ask the parents for a list of suggestions or buy a gift card to a favorite store, but for those of us who like to shop and to surprise, Susan has some worthwhile do's and don'ts.

Her subtitle reads: "Keep Parents in Mind When Making Choices for Youngest Generation." That covers a lot of the territory. Her list of do's and don'ts gets into particulars. Here are two:

DO check with the parents, especially before buying a "special" gift, such as a first bicycle or American Girl Doll. They may be planning to buy the gift themselves.

DON'T give toys that require a lot of space or particular care. Large toys, for instance, aren't a good choice for families who live in small spaces; toys that require a lot of supervision, such as chemistry sets, aren't optimal for families with crowded schedules.

'Tis the Gift Giving Season: The instinct to indulge vs. the urge to hold back

When our kids were small and living under our roof, gift giving on birthdays or for holidays was relatively simple: If we could afford it, we gave them the toy or toys of their dreams. Once they enter the independence of adulthood, do we still go all out with our gift giving? And should we expect them to shower on us an upgrade on their previous sweet, sentimental gift-giving?

That's a question that was posed to Carolyn Hax vis a vis Christmas gift-giving. A reader who had "always done it up for xmas, with nice gifts and some needed things, like underwear," wanted to know if it was time to stop since her 21-year-old daughter "does not put a lot of thought into gifts. My husband and I got a gift certificate to a hardware store last Christmas. That was it." The reader wonders how to balance the scales. "At some point should we give as we get?"

What does Hax have to say? She doesn't have "any problem with the idea that kids stay kids vs. graduate to equals. It really depends on the individuals, the specific families and the needs or standing of each member."

Personally, when kids are 20-somethings and struggling to find their footing in their careers and building lives that don't have their parents at the core, the last thing I would want them to do--especially if they are financially independent--is to spend their food money on store-bought gifts for their parents.

There is another way, and Hax had a better idea. It had nothing to do with expecting our kids to buy us lavish gifts or for us to continue raining toys down on them: "A parent with some savings can give out Christmas checks to grown children without infantilizing them." (I second the motion: cash is the gift that always fits, is never the wrong color and is always useful.] "At the same time," Hax points out, "children can give back to their parents the kinds of things that younger people tend to have in abundance, like energy and, literally, heavy lifting. As long as you all look out for each other, how you work out the details is up to you."

That's a balance to hold in mind as the holiday season gins up its gift-giving momentum ever earlier. (For more on the annoyance of that, check our Nancy Wolf's blog post on Witty Worried and Wolf.

Empty Nests: They're independent now. So why don't we feel good about it?

Child rearing's goal is simple: Our once-dependent infants are weaned and otherwise taught to stand on their own feet. We can pat ourselves on the back if our kids are launched into the world as independent adults. Oh they can still call home to whine if things aren't going well. Parents are a safe place and wise head. So long as they don't look to us to take over and solve their problems, they're independent. Congratulations.

But it's not easy to feel good about it. At least not at first. In his web page on adolescence, psychologist Carl Pickhardt addresses some of the emotional trials parents face as their adolescent kids move into and through what he calls "trailing independence"--an age range he pegs at 18 to 23. Specifically he writes about why we feel sadness when the kids move out and on and operate independently of parents, family, and home. "This is the last letting go in the process of Detachment Parenting of adolescents," he writes, "and it can feel very hard to do – forsaking the old management role, the sense of purpose, the accustomed authority, and the daily association."

He writes that "the last battle between holding on and letting go is not just between parent and adolescent, but agonizingly unfolds within the parents themselves. For a while the empty nest can result in the empty parent."

Pickhardt points to three D's of pain -- why we feel a loss rather than joy when our kids successfully launch.

--First, we're Dethroned. We've lost ruling influence over decisions our kids make.

--Second, we are at more of a Distance. Socially and geographically our kids are moving away as they focus --appropriately-- on building a new life.

--Third, we are Demoted. Our kids are creating a new system of relationships that they give a higher immediate priority than attending to us.

Here's Pickhardt's killer app--as in adaptation--to the three Ds:

"What is extremely important for parents to understand about the dethronement, distance, and demotion ...is that this change does NOT mean they are less loved; they are only less necessary."

"To a degree," he continues, "the return for their self-sacrificial investment in parenting an adolescent to independence is this sweet sadness of success, just as once upon a long time ago the little girl or boy’s entry into adolescence caused parents to give up the precious childhood time together they would never have again. The great hardship of Detachment Parenting is enduring loss from letting go."

Or as my friend Dick put it: "My kids are independent. Damn it."