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

Covid Realities: The new normal for caring for our kids when they get sick.

Several years ago when my daughter lived clear across the country, she called late one evening. She was sick and so was her husband and the baby--my year-old granddaughter. "I wish you lived next door," she said in a dispirited, sick-person voice. I was on a plane the next morning, It's what we do if we can, and I could. I arrived to make soup. straighten the house but mostly take care of my baby Grand so her parents could get some rest.

Fast forward to last week. My son, daughter-in-law and their daughter--my 14-year old granddaughter--were all sick. My daughter-in-law was bedridden with an excruciating headache; my Grand had a fever and was congested; my son had what he thought was a bad cold. They tested and all of them were positive for Covid.

I did not hop on a plane.

This is the new reality. There are times when our grown children need us--or we may think they need our ministering care.  But we can't or shouldn't race to their side. It isn't just Covid that keeps us away--though that's a significant part. In ways that the pandemic accelerated, the home care we once provided has been supplanted by apps. Prescriptions can be delivered; so can food--prepared or otherwise. Friends and neighbors can be texted and asked to drop things off or run errands. As to taking care of my Grand: A 14-year-old is not a toddler; it's unlikely she would welcome an intrusion by granny and gramps even if it came in the form of chicken soup. She took care of herself. She had her laptop to pass the feverish hours and books from me for her Kindle.

I've had to re-think the ways in which I can be helpful or useful to my grown children if they become ill. When my husband and I were sick with Covid at the very beginning of the pandemic, my son and daughter checked in on us several times a day and ordered stuff to be delivered to us. We felt cared for. That, I remind myself, is the way things are now. I called and texted my son and his family; I ordered stuff for them. But I did not travel anywhere. As our doctor told my kids when we had Covid and they wanted to drive here to oversee our care, "All you can do if you come here," she said, "is get Covid."

They stayed home then. We stayed put now. It's the new normal.

painting: "Repose" by John Singer Sargeant

 

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

Compassion for our adult kids who are parenting in today's world

When I first became a parent, my mother would chime in with kid-raising tips. Some of it was helpful; some annoying but for the most part there was little in her experience of raising my brother and myself to clue her in on how to deal with such modern-day (modern for my generation) issues as Saturday morning cartoons on TV and the ads that accompanied them.

I am my mother now. My Saturday morning TV issue pales compared to what my adult children have been dealing with in raising their children: Limiting screen time and keeping them safe from the Internet's pernicious access to pornographic, violent or misinformed material. The pandemic came along and made everything worse. And now comes an unpredictable economy at a time where school shootings aren't rare and classrooms are political battlegrounds. Even if my children wanted my advice on these issues (they haven't asked), I would have no previous experience from which to draw.

"There's almost not a word to express the stress parents are under right now. 'Overwhelmed' doesn't cut it. It's beyond anything we've ever experienced." This is what the founder of the Parent Coaching Institute told a reporter at an Axios newsletter.

The newsletter takes note of the specifics of what may be overwhelming the parents of our grandchildren (Click on the embedded links for more details):

The rising cost of gas, groceries and other daily expenses. These top the list of stressors, according to a March poll

Children have questions about the world's wars.

Sadness about the relationships and opportunities the pandemic is robbing from them.

Fear and anger about the planet warming.

COVID

Clashes over teaching about racism and U.S. history

A renewed debate over gun control

Having issues that affect kids and parents at the center of American politics.

If there is a silver lining, Axios tells us, it's that "hard times can be opportunities to strengthen relationships." That's backed up by census data that reports that parents say they've become closer to their children during COVID lockdowns and that they are eating more meals together; parents of younger children say they are reading to their kids more often.

All of which makes me feel that the pillars of our old-fashioned age of parenting--bedtime stories as a nightly ritual; dinnertime together as a daily tradition--are relevant. Plus, we still have one piece of timeless advice worth offering our stressed children: Take care of yourself. Your children need you rested and ready--or at least somewhere close to that.

Painting: Ivan Canu, Ferryman

Zipped Lips: Are we still in charge of correcting a social faux pas?

