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

Social Media Etiquette: The cellphone rules when a Grand comes to visit

When a 14-year-old Grand hopped a plane and came to visit her Gramps and PenPen during spring break, the trip was all about indulging her--giving her the chance to decide what we would do, where we would go and the kind of food we would eat. Freedom Hall. A visit without the parents in tow is a  liberating experience for us as well as for her. But there was one rule that her parents insisted we enforce: No cellphones, laptops or other screens in her room at night.

When our 16-year-old Grandson flew down here last week for a quick 36-hour visit (Sunday soccer games must be accommodated), a similar admonition followed him. Cellphones had to be parked in the kitchen (or wherever we plugged our charging station) at night and during dinner.

I hate being a policeman. I want my visits with my teen Grands to feel like we are a staging for the almost-adults they are almost becoming. I want them to feel I trust them to be responsible and to follow the sensible rules their parents lay down--that I don't need to check up on them.

But the cellphone rules are there for good reason. The science (and we believe in science!) finds that screen time at bedtime is disruptive to sleep patterns. A European study of nearly 10,000 16- to 19-year-olds found that the longer the time in any given day that a teenager spends using electronic devices such as tablets and smartphones, the worse their sleep will be.

Closer to home, an article in Science Life  (a publication of University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences) looked at sleep patterns for children and adolescents. After delineating a variety of reasons why adolescents don't bed down as easily as their younger siblings (circadian rhythms and that sort of stuff), the article ran these family-friendly Q and A paragraphs:

Is it okay if the phone is in the room but it’s just plugged in and charging? Or is there something about the presence of it, knowing it’s there and you might get a message?

That should be fine, but if your kid knows it’s there and might be tempted to check it in case a friend texts, you might as well charge it in the living room. Even if it’s on vibrate, their brains are cued to hear that and it could wake them up. They’re going to want to get up and check it, so it’s removing the temptation by taking it out of the room.

Is there a rule of thumb for how long before bedtime you should turn off the electronics?

If you could do at least 30 minutes that’s great. An hour or more is wonderful, but that’s not terribly realistic for a lot of people, including myself. I know the rules and I break them myself sometimes. But give your brain a chance to unwind, to reduce the effects of the bright light and recover from that. Give yourself at least 30 minutes to not be staring at a bright light or doing anything particularly stimulating like playing violent video games. Watching TV from a distance isn’t necessarily as bad because it’s not as bright, unless what you’re doing is very stimulating, so watching a horror movie in bed isn’t always a great idea.

Which is more of a problem: the light from screens or the stimulation from using electronics?

Both. Light is particularly bad because it suppresses melatonin. It’s also an alerting signal to the brain of it being daytime. It can confuse the brain about what time of day it is. The brain is thinking it should be alert and awake because it’s bright and something is going on. So it’s doing both at the same time.

Turns out we didn't have to police the situation too closely. Both our Grands (one our daughter's child; the other our son's) understood the rules. They voluntarily brought their phones to the charging station when they went to bed. There was a little more fudging on the laptop front--I won't say by whom. We did have to close it down when we did a bed check before we went to bed. But there were no whines or complaints. We could rest easy: Our Grands have learned and are practicing proper digital device behavior. Are they sleeping the sleep of the good? We assume so.

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Bank of Mom and Dad: The helping hand and its role in sibling rivalry

When my mother died, she left all that was left in her estate to me. But that didn't lessen my resentment of how my brother had, when he was alive (he died before my widowed mother did), talked her into giving him access to her savings accounts and squandered two thirds of it.

Whether we need the worldly goods or not--I was fortunate in not--there is something primal about the resentment we feel for a sibling if our parents treated them more favorably than us.

I bring that up lo these many years later because Paterfamlias and I--and our friends--are now the older generation, the parents of the grown children and, human nature being what it is, many of us are probably tilting more toward one child than another, helping out a child who may be struggling financially and not offering equal rewards to one who is not. The common sense of our actions may be apparent to us but not necessarily to the child who's not getting his or her share.

At least that is a point raised in a recent British publication, The National. After ranting a bit about parents who favor the "weaker" of their children over the more successful one, the author sums up research that has a surprising kick to it:

"Research in the United States found that parents helping their young adult children financially was linked to what it called a "solid parent-child bond" that got stronger the more money is given. I found it surprising, and disturbing, that money was a bigger issue than emotional support and affection. Other research states that sibling relationships were not affected by preferential treatment, like affection, as long as they were given the same amount of money. Give one more money than the other and you’re condemning siblings to bad relationships with each other later

So it turns out that our adult children are sensitive to inequality just as they were when they were small children living under our roof.

The answer to the issue is not necessarily to change our ways or even the scales, but to let our kids know what we're thinking and get input from them. In the best of all possible worlds, their reaction will be like that of a friend of mine's son who told his parents he was fine with their helping out his sister and that they should feel comfortable leaving the bulk of their worldly goods to her. He and his wife both have MBAs and high-paying jobs.. They are more than able to support their two children and send one who needs an extra boost to private school  The sister holds a low-paying job (she's a social worker) and her husband, who lost his job in the 2008 recession, has been unable to regain his footing. They are struggling to support their twin girls. It is a relief to the parents to know that they are providing financial help to their daughter without their son resenting it. (Not knowing when the need for that help will end? Relief-less.)

