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

Parenting College Kids: Does our Internet-connectedness delay their growing up?

For some of us, our kids are adults as soon as they leave our house to live elsewhere. We expect them to be able to manage money and relationships with their peers--to say nothing of us. If they're commuting to college and using our home as a base, we may consider them to be almost grown up. And if they move back home after a stint away at college, we have great expectations that they are adults now--they can vote; they can legally order a drink--even if they may be temporarily dependent on us financially.

Is it as simple as that? The issues of when a child becomes an adult is at the heart of a debate in psychological circles and behind the emergence of the concept of "emerging adulthood" to describe the half dozen or so post-adolescent years. There's a lively discussion about it at this New York Times site.

The discussion includes the role we play in setting our children on the path to adulthood. The professional addressing it is Barbara Hofer, a professor of psychology at Middlebury College and co-author, with Abigail Sullivan Moore, of "The iConnected Parent: Staying Close to Your Kids in College (and Beyond) While Letting Them Grow Up."

Turns out, some of us are doing our darnedest to keep our young adult children 'kids'--that is, youngsters who are dependent on us for more than financial support. "As a college professor who studies adolescents and emerging adults," Hofer writes, "I am particularly concerned that college students are not getting the opportunities they need to grow into autonomous, healthily connected adults when parents are still hyper-involved in their lives." 

The Hofer-Moore  research suggests that college kids are not being encouraged to make their own choices and decisions--to, in fact, make mistakes and figure out how to recover from them. Instead, Hofer writes that she sees parents hovering and helicoptering. "Parents who are using technology (calls, Skype,texting, e-mail, Facebook, etc.) to micromanage lives from afar may be thwarting the timely passage to adulthood." How bad is it? Hofer says one in five students in her study report parents are editing and proofing their papers. Her advice: "College parents can help with the transition by serving as a sounding board rather than being directive, by steering their college-age kids to campus resources for help, by considering long-range goals rather than short-term ones and by giving their “kids” space to grow up."

Back in the day--when my children were college students--Paterfamilias and I couldn't have edited or proofed, even if we wanted to. I hate to date myself, but my children left for college armed with typewriters--tho they did end up with computers by the time they graduated. The Internet wasn't around, to say nothing of WiFi. Not even FedEx. So there's no way we could have been so hands-on or hovering.

The new technologies keep us in touch with our grown children in many wonderful ways--don't get me started on Skype as a wondrous way to visit a grown child or grandchild who lives far away--but we can also take too much advantage of it. Just because we have an iPad doesn't mean we have to use it to keep up-to-the-minute (literally) tabs on our emerging adults. Let them try and fail and pick themselves up and try again. That doesn't mean we have to turn into techno-phobes. They can still text us all about it. 

It may be that the fault, to update a Shakespearean line, is not in our iPads but in ourselves, that we are too tied to the idea of our children as dependents. 

Emerging Adults: Calling a halt to the helicopter parenting

When I was growing up, some of my friends had over-protective parents--parents who marched over to school if a low grade or negative report was sent about their child, parents who labored with their children over the homework or had their kids call home every hour or so if they went out with friends for the evening--and this was well before cell phones. With the haze of hindsight, I saw the hovering come to an end by the time my friends went off to college.

Today we call it helicopter parenting and many colleges report that it doesn't stop when the kids leave home and become college students. Now it's not just phone calls; it's also texting and Facebook and social media check ups. And in-person interference. Parents have even been spotted crashing Freshman meet-ups.

Studies from academia suggest the perils our children face when we hover, helicopter or otherwise over-protect. They may end up unable to make decisions for themselves, to accept responsibility for their lives, to adjust to the demands of the workplace.

A list of the 10 detrimental effects from helicopter parenting--along with notations of the academic studies--are in this blog. Read it and hope you don't see yourself there.

 

Parenting Grown Children: A list of how to do it--or how not to do it.