When our kids were young and living under our roof, if they were impolite or said something inappropriate to their grandmother, we stepped up to point out (kindly, of course!) a more polite way to do or say something. But now that they are adults, is it still our job? Are we still in the social-correction business? Here's why I'm thinking about this:

A friend, let's call her C, was grousing about her son (let's call him D) who's 34, married and dad to a toddler. He was invited to an old friend's wedding--a friend from childhood whom D sees only occasionally but who came to D's wedding three years ago. Now the friend is getting married in his bride's hometown. The pandemic being a disrupter, weddings may come with all kinds of new limits and adjustments. In this case, spouses were not invited to the wedding. Going to the wedding would mean that D had to fly to a city one time zone away and be there for the weekend while his wife stayed home with the baby.

D opted not to go. He told his mom that his wife had nixed the idea.

C was livid. The wife being the nixer was only part of it. The groom's mom was C's old friend and had mentioned to C that her son had been disappointed that D was not at the wedding.  So C wrote her son an email telling him he should have gone to the wedding, that his old friend had come to his wedding, that she and the grandpop would have helped D's wife with the baby while D was away.

Although her son has not responded, C has no second thoughts about shooting off the email. She tells me, "I'm still his mother and it is still my job to call him out when he does something wrong. No one else will do it."

Is she right?

painting: William Chase, "A Friendly Call"

 

Holidays and Adult Children: The seven stages of Thanksgiving traditions

We are on the cusp of setting a totally new tradition for our family's Thanksgiving. It's time. We are no longer young parents. Our kids are middle-aged adults; they have children who are young adults. Extended family members are growing frail and need special attention.

I, who usually embrace change, don't like the changes that are coming our way. Yet, when I look back and see how our family's Thanksgiving holiday traditions have morphed, I take comfort in life's cyclical pattern. Like other families, ours has no stasis; the balanced becomes unbalanced.

We move through our Thanksgiving customs as we move through life--in stages. My family and I have moved through seven of them. Other family's particulars are inevitably different from mine, but for all of us, there are make-overs and take-overs over the years.

Stage 1: Loosey Goosey:  Our children are very young. We have moved to a city 4-hours away from where we grew up and where our parents live.  We keep the holiday simple and small--as small as the little townhouse we are renting. Two pre-school children less than two years apart in age focus our minds on day-to-day needs rather than elaborate holiday meals.

Stage 2: Friends and Family:  When we move to a bigger house and our children are in the prime of their primary school years, we have Thanksgiving dinners with another family. We share the cooking and meal planning, scanning our memory banks to remember which surprising new dish from the previous year our families liked and which should never ever be repeated. Thanksgiving dinner is always at our house: They have dogs; we have allergies.

Stage 3: New Attachments: Our kids leave for college, start independent lives and put down roots in other cities. They form romantic attachments, some of whom appear at Thanksgiving dinner. Attachments became spouses and now Thanksgiving is more than a meal. It is a weekend during which the refrigerator has to be stocked not just for a turkey dinner but for three meals a day and additional guests. The house expands to accommodate bigger beds and pillows as well as more seats at the dining room table.

Stage 4: New Beginnings:  Grandchildren transform our Thanksgiving get-togethers into a wild weekend at our house. Blow-up beds and portable cribs accommodate sleeping babies and toddlers. Those in charge of the kitchen have to keep straight our grandchildren's sipping and eating patterns and what their parents permit them to have and what is verbotten--for one family but not necessarily the other. There are multiple trips to airports to pick up and drop off a son and his family and a daughter and hers. By Sunday, we are as flat on our backs as the now-deflated blow-up beds.

Stage 5: Passing the Baton:  Our children's families grow bigger. It makes more sense for the two of us--the parents/grandparents--to travel to them than to have eight children/grandchildren moving through airports and highways to arrive at our house for Thanksgiving. Our son and daughter-in-law who have the largest family and house take on the mantel of hosting Thanksgiving. Our routine now is: We arrive two days in advance to help--and to avoid the height of airport congestion. We assist in the kitchen, run errands and set tables but we are no longer in charge.

Stage 6: Zoom. The pandemic is a game changer. No one is going anywhere. No hugs. No sneaks into the kitchen to pre-taste a side dish. No idle chit-chat. We make do with Zoom. Our son emcees the family get-together with photos from the past and a fun quiz about what's happening in those photos, i.e. why have the parents (that's us) let their 10-year-old daughter wear a sweater advertising Joe Camel? Fun stuff. But after an hour, we click off and the goodwill of being together online dissipates. Is Zoom or a hybrid mode going to be the future for family get-togethers?