According to Megan Ford, a therapist and head of the Financial Therapy Association, the biggest reason parents offer adult children financial help is that they are struggling due to a job loss, divorce or the pursuit of a career path that’s meaningful, but not lucrative. Also high on the list: providing assistance to a child who is disabled or has special needs or is dealing with addiction or mental health issues.

The National's author has this advice for those who are not even-handed in handing out or leaving money to their grown kids:

"Talk about it with your family, explain what you want to do, why, and that you realise it affects everyone. You might be surprised with the different takes on what you’re proposing. And most importantly, talk about being fair. You want to be fair don’t you? Find out what that means to everyone, not just what it means to you."

 

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Privacy Issues: Would you read your son's college journals? Class notes? Letters?

Unexpectedly,  we came across a cache of Uber son's college memorablia. The family that bought our house last year found a large box cramped under an eave in a remote section of crawl space. It had our name on it.

Paterfamilias and I hauled the very large, dust-coated box to our apartment. We peeled off the packing tape and found, among other things, assorted English Lit novels in bind-broken or yellowed condition, a framed college diploma and several shoe boxes full of photos, letters, college essays and a small, rubberband-bound journal.

We had no qualms about dumping the spoiled books, the college papers and the snapshots that were curling at the edges. But what to do about the journal and the boxes crammed with letters. (Our son went to college in pre-email days.) The stuff was our son's and remembrances of his young adult life. If he lived nearby, we would ask him to come by and dispose of the materials himself. But he doesn't. 

Here were our choices: We could trash everything and pretend the box had never surfaced (as well it might never have). Or, we could edit the materials down to travel size and bring the most interesting stuff with us on our next visit to our son and his family.

There is only one way to edit down material--sift through it to see what should be tucked into our suitcase and what should be tossed or shredded. This is where we faced "invasion of privacy" issues. How far along to read the letters to figure out whether they should be saved for further inspection by the person to whom they were addressed. Who was still important enough to him that letters written some 20 years ago would be meaningful.

It was a quease-producing process. The reading gave way to quick looks at return addresses. We plucked a few for posterity--like the one from a professor telling him how much he had enjoyed having our son in his class. The journal, an inscrutable pictograph account of an adventure with college friends, made it into the suitcase. The framed diploma? We texted about it and got a "no thanks."  The final treasure was an 8 x 10, framed, color photo of our son with three college teammates, two soccer coaches and one soccer ball. We packed it.

When we finally handed over the curated treasure trove, our son seemed mildly interested in the college prof's letter, greeted the journal with a "hmmmm," and laughed out loud (LOL'd) at the soccer photo. So did his kids. But we have proof that he was really pleased to see it. He posted it on Facebook.

Found in the attic of my parents' house. My kids told me I could share this picture if I managed to crop it enough to not show the mortifying short-shorts (OMG. Dad, put some clothes on!)....

 

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Money Matters: Can we afford to share our wealth with our grown kids in the here and now? There's a way to measure that.

 I've got an unrequited affection for the wisdom spouted by Philip Galanes, the NYTimes Social Qs columnist. Hot on the heels of that blog-crush is one for Carl Richards, who offers financial advice as the Sketch Guy (he likes to sketch his ideas on the back of a paper napkin; see below).  While he may not directly target our demographic (parents of adult children), his words of financial wisdom often pertain.

Take this recent sketch on the importance of defining how much income is enough, a calculation that, for those of us in or near retirement, may also apply to the accumulation and the spending of savings. 

On the income question, Richards asks whether, if you could double your income in 18 months for only five more hours of work per week, would you do it? He then ups the ante: triple the income for 10 hours; quintuple for 20.  "At what point," he asks, "would you answer “No”?"

His point is to figure out how much money we need to live happily and breathe easy (pay our bills; live the way we want to). Once paying the rent and grocery bills are assured, the calculation comes down to accumulating more money versus spending more time with family or at leisure.

For those of us at the farther end of the income-earning cycle, we might ask ourselves, how much in bankable assets do we need to live happily and breathe easily in retirement and how much would be willing to give up to double that amount. For some of us that means, how much longer should we work and put money away for our retirement?

Once we're retired and living off fixed assets, how do we want to add to the pot by taking a job--maybe as a barista or in retail sales. How much is enough to pay the bills and still have the wherewithal to offer our grown children a helping hand (if we think they deserve it) or indulge our grandchildren (if it gives us pleasure).  It's the same calculus we would use if we decided, as friends of ours have, that, once their grown kids graduated college, the Bank of Mom and Dad was shuttered. They've used their "excess" retirement money to travel the world and engage in hobbies and activities that require an investment in equipment or material.

How much is enough? It is more than a question of dollars and real estate. It's about our values. With income, it's a balance between money and time; with retirement savings, it's between money and what gives us pleasure and meaning.

 

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