I came across this to-do (and not-to-do ) list for parenting grown children. It was compiled by a mother (Candelaria Silva) with two grown children in their 30s who are still, Silva reports, "talking to me--unbidden." I was particulaly taken with a birthday card she sent each child on that child's 30th birthday. It was made up of a hand-written list of 30 things she loved and admired about that child. There is something so heart warming about the idea--not just the sending of the list but the sitting down and ruminating over all the positive stuff you love about your child. 

As to the rest of her to-do list, she's not oblivious to the negative. She just doesn't dwell on it. And she obviously parents her grown children with a light touch. Here are some other highlights from her account of what she calls "positive methods I've found to parent adult children."

* Forward articles with pertinent info from newspapers, magazines, and other people’s blogs.
* Send I love you cards and notes regularly.
* Listen – intently as an ally. Just say “uh-huh” every now and then to let them know you’re listening, while taking notes for follow-up info to send.
* Don't hover. (No helicopter parenting here.)
* Don’t try to solve their problems.
* Don’t lecture, ever.
* Don’t remind them of their past experiences and choices.
* Encourage.
* Make the offer to offer advice, a response, a suggestion lightly, almost as an aside.
* Don't hold your breath waiting for them to ask for your advice.
* Count to 20 when prompted to let go with a torrent of worries and cautions.
* A thoughtful letter with suggestions sent by postal mail (that you don't ever check to see if they've received) works.
* Did I mention prayer, meditation, crossing fingers?

 

Helicopter Parents: Forgetting where the line is between them and us

A lawyer friend is a high-powered, type-A attorney who's a very effective attack dog for his clients. The problem is, he sometimes applies that take-no-prisoners approach to his children's lives. Case in point: When his grown daughter had a big report due to the president of her company, he told her she should stop accepting invitations to various outings--she should be isolating herself in her office to get the big job done properly. It's exactly the way he would handle the pressure of an important brief or memo to a client.

Interfering in our children's lives: It's what we do--we can't help it. Sometimes it's egregious; sometimes it's just annoying or a little anecdote our grown children tell their friends about their mom or dad.

Why do we do it? Is it simply helicopter-parenting taken to the next level of our children's maturity? Are we simply being protective of our children? Do we want to ease the way with the benefit of lessons we learned the hard way? Whatever it is, we're on dangerous ground here. We lead our own lives--and just our own. Sometimes we get so invested in our children and their burgeoning careers that we may cross a line and forget who's in charge here. Whose life is it anyway?

On a blog that Theresa Froehlich writes, she notes the real danger of overdoing the pressure on the control button. "Every time I react with the compulsion to rescue my child, I am sending her the message that I don’t think she is capable."

 

 

Helicopter parents: How not to talk to an 18-year-old

A few weeks ago I posted a blog on how to talk to an 8-year-old. It got a lot of response, and I learned a whole litany of questions to use to get a conversation going, questions that were not conversation stoppers. (Case in point:  "How's school?")

It's a little more complicated with an 18-year-old, but here too there are conversation blockers. Stephen Emerson, president of Haverford College and the father of a college-age student, sees these 'stoppers' as "Have you thought about" and "Here's how to do it," and, the most egregious of all, "how about if I call..." He calls these the sins or signs of helicopter parents.

In a recent op-ed piece, he had some sage thoughts for parents who tend to hover over their children, even as those children age out of living in the parental home and of being under their parents' advise-guide-control regime. But he also raises a basic question about hovering: what if helicoptering is, he asks, "our generation's greatest cultural sin, in that it could have lifelong effects on children taught to believe that they are incapable of autonomy?" Helicoptering or hovering--our inability or refusal to allow them to make their own way--could cause our children to develop a sense of inadequacy.

As a parent, he does not see himself growing distant from his daughter as she acquires independence "but that we are realigning. Before, when we were on a clear grown-up/child path, I probably--yes--hovered above. Now I find myself at  her side....as our journeys continue, we parents will see our position relative to our children shift yet again. We will be behind them, and they will be leading us."

