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

Holidays without the Kids: Finding ways to make the best of it.

We are alone for the Holidays. Our children and grandchildren are elsewhere. This is the fallout from having children who marry spouses whose families have holiday traditions they want to honor with their presence. When our children were young, our tradition was to escape the hoopla and take the family skiing. But our children are grown now with families of their own, live in cities far from us and are creating their own ways of observing the Season.

We're not alone in this. There are lots of reasons why adult children spend their holidays with other parents or friends or doing something else. Many of us have found work-arounds. Some of our friends have time-shifted the holidays. That is, they pre-celebrated or are post-celebrating the holiday at a time and day more convenient to gathering everyone together. Good will to all.

But that still leaves the vacuum that is the day of the holiday itself. Christmas, in particular, can feel like the world has ghosted us, that everyone else is gathered around their living rooms, singing carols, opening gifts, eating Christmas dinner and thinking about peace and goodwill to man. (Well, maybe as an outsider looking in my imagination is over-firing.) But the fact remains that on Christmas day stores, restaurants, theaters, museums and other amusements have shut their doors. Shout out to movie theaters for keeping their screens lit.

What to do? Not all of us will over-compensate by crowding into Chinese restaurants. One set of friends whose children are otherwise occupied made reservations for Christmas dinner at a very chic--and fabulous--country inn. Friends of theirs--also without the company of the children from either his or her first marriages--will join them.

Other friends are leaving the country--off to Baja, Mexico to loll in the sun and enjoy water sports while their children celebrate the holidays skiing and hiking in the deep chill of New England.

And then there's always a good book, Netflix and freshly popped popcorn. Stream The Crown or Jack Ryan and, poof, before we know it, it's the day after.

Observation: Offering unsolicited advice to grown children is a no-win.

When it comes to raising their children, our sons and daughters are not perfect. Or maybe they are but their spouses have too heavy or light a hand. Correcting behavior or disciplining their children is a touchy business and when we get to see it up close and personally, we may not like it. We may even think they are taking the wrong approach--either too tough or not tough enough. We worry about our grandkids' pysches.

We need to get over it. When it comes to general advice, our kids rarely want to hear from us if they haven't asked. Child-raising advice doubles the ante. We can't win by butting in or making suggestions later.

Philip Galanes of Social Q's may or may not have to live with the zipped-shut mouth within his own family but he gives similar council more elegantly and with more practicality than I do. Here's his answer to a woman whose daughter-in-law yelled at and, from the grandmother's perspective, belittled her 17-year-old son during a family meal. After the event, the woman offered her daughter-in-law what she described as  "some advice you can take or leave.”  Result: daughter- in- law will no longer take her calls.

After advising the writer  to "Keep apologizing at regular intervals and hope for the best," Galanes offers this suggestion. It applies to all of us who have the urge to intervene when we see our grown children discipline their children and are sure we know a better way. (We may, but we've already had our shot.)

...If one person is treating another badly, the immediate need is comforting the victim, not asserting dominance over the aggressor. Better to have taken your grandson to a skateboard shop (or anyplace he likes), spoken to him kindly and let him vent. That may have done him some good and given you more context for understanding his difficulties with his mother, rather than starting a war with her that you can never win.

 

Emerging Adults: Big adjustments ahead as teenage kids morph into independent adults.

He's a psychologist who specializes in adolescence but Carl Pickhardt also has a lot to say about the next stage: young adults (roughly twenty-somethings)  and their natural and inevitable  independence from us, their loving and occasionally controlling parents. In a recent newsletter, he laid out the basic changes in our relationship with our grown-up young 'uns. This period of development, he notes,  is a time when our children have gained "functional independence and a sense of identity." That is, our newly minted adults should be able to tell themselves, "I’m on my own and I know who I am.” 

In the real world, young adults have their struggles coming to terms with this sense of independence and self awareness, but so do we. Let me quote Pickhardt on the range of losses we may feel as the transition takes place:

• Demotion: parents lose positional superiority. Interpersonal standing is now equitized.  “I can’t pull rank of ruling authority anymore.”

• Distance: parents lose central importance. Parents become more peripheral to young adult life. “I’m more of an outsider now.”

• Disappointment: parental expectations are unmet. Old dreams do not match the emerging reality.  “He didn’t turn out all the ways I anticipated.”

• Disapproval: parents don't like some daily decisions being made. In the young person’s place, they would choose differently.  “We don’t agree with her priorities.”

• Diversity: parents lose some old sense of similarity. The adult child life is increasingly unfamiliar. “Her lifestyle is so different from ours.”

• Despondency: parents lose accustomed contact. Primary intimacy and importance are found elsewhere. “I miss the old closeness we used to share.”  

• Deprivation: parents lose current information. They feel more out of touch with what is happening.  “I'm not regularly told what is going on.”

• Directness: parents lose spontaneity of communication. There is more talking carefully.  “I’m more diplomatic about what I say and how I say it.

How to adjust--while doing no harm. Pickhardt has a warning on how important it is that our children make the transition.

Proceeding as though your adult child will stay as family-centered as the adolescent usually doesn’t work too well. Instead, by emphasizing certain parental roles, more closeness can often grow. A few suggestions follow. 

• Parents can become cheerleaders – celebrating accomplishments.

• Parents can become supporters – providing listening. 

• Parents can become motivators – encouraging effort.

• Parents can become followers – expressing interest

• Parents can become mentors – advising when asked.

• Parents can become companions – providing welcome company.

• Parents can become independents – leading separate lives.

• Parents can become informants – sharing home and family news.

• Parents can become helpers – being on family call.

• Parents can become requestors -- asking for assistance.

It's the future we have been building towards--that day when our children will be independent, sentient beings who'll mature into adults who can, let us all hope, live productive lives and rise to the occasion of caring for us in our dotage.