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

Young Adults: What if they call home from college and they're miserable.

Photo: Palo Coleman

They're off to college. The empty nest looms or maybe just the diminution of the number of children at home. Paterfamilias and I have been there, lived through that. Now it's one of our grown-up children whose oldest child has bounded off happily for college.

So maybe this is as good a time as ever to talk about a blog post Dr. Carl Pickhardt wrote for Psychology Today. It's not about children leaving the nest or parents having empty-nest longings. It's about a surprise call parents may get from their child while he or she is presumably taking notes in classes, trying out for various activities and figuring out how to fit in. Even if our kids go off to college happily, we parents may find all is not what it should be with the new experience. Pickhardt's post is about what to do if the child you've dropped off at college calls home weeks later and is in crisis. 

Let me let Pickhardt set the scene:

Most young people making this transition into more independent living have at least a few times at the outset when they feel truly unprepared and overwhelmed.... Consider some hard adjustments of this challenging time.

Some of the adjustments Pickhardt ticks off are missing home and family; feeling lonely; disappointment at  not coping well; concerns about living up to parental expectations; incompatibility with a roommate.

So how parents can parents handle the situation. Here's Pickhardt's five-step process should that "crisis call" come. 

1.   WELCOME the call. “We are so happy that you thought to call us; we love hearing from you, whatever you have to share.” Show that the loving family connection is unbroken. 

2.   EMPATHIZE with the upset: “Yes, if sounds like you are going through a really difficult time. Tell us more about it.” Provide emotional support.

3.   OPERATIONALIZE the problem. “Can you tell us specifically what is happening and not happening that has contributed to your feeling this way?” Bring the problem into practical and objective focus.

4.   STRATEGIZE about what to do. “What might be some constructive actions to take that would ease your current unhappiness, and would any outside help be useful at this time?” Explore problem solving possibilities.

5.   ENERGIZE with faith in finding ways for moving forward. Declare: “We believe you have what it takes to meet this challenge and will come out stronger on the other side. Please keep calling us, and we’ll keep checking in if you like, so we can be with you as you work this through. " Provide confidence and optimism. 

Depending on how fragile your child might seem, Pickhardt notes the possibility of seeking professional help from on-campus sources.  But not too fast.

When a college crisis call does come in, it may help to remember that quote from John F. Kennedy: “When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters – one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity.” 

So, parents need to thread this needle: Take action if endangerment is communicated; but short of that, provide listening, empathy, and advice if asked, but do not intervene and interfere in this opportunity for the young person to grow.

What it feels like to send your first born off to college

I will not name names. But this was a Facebook post written by a dad I know who drove his oldest child--his son, who happens to be my grandson--to college a few days ago and managed to keep those lump-in-throat emotions in check--for a while:

And for those who are asking the obvious question, by some miracle I did not cry. (No one will believe that.)

At least not until I got home and found a letter from him on the kitchen table. Then it was full-on runny nose blubbering.

He will be so happy there and I will still miss him so much.

On-The-Job Advice: Helicopter parenting and your adult child's work place.

photo: Maia Lemov

Once our kids graduate--be it from college, graduate school or a specialized program--we're pleased when they land their first "career" job. They're launched. It's more than pleasing. It's thrilling.

But some of us have a hard time letting go and recognizing they are now on their own as professionals. I've written about parents who contacted their child's boss when they didn't like the way the company was treating their child. I think we can all agree that is a major overstep. I've taken note of other over-steps in the job search and work place here and here

How about this one? A parent wrote to the New York Times' Work Friend columnist, Megan Greenwell, that her daughter asked her for advice on a workplace issue and now she was asking the columnist to weigh in.

My 24-year-old daughter works for a small nonprofit. She has recently started to see a therapist one day a week, so she arrives an hour later than normal and stays an extra hour that day. She puts her arrival time into the organization’s calendar, which is the protocol if you have a doctor’s appointment, but since this is a weekly appointment, she wasn’t sure if she needs to explain where she is to the executive director. My initial response is that her therapy appointments are none of the director’s business, but now I wonder if I am just being old-fashioned. What do you recommend for her?

Megan Greenwell wasn't treating this as a "tell" or "not-tell" issue. She took it as a deeper incursion into the daughter's independence and autonomy. Here, in part, is what she wrote the mother about her daughter:

I’d recommend that she draw sharper boundaries with her mom. Asking family members for advice is entirely reasonable, but your outsourcing the question crosses the line into helicopter parenting. A 24-year-old is more than capable of navigating her own office politics.

"Over-parenting" can be a fine line. Is asking advice about the advice to give an adult child who has asked for advice crossing into the dreaded territory of helicopter parenting? Does it suggest we're making too much of the issue, of over-reacting to our adult child's situation?

Got an opinion on this? Please share.

(P.S. Here's how Greenwell came down on the actual issue of whether or not to tell:)

It sounds as though her boss has already agreed to her schedule change one day a week, so I don’t see a need for any further discussion about why. If arriving an hour late isn’t causing any problems, she can just keep filling out the calendar. She absolutely shouldn’t feel any shame for going to therapy — everyone should try it! — but she doesn’t need to go out of her way to make sure everyone knows, either.