And that's an issue many of us struggle with--letting go and letting them take the lead.

 

 

 

 

Refilling the Nest: The unpleasantness of having grown sons home for the summer.

The first surprise is the beer. Carol and I usually have walk-and-talk lunches so asking our waitress for "the coldest beer you have" is not in the order of things. "I need to celebrate," she says by way of explanation. "Thank God they're gone."

"They" are two sons--young adults. The 20-year-old flew off to college the night before. The morning of our lunch, the 23-year-old packed up and left for a training session for his first non-summer job--as an AmeriCorps volunteer at an inner city school in a city about an hour from home. Having them in residence for the summer was exhausting--mostly because of the nagging it took to get them to do anything she wanted them to do. "Anything" covered everything from finding a summer job [neither succeeded], helping with household chores and projects, studying for graduate school exams, filling out forms for the next semester at school--you probably know the list. She found her boys to be "lazy" and spoiled--"They expect us to do everything for them without any strings attached."

Let's put her frustrating summer in perspective. The boys--young men--were 20 -somethings: "Emerging adults," according to this New York Times article by Robin Marantz Henig. "The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course," she writes, "as young people remain un­tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life."

Here are the stats the author uses to back up her point: "Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s"

And that leads to this conclusion: "To some, what we’re seeing is a transient epiphenomenon, the byproduct of cultural and economic forces. To others, the longer road to adulthood signifies something deep, durable and maybe better-suited to our neurological hard-wiring. What we’re seeing, they insist, is the dawning of a new life stage — a stage that all of us need to adjust to."

And when that adjustment takes place in our home--up close and personal all summer long--it leads to a cold beer when the kids--finally--go back to school or move out to test the waters of independent life.

Emerging Adulthood: Are you more indulgent of your 20-something than other parents?

Our post-college graduates are not as grown up as we think we were at that age. That was one of the messages from this New York Times story "What Is It About 20-Somethings? The signs of change: They are marrying later than we did. The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s was 21 for women and 23 for men. By 2009, it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men. 

The article also pointed out that, as we wait for the mature-enough-to-marry stage, we give them more help--practical and advisory--than we got when we were their age. A survey by Karen Fingerman asked parents of 20-something children whether they provided their grown sons or daughters practical assistance (money or help with everyday tasks) in the previous month. In 2008, two out of three parents said they had. Twenty years ago, only one in three parents had. We're also more generous with advice, companionship and an attentive ear: 86 percent of today's parents reported they had provided advice and the like in previous month; less than half did so in 1988.

Then there's data gathered by the Network on Transitions to Adulthood. It finds that American parents--rich, poor and in-between-- give 10 percent of their income to their 18- to 21-year old children.

This is not meant to be a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses moment--for measuring what you do against what others do. But it's interesting to have a date-driven perspective on how we're treating our 20-somethings, compared to the way our parents treated us--on average.

Helping Hands: A 20-Something moves out and on

Here's what Carol did last week for her son, who is 23 and moving out of her house to an apartment in another city. She paid the first month's rent and the security deposit; gathered 'extra" stuff from  her kitchen to set up his kitchen; bought him a bathroom plunger ("He doesn't even know how much he'll need that"), curtain rods and curtains, a bed and new clothes ["He has to look like a grown up, not a college kid."].

Here's what she says her son, who graduated from college in June, did on his own: Got a job starting in September with a volunteer service agency. Found the 4-bedroom townhouse rental ("I wish I'd been there to help with that. It's too far from the place where he'll be working.") and found three roommates who will be working for the same volunteer agency as he is.

Here's what he didn't do this summer that his mother thought he should do: Get a summer job. Study and take the GREs in preparation for applying to graduate school. Contact the roommates to coordinate what items--kitchen supplies, furniture--they would bring. Contact the utility company and persuade them to drop the security deposit--since the new tenants would be doing volunteer work. Show some excitement and enthusiasm for the next phase of his life.

Here's what Carol had to say at lunch, a few hours after this much-loved eldest son drove off to start his new life: "I need a drink to celebrate. Thank God he's gone."

