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

Rebalancing Acts: When our kids become our social advisers

I was invited to a pool party.

It was last minute. Casual. A text read, "You are invited to pool dip and also dinner tomorrow Saturday night here. Come anytime afternoon. Cupla folks you'll like."

I went into panic mode. I would know no one but the host--an editor I'd met years ago during my freelance days and maintained a pleasant on-and-off friendship with over the years. He'd been especially kind when my husband was ill--taking me out to lunch; emailing me jokes. But I didn't know his wife, no less the "cupla friends."

Although I was now a widow, it's not as though I'd never navigated socially on my own. During my days as a reporter and editor, I went to receptions and cocktail parties on my own. It wasn't scary. The people there would be connected to the beat I covered; it would be easy to start a conversation. But this was different. I wouldn't have the anchor of a friend, co-worker or husband to seek out if I was floundering socially.

My first thought: I can't do this. How do I say no nicely? I went for a walk with a fellow widow to see how she would handle declining the invitation. "You have to go," she said. "You shouldn't lock yourself up in your apartment." We came up with a strategy that I thought I could handle: Go for the swim but find an excuse not to stay for dinner.

I got back to my apartment and called my daughter-in-law. She and my son have a pool as do several of their friends. She would know pool party protocols and whether I needed to bring a host gift. Her advice: wear your bathing suit under a skirt or dress; stuff underwear into your purse. If you're not staying for dinner, don't worry about a gift.

I was still uneasy. I FaceTimed with my daughter. She keyed in on why I was so stressed, on what was provoking my unease and what did I see as the worst-case scenario of being at a pool party. It was the usual social anxiety: I would know no one, have no one to talk to, be a loner paddling around in a swimming pool full of jolly people who all knew each other.

Then my daughter put on her daughter. My 21-year-old granddaughter is into clothes styling. I asked her what to wear and if I should bring a towel.

Her answer was definitive. "PenPen," she said, "no one goes into the water at a pool party! There won't be any swimming. Wear a loose dress that looks like you could be wearing a bathing suit under it or wear a bathing suit under it. You will not need a towel."

I tell you the long version of this episode (minus the full-blown anxiety attack on Saturday afternoon; the first few months of being a widow are not easy) because it struck me that, after years of being an adviser to my children, that world had turned upside down. I was turning to my children for advice--on what to wear, how to behave and, most importantly, how to get on top of my anxieties. They were, in effect, parenting me.

I have written about this rebalancing of roles before. I saw it happen during the pandemic, to friends and even to my husband and me, although we weren't asking for advice so much as receiving it. Our kids would try to tell us what we should and should not do to stay safe. When my husband and I got Covid (this was pre-vaccine and our cases were not life-threatening), they conferred with our doctors, sent medical supplies (oximeters, blood pressure cuffs) and tapped into their suddenly-acquired medical knowledge to advise us.

Maybe because we're over 65 and of an age where we are considered especially vulnerable to the flu, a heat wave or whatever else is going around, our kids now worry about us the way we did about them. And when we have social questions--what to wear, how long to stay at a party, what kind of gift to bring--we turn to them. They are the experienced hands, the folks who are up-to-date. All of a sudden they've acquired the know-how to advise us.

If you're interested in a pool party update: The editor's wife was welcoming, kind and charming. There was only one other couple ("cupla" was literal) and they were delightful to talk to. We sat on the edge of the pool, dangled our feet and had a drink. I left before dinner.  There was no swimming.

 paintings: top, Renoir, The Boating Party; bottom,  Kay Hibbard, Beachcombers

 

Adult Children Confess: Here's what we do that annoys them

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as ithers see us!" That's 18th Century Scottish poet Robert Burns sharing his insight that continues to hold true today.

In that spirit, here are our adult children's top two complaints about us, as told to Carolyn Hax in an online discussion.  I am hopeful neither of these top two "annoying" habits apply to me, but I'm self-scrutinizing anyway.

Number One: Offering criticism and unsolicited advice.

Number Two: Ignoring cues and asking highly personal questions when no one is in the mood for sharing.

Hax sympathizes with the adult children who responded to a reader-letter and a follow-up prompt, "What makes my parents so annoying." But she and her readers also have a few suggestions for us on how to "mitigate" their annoyance with us.