Stage 7: Frailties: We are negotiating Thanksgiving in a post-pandemic world. It is also a world in which time has been marching on. Grandchildren are taking a gap year abroad.  Elderly relatives who live alone in other cities are growing increasingly frail and in need of attention, especially during the holidays. We, the parents/grandparents, are not as spry as we once were. We will make the trip north this year but our three families will split up in order to accommodate the elderly cousin who is alone. It's not just the cousin who's feeling his age. Our children have already raised the question of whether they should come to us. We could, they suggest, rely on store-prepared turkeys and sides instead of cooking a meal for ten or more.

We are on the cusp of something completely different--and not completely welcome.

painting: Norman Rockwell

 

 

Post Pandemic Issues: Can we close our helping hand to our non-vaxxed kids

The country is riven by the vaccinated versus anti-vaxxers. Infection rates are escalating among the unvaccinated. That's allowing new, virulent variants to thrive, threatening our health and the return to normal, whatever that may be.

What happens when the unvaxxed hits home, when it's not the rogue uncle or distant cousin but your adult child who won't get a shot?

This touchy issue popped up in Kwame Anthony Appiah's New York Times column The Ethicist. The father of an unvaxxed son wrote in with that quandary plus a further complication. Until the son gets a job, the dad is paying his son's share of the rent on an apartment the son shares with his girlfriend. But the son's job search is complicated by his reluctance to get vaccinated. The reader posed this argument and question:

I told him that future employers would most likely insist on his getting vaccinated, and that his unvaccinated state would have financial implications by delaying his start date and income until he could get fully vaccinated. I said that his refusal to get the shot would cost money and that I wasn’t sure I would continue to support him during that gap period between accepting a job and starting work. He became upset, maintaining that he was already compromising by agreeing to become vaccinated if a job required it and that my withholding support was unfair, especially given his willingness to compromise by getting the shot.

Who’s right here? 

Appiah covered the importance of getting vaccinated and then zeroed in on the issue of whether the father, who's nearing retirement and feeling a financial pinch, is right to cut off financial aid if his son refuses to get vaccinated.

Vaccination aside,  Appiah made a point that will resonate with all of us who offer our grown children financial support of any kind. 

If he’s willing to accept an employer’s terms, he should be willing to accept his parental benefactor’s. After all, a parent isn’t generally obliged to provide financial support to an adult child.

Given that you have allowed him to depend upon your generosity, however, you would do well to withdraw that support gently, or with ample advance warning. I know it seems paradoxical to say that a gift can entail an obligation. But in all sorts of circumstances, it can. Suppose your tractor-owning neighbor makes a habit of clearing your driveway every time you’re snowed in. Because of her generosity, you don’t make alternative arrangements. If she suddenly has a change of heart, you’re worse off after the next blizzard than you would otherwise be. That doesn’t bind her to a lifetime of plowing your driveway; it does mean she owes you notice.

In the end, though, respecting people’s agency doesn’t mean you have to underwrite their every mistaken belief. Your son is free to reject your support if he wants to persist in error.

Rebalancing Acts: Following our kids' cultural and health leads

During the pandemic lockdown many of us experienced a strange shift in the balance between us and our grown kids: Instead of our previous parental controls, they were "ordering" us around--telling us we had to stay home, stop going out to buy groceries and order take-out food delivered.

It came, of course, from an overabundance of care that we were in the over-60 group that was prone to deadly Covid attacks.

Well, the pandemic is mostly over. We're vaccinated now. We're able to shop at supermarkets without our masks on--and without admonitions from our children. But as the fog of the pandemic clears, there's still some re-balancing going on. These are of a lower level than the "pandemic orders." And yet, the old order changeth yielding place to the new.

One mom tells me that for most of her daughter's high school years, the daughter borrowed her mom's clothes--appropriated might be a better word. Now her young adult daughter sheds her clothes in a mini-moment of style. The mom picks up the discards and is now wearing them. It almost never happens that the daughter wants to be seen in her mom's sweaters.

Then there's the dad who loved to introduce his pre-teen son and daughters to a beloved book or watch his favorite old movies with them. Now that they're young adults, they are introducing him to music he never heard before, to dance crazes that are part of their world and to poets with whom he is totally unfamiliar. He's happy to learn all about the new world but he's rarely the one who comes up with cultural touchstones anymore.

