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

The bitter and sweet of living far from our grown children

We who live far  from our grown kids take solace in the "up" side of distance. When we visit them it is usually for a few days or even longer and those visits can be festive, busy and intense. For a few fleeting days we are part of their everyday lives: We see up close and personally how they live. We pick up on quotidian minutia that they don't discuss with us on Face Time or in texts. It's more intimate and revealing than having children live nearby and dropping by for an hour here and a dinner there.

But there's a trade-off. They're here today and gone in another day or two. A friend whose daughter flew in for a two-day visit, texted me in mid-visit: "My apartment is full of life! Today I know what I am missing."

Say no more. I know exactly what she means.

We are disciplined about being independent. These visits--whether we go to them or they come to us--are a reminder of the price of that discipline. We're not "sweeping up the heart/and putting love away" but the reality is our grown kids live far from us and lead lives very much apart from ours. We can't meet them spontaneously for a Saturday morning coffee. Paterfamilias and I have stopped going to Chinese restaurants on Sunday evenings--they are too filled with three generations of family laughing and talking and sharing fried rice and moo shi pork. And we're not.

While the long visits we get are wonderful and "full of life," they are a reminder of how much we miss our children and their families, of how we discipline ourselves not to think about the loss and the excitement the younger generation, whose lives are on fire, bring into our lives. 

 

 

Giving Advice and Good Counsel to Grown Children

 

 

 

 

We here at Parenting Grown Children central--I use the editorial we since there's no one here but me--have long counseled that we can offer our grown children advice, but should do so only when asked. (See Notes to Self.) Yes, we have much life experience to share--wisdom born of experience that could help our grown children avoid mistakes. But we have to let them figure stuff out for themselves. If they want our good counsel--and sometimes they do--they'll ask for it. Otherwise, bite that lip; walk gently on those eggshells.

Not an easy direction to follow.  Sometimes the temptation can be too much; the stakes too high. Carolyn Hax recently advised a dad--she was asked for her counsel. The dad was concerned about his 27-year-old son who graduated college with honors in his field but was working at a low-pressure, low-wage job and living with and off his girlfriend. The dad's wife--the stepmother--has been pressuring him to have a "serious father-son talk" with his son about the son's future. The dad is clearly of two minds. He is worried about his son but he also has faith that "he'll eventually find his direction in life. And not everyone needs to be a CEO, right?" And so he turns to Hax to ask, "Should I talk with him or not?"

Hax's answer wasted no words: "Not. Not your business."

So hard to step back and take Hax's advice. And yet, needs must. If we brought them up right, they will find their true north--though it may not be the one we would choose for them. Cheers and show the love of support, dad.