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

Grandparenting: The rewards of getting to know the Grands, one by one

 My friend Gail  babysits three daytimes a week for her son's five children. It's been her non-paying job, off and on, for the past 12 years. She's there when the oldest children leave for school and on hand until her daughter-in-law comes home at 3:00.

You would think she knows those children well. That's why it was a surprise when she told me how she and Ralph--her husband and the grandpop--babysat together one evening when the parents had to go to back-to-school night. She put the three younger children to bed by 8:30 but the two older ones--two boys, ages 10 and 12--stayed up for another hour and chatted with her and Ralph. They talked about everything and nothing. It was the first time, Gail says, that she got to know them as individuals not, as she put it, "as part of a herd."

Her words fell on fertile ground. When Paterfamilias and I visit Uber son and his family of three children, we try to pick off one of them for a chat, another one for a walk or one for a drive to Starbucks. But they are all still very much within the magnetic pull of the family dynamic--in effect, the herd.

As it did for Gail.  that changed for us. This summer, Uber son's older daughter--the middle child who is 13--flew to Washington by herself to visit us for two days. Split from the herd, she was no longer the big sister helping her little sister, or mom's chief assistant, or the younger sister competing with an older brother. She was her own person--an early teen heading for young adulthood and a person whose interests were our top and only priority.

She has a talent and appreciation for art, so we headed to the National Gallery and spent the day audio-touring some of the greatest paintings in the world. We didn't have to shorten the gallery visit for a younger sister's attention span. During our lunch break, we didn't have to cater to anyone else's conversational priorities--we could talk about the paintings we saw, the history we learned and the artists we liked. When she said she would also like to see  Ford's Theater where Lincoln was shot, we didn't have to poll anyone else to see if we should go. Off we went. Ditto for the kind of restaurant we would go to for dinner. That night, when a huge thunderstorm broke over the city, we stood out on our 14th floor terrace for half an hour to watch the lightening explode all around the night sky. She spent time trying to capture a flash of lightening on her iPhone but the roars of light struck too quickly and from unexpected directions. It was nature's fireworks and she didn't have to think about how anyone else in the family was reacting.

The next morning we flew home with her. Within seconds she was back in the orbit of her family and her usual roles of big-sister, mom-helper, brother competitor. But that didn't change the fact that we had forged a new and different bond with our granddaughter. We had been rewarded with a glimpse of the future Maia: the serious student with a mind for history, an eye for art and a love of thunderstorms--the one who is part of a loving family herd, but is also an independent thinker and her very own person.

The Grands grow up so quickly. The roles we play with and for them are ever-changing. The visit made us realize we're moving from cuddlers to guides--trusted adults on whom they can test their future dreams and ideas.

 

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Observations: Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the feel of an empty-nested house

                    

Well, it's not Anne herself but Anne as channeled by Melanie Benjamin in her novel "The Aviator's Wife,"  which is told in the first-person voice of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Benjamin read through Lindbergh's diaries and personal papers as part of her research for the book, so these comments on how her child-emptied house in Darien, Connecticut felt to the mother of five grown children  presumably mirror the Aviator's Wife's feelings:

"It's the quiet that you notice, first, when the children begin to leave.

And not just the practical fact that the record player is unplugged, the radio turned off. Nor simply the lack of some instrument being practiced behind closed door. Not merely the silent phone, the absence of stampeding feet up and down stairs, the slamming of doors, the constant rush of water in the bathroom.

It's more than that--less than that, too. It's a hum, a vibration that leaves when they leave. For all of a sudden the very air in the house is slower, duller; gentler against your eardrum. "

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Bank of Mom and Dad: Should the helping hand be a loan or a gift?

Some of us have taken a tough love stand: Once they're adults, our kids are on their own: The Bank of Mom and Dad is closed.

Others take a more nuanced approach: A helping hand is there, depending on what it's for.