Here are a few of them (edited version):

Let your kids be themselves. Few annoyances are as annoying as being parented against one's will.

Keep your anxieties to yourself.

Learn not to feel or act hurt that your kids find you annoying. It's more positional than personal anyway.

Learn to laugh at yourself, and admit when you're wrong.

Don't make them spend time with you. If you have a relationship where they can say no to a visit or that they have other plans, then there's a limit to how much you can annoy them.

painting: Emma Amos, Self Portrait

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Children, Our Bosses: A change in the dynamics of who's taking charge of whom.

Friends of ours just returned from four weeks in Italy. Days of sunshine. Mornings with una tazza di caffè. So delightful. They stayed at a four-story house their son and his family have rented: Their daughter-in-law was appointed to a prestigious job at an international agency headquartered in Rome and so the family relocated. What that meant for my friends, who have been plagued by health issues these past few years, is that their son is no longer available (as he had been) to help them out when they have a health or house-maintenance problem.  The son, in his turn, is gently insisting that his parents move to Italy--the four-story house has a suite for them and he will be able to take care of them as needs arise.

A week after our friends returned from Rome, we had dinner together. "No way," they said. "We are not moving to Italy." Language issues aside (It's not a minor aside when you don't speak Italian and live in Italy.), they were not, they said "ready" to make such a move, a move that would make them totally dependent on their son and his family. How would they make friends? Have any kind of community life? Be able to talk to anyone outside of the house?

The question that hung in the air: When is one "ready" to pull up roots and move near one's grown children? Italy may throw a slightly romantic cast on such a decision, but whether it's Rome or Miami or Chicago (or wherever a grown child now lives), it's disorienting to leave a "life" behind and start over. Should we do it when we're young enough to join communities and build a new life? Or do we wait until we're deep into our dotage and don't have many good choices left?

Even more to the point: Should it be our children who are telling us (gently insisting) what to do and when to do it? During Covid, when those of us over 65 were told we were at greater risk than everyone else, many of us found our children got bossy: Telling us to stay home and keep ourselves under strict quarantine.  I posted about that phenomenon here and here. 

Within my own family, my children have brought up the "relocation" subject in a less insistent way. Their dad and I are without major health problems. We may no longer be taking bicycling vacations in Brittany, but we're still leading active lives. Our children want to know what we'd want to do if/when the time came that we couldn't manage on our own. Would we want to move to a supportive living facility near them or where we are? So hard to imagine not being able to take care of oneself. But who knows what lies ahead?

My daughter put it this way: "It's hard to imagine this most ordinary thing."

That said, the seed has been planted--by them for us. The issue is not front-of-mind but it's back there somewhere, ready to be addressed when we're "ready."

photo: Maia Lemov

Covid Seniors: Are our adult kids still trying to be our parents?

Some of us whose adult children are now of sandwich-generation age--meaning their teen- and 20-something kids are becoming independent while their parents are evolving toward ancient--have a "take control" attitude toward their parents. It may be a hangover from the Covad pandemic. Back in those bad old days, a good number of adult kids, seeing their parents as vulnerable, set down rules for us--as though they had become our parents. What I saw among my friends were dictates like these: No shopping even if masked; no outdoor visits with friends (even if masked); no indoor visits with grandkids (only waves from the window).

Now that the pandemic has eased--or at least, the way we live with it has evolved--some of us are finding our kids haven't taken the foot off the controls. Again, I see it among my friends, especially those with health problems. But now I have news of it from afar. Well, as afar as Philip Galanes and his Social Q column

In the Galanes instance, a reader/letterwriter is a middle-aged man who is alarmed because his partner wants to move his 80-year-old parents who live in a distant city into his and his partner's home. The partner wants to remodel the home to accommodate his parents but the reader is looking for another solution--say, offering to contribute to a house or apartment for the parents that's in a nearby neighborhood but not in the reader's home.

Galanes's answer looks at the issue from the parents' point of view. He defends our autonomy and ends with a point we might want to make if we feel our kids are getting too, well, controlling. Here's some of Galanes'reply:

....I’ve been the self-appointed savior of an older parent, too! I know your partner is acting out of love (and fear). But his parents are old — not pieces of furniture to be carted from state to state. Your partner should begin this discussion by asking his parents what they would like if they were to need more help.