Among those of us who have kids older than the young adult stage, we may be surprised at how influential their voice can be. A friend whose husband had balance problems but refused to use a cane found the adult daughters sending their dad a handsomely carved, wooden, walking stick. It was better looking than the sensible cane his wife was pushing. And, because it came from his kids, somehow he found it more acceptable. A rebalancing act.

painting: Readers by Theresa Bernstein

Post Pandemic Parenting: Compassion for the anxieties our kids may be experiencing

The pandemic was difficult for everyone. As parents of grown children, some of us couldn't see our kids or grandkids--no hugs, no in-person visits. Infants and toddlers had no "village" to support them or playdates to socialize them. School-age kids--well, the school year was a disaster for many of them. Our grown kids, especially the twenty-somethings, also suffered. Whether they moved back home with us or toughed it out with a roommate or spouse, the isolation of the shut-down disrupted their friendships and romantic relationships as well as their work life. Many of them lost what one clinical social worker calls "the rhythm of living."

Here's what some recent findings show:

--43.6 percent of adults 18 to 29 self-reported that they experienced symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder in the previous seven days between May 26 and June 7, according to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention’s Household Pulse Survey

--34 percent of those 18 to 23 said their mental health has worsened compared with before the pandemic, according to the  2020 Stress in America survey by the American Psychological Association. That number is higher than any other generation.

All of which suggests we may want to offer our adult kids a little extra measure of compassion. This NYTimes article sets out some effective strategies for helping our kids find help if they're struggling.

Avoid lecturing. It comes across as criticism and may shut down the lines of communication. "Start by asking questions that help parents understand how the young adult is hurting, with language like: “How’s your mood these days? You’re doing so much.”

Don't try to solve their problems. Instead, let them know you've heard what they've said. For instance, they might say they get yelled at by their supervisor. Tell them you're sorry they're experiencing that. That might open the door to suggesting they get help, but if it doesn't, let them know you would be happy to partner with them in thinking about possible solutions.

Normalize the situation. Tell your child that many people struggle with their mental health and that it often helps to talk to someone about how they’re feeling. “Let them know that you will be with them every step of the way” and help them get to a better place."

Normalize a decision to get help. That is, help them see that treating mental health is just like treating a physical ailment. "Conveying the message that mental health issues are similarly treatable provides a 'sense of hope.' ”

 

painting: Picasso. Femme au cafe

 

---

 

Post Pandemic Parenting: Keeping our families safe from hate crimes

We have come through (are still in) harrowing times--not just the pandemic but partisan divides and a Fascist-like call-out of one group or another. It isn't just Twitter storms or Facebook harangues. As any of us who follow the news know, violence against people from various ethnic or religious groups is on the rise here.

I bring this up now because some of us have been sheltering our grown children during the pandemic--colleges went virtual; so did jobs. Many of our kids who had been living independently came home. Now, with vaccinations making colleges and workplaces safe again, our grown children have been emptying or re-emptying the nest. Those of college age will be leaving by September.

We all worry about our children's safety as they venture out into the world, but what do we do if our kids fall into any of the groups currently under attack by...I'm a little stuck for a word here; I'll go with the Intolerant and Ignorant.

A recent NYTimes piece on nest-emptying offered some advice about intra-family communication in dangerous times. With violence against Asians currently front and enter in the news, the article addressed their concerns in particular. 

Here's the relevant excerpt from the article:   

Even as vaccinations make the risk of the coronavirus less dire, some families have other reasons to fear for each other’s safety. Ms. Tabag [Kari Tabag, a licensed clinical social worker and professor at Adelphi University] works with several Asian families and says that, in the wake of Asian hate crimes, parents are worried that they can’t protect their children. They used to end conversations with, “I love you. Take care,” she said. “Now it’s ‘Stay safe.’” At the same time, some children she works with fear they can’t be there to protect their parents.

Ms. Tabag said that filial piety is ingrained in Asian children, who are expected to listen, follow directives and not speak back to parents and elders. She believes open communication between parents and children involving concerns about acts of hatred is important. “Asian parents need to speak with their children and disclose their concerns for their safety. This gives the green light for children to open up to their parents and voice their concerns about their parent’s safety.”

photo credit: Maia Lemov