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

What our grown kids don't understand about us and the coronavirus

Some of my friends are strict isolationists: They're locked down, venturing out only for a walk around the block. Food is delivered. Groceries wiped down. Family visits via FaceTime, Skype or a wave from the backyard. It is a point of pride that their grown children have laid down isolation rules for them--and insist they keep. And well they should: Many of them have serious underlying conditions and need to steer clear of any exposure.

Clearly, our children are worried about us. After all, adults over 65 account for 8 in 10 coronavirus deaths. No wonder they are scared that something dreadful may happen to us, and they won't be able to be there to come to our aid. So they have, in effect, become our parents--the ones who tell us what we can and cannot do. They're grounding us.

But there are those of us who find our backs stiffening when our grown children try to set limits on our activities, when they insist we stop shopping at supermarkets or taking long walks in public parks--even though we have no underlying conditions with the exception of our age.

The pressure to isolate ourselves comes from everywhere and is internalized in different ways. I  went to my local farmer's market on Sunday (limited access to the grounds, masks on all) and overheard this little, old, grey-haired lady complaining bitterly to one of the vendors: Neighbors keep offering to pick up groceries (the nerve!) for her when she is fully capable of doing so herself. "There's nothing wrong with me," she huffed. "I don't feel I'm an old person. I can do anything they can do." Her children are pleading with her to stay home and not go out at all. "Why shouldn't I go out for a walk?' she complains, visibly shaking with anger. She was on a rant--too long and strident for my comfort.  (I was next in line, so tick-tock.) But I understood what she was saying--and agreed with some of it.

Enough of us do that our grown children have taken to meeting in Zoom-rooms or other online chat spots to grouse about how ungovernable their aging parents are. They hear the statistics about deaths among the elderly and are sick with worry that their mom or dad will fall prey to the disease and they won't be there to comfort us. It's just like when they were small children and we worried they would run out into traffic.  Only the roles are reversed now.

Although people our age are dying disproportionately from this dreadful disease, many of us are fortunate enough to be hale and healthy. We don't feel we need to live by more stringent rules than our neighbors. So, why are we less worried about ourselves than our children are about us?

I got a partial answer to that questions in a piece in the New York Times. There is, evidently, scientific research that explains why some of us seem almost cavalier in the face of the coronavirus death threat.

One finding is that, as older adults, we may not experience the same level of threat as younger people do. We have become, in effect, sunny side up. According to researcher Claudia Haase, there are "age-related shifts in the service of making negative emotions smaller and positive emotions bigger. Older adults are often masters in turning their attention away from information that is threatening, upsetting and negative.” The priority of older adults, she adds, is to make the most of their limited time on earth, and their highest value is social connection.

And then there’s this: We older adults may not see ourselves as old, even if we're well into our 70s and 80s. Here's Haase again:  “Older adults may not think of themselves as being at heightened risk for Covid-19 because old age carries a lot of stigma. There’s a huge reluctance to view oneself in those terms.”

There may or may not be scientific research on another point: Some of us look ahead to the ills that could fell us and we think, "Better to go this way." That was a sentiment expressed by a friend of mine who lost her mother to breast cancer and who's faced several rounds of chemotherapy for the disease herself. The author of the NYTimes article, Julie Fingersh, reported a variation on that thought by her 88-year-old father. When she asked him if he were afraid of becoming sick from the virus, he answered, "What's to be afraid of? If I get it, Sayonara!"

The article was not written with us in mind. It was fodder for middle-aged children who wanted to "persuade blithe parents to respect the threat."

Good luck with that. Tara Brach has this zen-like advice for our grown children: "There has to be a letting go, because ultimately, you cannot control them. They're responsible for their living and dying."

 

Love in the Time of Corona: Being sheltered by your grown child? Calvin Trillin rates it ***

Like most of our friends where we live, Paterfamilias and I are sheltering alone in our apartment. Our grown children live in cities far from us. Unlike our friends with children living nearby, we do not get picture window visits--blown kisses from our children or grandchildren standing in our backyards or on sidewalks below our windows.  Groceries with love notes in it are not dropped at our door. We are strictly in communicado via FaceTime, which does the job--except for the hugs.

Unlike some people we have not been whisked away by our grown children to shelter with them in their remote second homes. Calvin Trillin has. I have been alerted to his adventure by my very own grown child, who has no second home to offer but who sent the link.  Trillan's New Yorker piece is comic relief for those of us who need it.

Here's a taste of what's to come.

Don’t get me wrong—I appreciate my daughter, Hilda, arranging to have me snatched from the dangerously crowded city and harboring me at her house in a semirural part of the state. I appreciate the efforts of my son-in-law, Desmond, who drove the getaway car, and of my teen-age grandsons, Jason and Justin, whom I now refer to as my tech-support team. So you must be wondering why I intend to give the establishment run by Hilda and her family only three stars on TripAdvisor.

Enjoy.

Covid 19, ventilators and a guiding message for our grown children

I am thinking out loud here. I have just been on a walk with a friend--6 feet apart; masked (scarfed in my case). We started talking about the wrenching decision a cousin of hers had to make. The cousin's 70-year-old brother, who lived in a group home and had a severe speech defect, was in the hospital with coronavirus. Doctors had called her, the sister, for permission to put her brother on a ventilator since he was fighting any attempt to put anything on his face and couldn't articulate his wishes. Brother and sister weren't close; she didn't know what to do. My friend is a doctor; so is her husband. They couldn't make a decision for the cousin, but they talked her through what might happen given his current health. The cousin called the next day; her brother had died before she could get back to the doctors with her decision.

Ventilator decisions are ones families, ICU doctors and nurses are faced with every day. As coronavirus cases keep spiking and ventilator availability may not be able to keep up with need,  hand-wringing discussions are taking place in medical circles: How, if it comes down to it, to make the decision of who gets one and who doesn't.

The decisions health professionals may have to make may get down to one of life's basic ethical questions:  what is a life worth? More specifically in this time of the corona, whose life takes precedence when it comes to ventilator decisions. What a time we are living through--not only a pandemic but a crisis of supply (of both machine and medical personnel)--that we may have come to a point where medical professionals have to make decisions like this.

My friend and I talk about directives we have given our families--our spouses, our grown children--about what we want done should we suffer debilitating diseases and not be able to make resuscitate decisions for ourselves. The question we debate on our walk is whether these directives--written months or years ago and meant as guidance during a personal health crisis that affects only us and our loved ones--apply to today's situation. What if we become ill with coronavirus and become sick enough to need aid in breathing. Do we want medical personnel to make the decision about whether a machine should breathe for us--possibly at the expense of someone else. Where do we want our loved ones to draw the line. What do we want them to tell the doctors and nurses overseeing our care? "Yes, do anything to save her," or "No, she feels she's lived a good and long life, and she wants you to use your resources for someone with their future still ahead of them."

We ended our walk in total agreement on what we want to tell our spouses and grown children. But when I got home and brought up the question, my spouse had a very different answer.

It is a very personal decision. I would never tell anyone beyond my grown children and spouse what I want done. There is no right or wrong here. But there is some thinking to do. If it should come down to it, our children deserve guidance from us.