For those of us in that camp, the question is: Should that help be in the form of a loan or a gift.

The loan would appear to be the less risky way to go. The money will hopefully be repaid and we haven't, as one financial adviser put it, " dampened their drive to become financially independent."

Call Paterfamilias and me "Mommy and Daddy Indulgence," but we see the risks of loans as higher than those of a gift.

The loan risks? They won't be able to pay it back and there will be bad blood between the banker (Mom and Dad) and the borrower (the adult progeny).  A Carnegie Mellon survey published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, looked into the terms and consequences of loans between and among friends and family and found that "people’s tendency to confuse what is in their own interest with what is fair is a major source of disagreements between people.” Put another way, ill will develops between lender and borrower. Relationships suffer.

More specifically, the survey of some 900 participants found that overdue personal loans had wide-ranging negative consequences, such as loss of closeness and loss of trust. Lenders felt that the delinquent borrowers were going out of their way to avoid them.

Bottom line: If the idea of gifting the money runs counter to your instincts and beliefs, then march your child over to the bank and co-sign a loan. The bank is in the business of collecting on debt. If your child misses a payment or two, let the bank hound them. And if your child defaults on the loan? Well, you're out of pocket, just as you would be if you made a gift.

This scenario only works if you can afford to lose the money. If you can't, you probably shouldn't be making a direct loan, co-signing a bank loan or gifting the money.

There's a pithy proverb that fills this bill, courtesy of the Bard on Avon:

 

 

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Parenting Grown Children: Are the bride's parents still on the hook for the wedding?

When it comes to wedding costs, those of us who are parents of the bride can only be thankful that dowries are no longer an acceptable mode of exchange. But what about paying for the wedding? Tradition has it that the bride's family is on the hook for it. But is that how millennials see it? Has there been a rethinking of who pays for what?

I bring this up because I recently saw a Survey Monkey poll run by a 20-something over at FiveThirtyEight. (He likes to run surveys about what he calls questions about how to be an adult).  More than 1,000 single and married folks from millennials to 60+ answered the Survey Monkey questions, which asked about a variety of financial and etiquette wedding issues. Chief among them: who should pay for the shindig?

Before I read the results, I leaned on my own carefully acquired anecdotal evidence: It will vary with the age of the bridge and groom: the older they are (upwards of their mid-30s as opposed to in their 20s) the more likely the bride and groom will pay for or share the costs for the wedding they want. The survey answers were more varied than that.

According to the 20-something who analyzed the Monkey results:

Three responses rose to the top: 25 percent of respondents said the bride’s family, 26 percent said the couple, and 26 percent said that the groom’s family, the bride’s family, and the couple should split evenly. The remainder were split over various permutations of those three groups, with most saying either both families splitting it or the bride’s family and the couple splitting it. For what it’s worth, among the 18-to-29 cohort --you know, the ones often getting married — about half thought it should be some permutation of the parents’ problem to pay, with 35 percent saying the bride’s family should cover it.

Bottom line: The more things change the more they stay the same. There’s still a broad belief that the bride’s family should pay for the main event. To put some survey numbers on it:

Stripping out the permutations, 70 percent said the bride’s family should be at least somewhat on the hook for paying for the wedding, 60 percent said the couple should chip in, and 41 percent said the groom’s family should.

Here are the survey permutations for those interested in details--and to see how answers varied by age of respondent. And yes, my anecdotal evidence is within the margin of error.

 

	SHARE OF RESPONDENTS BY AGE
WHO PAYS?	TOTAL	18-29	30-44	45-59	60+
The couple	26%	22%	22%	31%	29%
Three-way split (groom & bride’s families, couple)	26	19	31	30	24
The bride’s family	25	35	18	22	24
The groom’s family and the bride’s family	12	12	15	10	11
The bride’s family and the couple	7	10	6	5	9
The groom’s family	2	1	6	2	1
The groom’s family and the couple	0	0	2	0	0

 

 

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