They may be part of a vibrant community of friends and neighbors who enrich their daily lives. They may prefer to age in place (with appropriate help) or at an assisted-living facility nearby....And all these options avoid the drastic steps of remodeling homes or buying new ones in a state where their son may be the only person they know.

I don’t minimize the practical or emotional complexities of aging. Your partner’s parents are lucky to have a loving son in their corner. And for all we know, they may want to move — at which point, we can take up your concern. But respecting their autonomy has to be the core of this discussion. They’ve seen a thing or two in their 80-odd years! Let them lead the way for as long as they can.

painting: R Bearden

The Wisdom of our Children: When the balance of giving advice tips in their favor

A funny thing has happened on our way to becoming older parents: We may find that our grown kids have acquired wisdom and good sense. And now, as we age into our more senior adult years, they share their gravitas with us (though some of their over-protective counsel during Covid was a bit overbearing as I posted here.) Many times, though, they become our guides to making difficult decisions. 

I was reminded of this when I bumped into a friend I hadn't seen in years. Now a widow, she was telling me about her son--I had last seen him when he was a toddler--who was now a physician in charge of a major healing center at a hospital across the country.  When her husband became gravely ill and hospital-bound, my friend desperately wanted to bring him home to care for him. She was trying to figure out how to reconfigure their home to make it possible to care for him there.  When her son flew home for a visit, he assessed both his father's condition and the house and told his mother what she didn't want to hear: It couldn't be done. There was no way his father could come home and be cared for safely and comfortably.

Her son's words and advice--"Let's find a really good nursing home for dad"--helped her acknowledge the best course to take for her husband's well-being. He died within a few months, but she was able to oversee her husband's care at the nursing home and spend much of every day with him.

When we face difficult choices, we are fortunate when we can lean on our children for sound advice. At some point in our lives, the good-counsel balance shifts slightly and our children become our valued advisors. We are able to reap what we've sown.

painting: Picasso, Still Life

 

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."

 

Coronavirus and our grown children: Showing us they care by parenting us

Governor Andrew Cuomo, photo Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo

Our son is on the phone again. "Are you doing Take Out for dinner?" he asks. We are. "Don't go into the restaurant" he tells us. "Have it delivered."

We are looking forward to the short drive to the restaurant. It's what passes for an outing in these times of social-distancing. The dash into the restaurant to pick up the food that's been pre-ordered and pre-paid: We're okay with that. We don't argue with out son. We don't have to. He's not our parent. We'll do as we think best when we click off FaceTime.

But here's the thing. Our friends are experiencing similar "parenting" phone calls, many even more directive. Their sons and daughters are telling them to stay home, quarantine themselves, don't go to the supermarket, abide by the strictest set of isolation rules--rules beyond those suggested for the general shelter-in-place population. Of course, we are all well over 60 so our children are worried about us, as public health officials have suggested they should be. We are staying home--except for daily walks, supermarket runs and the occasional take out dinner--and are healthy with no underlying conditions. So are they, but now they are parenting us.

Should they? The Lt. Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, says that he, at 69 year of age, is willing to, well, take one for the team if it means saving the economy. He suggests we should be willing to do it too. I guess that means we should spend our money on the economy and if we get sick, no ventilators for us. We "oldies" should be willing to cull the senior herd. No sacrifice too great for our kids.

Our kids and our grandkids are sending a different message: They like having their Nanas and PopPops around. New York's Governor Cuomo hit an emotional high note when he told a press conference, "My mother is not expendable and your mother is not expendable."

Thank you, Governor.

Now we're going to go pick up our sushi dinners at the Japanese restaurant where every surface in sight is wiped down and where we customers (and the men and women who deliver for GrubHub, DoorDash and the like) are kept at a safe distance.

For us, picking it up ourselves means one less contact with the package of food. We are staying safe as best we can. We are not Dan Patricks and our kids don't  want us to be.

Thank you for letting us know, kids.

 

Observation: Seth Meyers on parents giving grown kids job advice

 

If his parents were our friends and rambled on about their son's brilliant career, we wouldn't consider them braggarts.  Seth Meyers has been a star on such comedic biggies as Saturday Night Live and the Late Night show and was host of the Golden Globes in 2018.

