Parenting Grown Children: What Dr. Spock Forgot to Tell Us: July 2015

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July 2015

July 13, 2015

Parenting Grown Children: We are at our peril when we give advice they didn't ask for

When it comes to giving our grown children advice (the unsolicited variety), it's seller beware. Paterfamilias, for one, thought he had mastered that elementary lesson, especially after giving Alpha Daughter his best lawyerly advice about an insurance claim. He had offered his counsel in serial fashion, which is to say, several times to make various legal points, until she finally cut him off: "I don't want to talk about it anymore," she told him.

He forgot that lesson when there was a small claims court suit Alpha Daughter needed to bring against an airline that wronged her, our son-in-law and our Grand Pup. (As they were checking in for their flight from Boston to Berlin--they were going to live in Berlin for a year--the airline told them it wouldn't let the dog on board, even though our SIL had discussed size of dog and crate with them in advance and had met all their requirements. SIL and pup had to purchase another ticket and fly another airline the next day. No refund from the first airline!) It wasn't so much PF's offering of advice on how to file a claim--that was greatly appreciated--it was the timing of that advice. She was temporarily overwhelmed by her workload and family demands and just didn't "want to talk about it now."

So did PF know better than to offer advice when Alpha Daughter--a woman with a responsible job, 12-year-old child, house and mortgage--needed to replace her 13-year-old car? It was very tempting to tell her what to buy: PF had not only just published his book on the history of automobile safety (Car Safety Wars: 100 years of technology, politics and death), he had bonded with many experts who follow the day-to-day safety records of cars currently on the road.

This time, though, he wised up. He used email to send buying suggestions from a friend at the Center for Auto Safety and links to government and other sites that rank cars for various aspects of their safety.

The next morning, he was a little uneasy about opening the return email from his daughter. "I thought she was going to tell me to butt out." Instead, her return message was simple and elegant: "Great advice. Thanks dad."

As I see it, PF dodged the advice bullet by not giving direct suggestions--buy this, not that--but rather by leading her to the sources that she could use to make a good decision. That's why he wanted to intervene in the first place: "All I care about is the safety of my daughter, my grandchild and my son-in-law." He didn't mention the GrandPup.

Posted at 02:02 PM in giving advice | Permalink | Comments (3)

July 09, 2015

Grandparenting: Being careful what we say to our grownchildren about their children

Words matter: When we talk to our adult kids, when we talk to our Grands and, most especially, when we talk to our adult kids about our Grands aka their children. Some of us, it seems, blur the line between parenting and grandparenting. We may even stumble into that biggest of verboten areas: telling our kids how to raise their children.

On her website, Empowering Parents, Debby Pincus hands out some advice that keeps the parent/grandparent line sharp. Her basic point: "Unsolicited advice is rarely welcome, and if it’s coming from one’s own parents or in-laws, it will most likely be heard as criticism."

Similarly, one word that's been raising a ruckus in parenting circles and on advice columns and grandparenting blogs (such as Susan Adcox's grandparents.about.com), is "my"--as in the grandparental use of "my baby" or "my darlings" to refer to our Grands. Some parents--usually the moms--take umbrage at our presumption of possession. The children are, of course, theirs. For grandparents who like the warmth of the use of "my" to refer to their Grands, there's a common sense recourse. Ask the mom whether she minds or how she feels about it. Ditto-- particularly for grandmothers -- the use of a grandparent name that edges too close to being the mom, such as Big Mommy or G-Mommy.

In her column on this point, Adcox acknowledges how irritating our commandering of the parental role might be, but she also suggests the parents in question could back off a bit. After all, we play an important role in our grandchildren's lives. Adcox suggests we say something to the effect that, 'We're not perfect. Be prepared to forgive us as we make some missteps.'

A reader of Carolyn Hax's column on that point also has a personal response. "I've also upset my daughter-in-laws (as well as my daughters) by saying "my baby." When hit with the inevitable "It's not your baby," I respond with, "Of COURSE that's my baby. Just as much as YOU are, my little (insert silly nickname here)!" Amazing things happen during that exchange. Mom stops feeling threatened, "Granny" lets Mom know she will always be there and Mom realizes that Granny loves her just as much as she does the baby. It doesn't hurt to throw in, "Can I do something for you so you can get some rest?"

It's all about balancing those boundaries.

Posted at 06:27 AM in grandchildren, grandparenting | Permalink | Comments (3)

July 01, 2015

Observations: A Stanford Dean on the effect of helicopter parenting on college students

Did we hang around the college campus too long when we dropped our child off that fall of freshman year? Did we call too often? Visit once too many times? That's not what Julie Lythcott-Haims is talking about when she talks about overparenting and overprotecting college students or, to use the trendier term, helicopter-parenting them. A former Dean of Freshmen and Undergraduate Advising at Stanford University, Lythcott-Haims has seen the effect of helicopter parenting on Stanford students. Here's some of what she had to say about it in her book, How to Raise an Adultand in an interview with Tech Crunch

FROM THE BOOK:

"Too many of us do some combination of overdirecting, overprotecting, or over-involving ourselves in our kids’ lives. We treat our kids like rare and precious botanical specimens and provide a deliberate, measured amount of care and feeding while running interference on all that might toughen and weather them. But humans need some degree of weathering in order to survive the larger challenges life will throw our way. Without experiencing the rougher spots of life, our kids become exquisite, like orchids, yet are incapable, sometimes terribly incapable, of thriving in the real world on their own. Why did parenting change from preparing our kids for life to protecting them from life, which means they’re not prepared to live life on their own?

...The dean in me may have been concerned about the development and prospects of young adults who had been overparented—and I think I’ve made better choices as a parent thanks to spending so much time with other people’s young adults. But the parent in me has struggled with the same fears and pressures every other parent faces, and, again, I understand that the systemic problem of overparenting is rooted in our worries about the world and about how our children will be successful in it without us. Still, we’re doing harm. For our kids’ sakes, and also for our own, we need to stop parenting from fear and bring a more healthy—a more wisely loving—approach back into our communities, schools, and homes.

FROM THE TECHCRUNCH INTERVIEW:

You were at Stanford a long while. At what point did you think: It’s weird how involved all these parents have become?

I began to see it more and more over time – parents who were coming to the university with their sons and daughters and sticking around, sometimes literally and often virtually. I found it bewildering. My own experience as a student in the ‘80s didn’t include much involvement from my parents at all, and I began wondering what if my parents had been expected to register for my courses, settle roommate disputes, talk with my professors about my grades. Not that long ago, 18- to 20-year-olds had the capacity to do those things for themselves, and now, they seemed not to.