The relief came from no longer having to nag him--and from no longer having to shoulder the responsibility for getting him set up and ready to go to work at his first real [9-5] job. There was also a little bit of rage, too. "When I was his age, I moved to my own apartment and no one helped me. I had to take care of everything all by myself."

So, I ask her, what would have happened if her son had to manage the move all by himself?

"Oh he would have been fine," she tells me. "But I would have been a basket case."

Case closed on why we hover and helicopter our adult children--children who are old enough to make a few mistakes on their own.

But here's some perspective on what we're dealing with when we're nurturing a 20-something toward independence. According to a recent New York Times article by Robin Marantz Henig, "What Is It About 20-Somethings," the 20s can be viewed--and are viewed by a growing movement in psychology circles--as a distinct life stage called "emerging adulthood." This stage, says Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a psychology professor at Clark University, is marked by, among other things, the need for more education to survive in an information-based economy and fewer entry level jobs even after all that schooling. The emerging adulthood's psychological profile is marked by identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between and "a sense of possibilities."

The piece, which explains how 'adolescence" came to be considered a stage of development and how 'emerging adulthood' is taking a similar path, is must-reading for anyone who is dealing with, has dealt with or is about to deal with a 20-something. Bottom line: Maybe they aren't ready to do what we did at their age.

Timing a Visit: How long should a visit to grownchildren and their families be?

Sometimes I wonder why I am so resistant to longer visits with my children [both of whom live in other cities]. I consider myself the master of the Blitzkrieg visit--in on a Saturday morning; out by Sunday evening, with lots of hugs, kisses, and grabbed conversations in between. You're gone before anyone gets on anyone's nerves.

But now, Alpha Daughter has moved to another country for a year--6 time zones away. I'll be going on my first visit there in a few weeks but clearly, the pure Blitzkrieg is out of the question. Nonetheless, I have a variation in mind: in for 2 or 3 days, off to another country to travel and tour, back for another 2 or 3 day visit, then home. I've shared the plan with my daughter--who was home with her child for a two-week visit--and she raised questions about it.  Why, she asked, do I prefer the short visit? After all, she pointed out, a longer one--and we have just been through this very long one successfully [no one got seriously disagreeable]--gives you a chance to get pulled into the daily rhythms of her family, to experience her child in a more personal way and gain greater understanding of their lives, as well as give you more opportunities for meaningful conversations.

What she says was certainly true of our two-week visit. So I think seriously about my short-visit preference. The only honest answer I can come up with is that my mother used to come to visit me for three weeks at a time.  She was intrusive and tried to impose her will on everything from how the house should be cleaned to how my children should be disciplined. How I hated those visits. I had a backache, stomach pain and hives by the time she left. The only plus side to the visits was the euphoria of relief when she left. So I've gone in the opposite direction. But my daughter's question makes me wonder if I'm so busy NOT being my mother that I'm giving up on some of the joys of parenting adult children and getting to know my grandchildren for better and occasionally worse.

Helicopter landings: Overprotecting adult children does not pay off

There's an interesting discussion on the perils and pitfalls of helicopter parenting--of the sour fruits parents reap when they don't let their grown children grow up and take care of themselves--at this web site. While many of us think of the moms as the overprotective parent, this is a story about a dad who does too much.
It reminds me of a dad I know who was having trouble letting go of a 29-year-old daughter. "I know she has to take off the water wings," he said, "but what if I'm not in the water to catch her."

here's a grab from the entry on jimsjourney.wordpress.com:
"His children were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, but they didn’t have to do it.

I remember one day in particular that the man was more than a bit irritated; he had to go home and change the oil in his forty-year-old son’s car. On further questioning, the man revealed the true reason for his anger… the oil should have been changed weeks earlier.

The bottom line is that his children were only partially to blame. On the surface, it appeared they were taking advantage of Daddy. In truth, Daddy had a personality that needed to be needed."