Maybe his parents don't talk a lot about their son--I have no idea; I don't know them. But Seth Meyers tells us (via comedian Jerry Seinfeld's Netflix series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee) that his dad, whose expertise is finance, used to give him lots of career advice and critique his comedic approach--even when he was on SNL. Over the years, Meyers reported, his dad had some worthwhile  comedic pointers to offer. But sometimes the tips not only came too often but were unhelpful on many levels. 

Here's what Meyers told Seinfeld he told his dad about the advice-giving business, especially as it relates to child-parent relationships:

“I remember saying to him, ‘You’ve done a very good job of being a tough, honest critic with me. I no longer need it. So you have to shift from what you’ve been doing to a completely different role--of support.’”

Meyers and his dad have weathered the advice-giving shoals. You can see how well the family gets along on the above video, one of occasional Late Night segments called The Meyers Family.

 

Parenting Grown Children: Or are they starting to parent us?

 I walk into my daughter's kitchen on a Sunday morning--Paterfamilias and I are visiting for the weekend--and there she is, our daughter working with her daughter (my Grand) on a home work assignment. My daughter is the sounding board, reacting to her daughter's thoughts and questions about an essay our Grand is writing for history class. It's on the Sixth Amendment (Don't bother to look it up. It's the right to a speedy and fair trial).

It's a touching scene--my daughter taking her time to discuss the constitutional issues with her child and encourage her reasoning or redirect her research. It's what parenting is all about.

That afternoon, my daughter and I take a walk. She asks about my blog and a memoir I've been mulling over about my years at Time Inc--my first job right outta college and smack in the middle of the Mad Men years. As she was that morning with her child, my daughter turns into a sounding board--asking questions, offering advice and suggesting avenues of research.

It's touching. Her suggestions are helpful, encouraging and right on point. Is this parenting in reverse? Or should we call it "parenting up?"

We hear a lot about the sandwich generation--how many adult children are caught between taking care of their children and assisting their increasingly frail parents.  We've read Roz Chast's "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant" for an up front and personal account that covers the frustrations of that journey from an only child's perspective. We aren't on that "something" road. We aren't dependent or frail--at least not yet. But our children are full grown, mature and alarmingly wise adults. We can talk as equals--even though there's a hint of a tilt in the balance toward them. They have become as good at advising us as we have been at offering them our best counsel.  We're at a peak moment.

 

Related articles

Parenting Grown Children: We are at our peril when we give advice they didn't ask for

Observations: Calvin Trillin on adult children becoming their parents' counselors

Is there a tipping point where our children become our advisors--or at least the people making reasonable suggestions about how we should deal with some aspects of our lives? We aren't so old and frail that we need them to take over our check books or pay our rent. But some of us may have lost a step or two and the kids seem to notice.

In  "Final Cut," a recent New Yorker piece by Calvin Trillin, Trillin reminisces about the years he, his wife, two daughters and various friends made ultra-amateurish, home movies together--writing scripts that were variations on the same story as the year before, casting the kids and friends against type, hauling out the same old props. All this took place at Trillin's summer home in Nova Scotia. But the more some things stayed the same--the house and its barn, the story line, the props--the more they changed, including the relationship between widowed parent (Trillin) and his now-grown children.

How do we deal with that ever-so-slight shift in our relationship with our grown children, a tiny tilt wherein they begin to act as our advisors and protectors as well.

Here's Trillin's take:

Driving through Maine this July toward the Nova Scotia ferry--past our favorite clam shack, past the outlets where we used to top up the girls' school wardrobes on the way back to New York in the fall--I was mindful of the fact that I wouldn't be making precisely that trip again. I had reached the age at which one's children begin sentences with the phrase "You are no longer allowed..."

...I’m grateful for my daughters’ concern, of course, and I’m grateful that they turned out to be the sort of people who remain good-humored about being referred to by me as “the nursing staff.” After some protracted negotiations with the nursing staff this spring, it was agreed that this would be the last time that I made the long drive from New York to Nova Scotia by myself, instead of taking a plane to Halifax and renting a car. "

Sometimes our kids come up with valued advice, just as we did when we were their parents. It's up to us to see if there's wisdom in their words--and admit when they're right.