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

Observation: Living within the limits of being a mother-in-law

I was lucky. My husband didn't get along with his mother but I did. She didn't interfere (as my mother did) and, unlike most women of her generation (my mother, again) she never had a negative word to say about my pursuit of a career.  Not that I sought her out as a confidant. But neither did I see her as an enemy or rival--or someone to be avoided. I was fortunate and so, I guess, was she.

What happens when we're not so lucky? When our child's chosen life partner doesn't like us--or makes themselves scarce whenever we appear at the door. Or sets limits on visiting hours. Or keeps us at a distance in myriad ways small and large.

This was an issue for a Carolyn Hax reader who wrote that his wife, who had had a challenging relationship with his parents (who were difficult and needed to be kept at a distance) was now struggling with boundaries set by their son and his wife. More specifically, as the reader/writer put it, the young couple were "limiting contact, contacting her on their schedule, etc. My wife ... complains incessantly to me that she does not hear from our son and daughter-in-law as often as she’d like, which would be multiple times a day. We do hear from them every week or so."

Hax beat right to the heart of the matter. What was past with the reader's parents was past. Today is what matters. Yes, the reader and his wife may feel hurt that the son and his wife don't call as often as they (the parents) would like--but they call. Maybe contact with the couple is circumscribed. But--and here Hax lays it on the line--it's up to the parents to comply with limits their adult children set. As Hax put it:

If you are on the cold side of a boundary, then there’s no better argument than to Back! Off! ....Respect for the couple’s space is the only answer.

credit: L. Saint Fleurant, Mother and Children

(I'll be addressing this issue again, in particular when it goes from the relatively benign (our adult child doesn't call often enough) to the truly malignant (our adult child no longer speaks to us). Psychologist Joshua Coleman has a book on the topic, "Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict.”  I'll  sum up some of his points, but I can tell you--reader alert--that we the parents don't get an easy pass when it comes to the healing part.)

 

 

 

Tracking Apps: Young adults need to grow into independence. Tracking them blocks that.

"Almost all my friends track their college-age kids." This is my daughter-in-law speaking, though she is not among the trackers. She lives in a medium-size city far from the perils of major urban hubs. But her fellow parents, she says, want the reassurance that their young adult child arrived safely at wherever it is they are going--whether they are traveling by bike, a friend's car or an Uber, whether they are away at college or in a workplace.

A few posts ago, I wrote about a mom who was worried about whether she should still be tracking her college-age kids (by air tags, as opposed to smartphone app to which her children objected); she had a friend who was still tracking her married 24-year-old daughter.

I am of a generation that is less familiar with and less attuned to smartphone's abilities to keep tabs on one another. So I was stunned to hear about all this tracking, which is why I blogged about it, why I mentioned it to my daughter-in-law and why her answer was equally surprising. Then I came across an issue of Axios, a newsletter that is usually about politics. This time it was about "parents' unprecedented ability to keep tabs on their kids."

How many parents do it? A lot. A survey by a cybersecurity company (Malwarebytes) found that 84% of U.S. parents use some form of tracking to monitor their kids.  One of the most popular apps lets parents know when their child walks into a friend's house, whether they're driving too fast and a complete history of their movements over a weekend. Some apps let parents of college-age kids know whether their child made it to their math class.

A bit of tracking may be useful with young children and even teens, but for young adults going to college or starting off life outside the parental home, leaving is a major step toward independence. By tracking the minutia of our adult children's daily lives we're taking that away, or as Axios put it, "the opportunity to make mistakes, skip  class and feel the repercussions and figure it out for themselves."

I asked a 22-year-old about the tracking of young adult kids. "One needs to learn self-regulatory skills and you aren't going to if your parents are monitoring you all the time,"  she told me, adding, "If you can't get to class without your mom checking on you, you'll never want to go to class and never know how to make yourself do something."

I'll end with the Axios newsletter's concluding quote:

"You're providing your child with training wheels. They're going to have to come off."

painting: "Red Dance," Kenneth Young

The App World: Should we be tracking our grown children?

Am I showing my age and my app ignorance? Well, I certainly felt the former and learned a lot about the latter from a Carolyn Hax column. The column dealt with a reader's query about tracking her young adult children--children who are in college and no longer living at home.

The parent wrote that "EVERY single one [of her friends] still tracks their 'kids'! Including one with a married 24-year-old daughter."

The tracking is done via a phone app and/or by airtags (I had to look it up; in case you do too, they're the tags you can use to track where your keys, laptop or lost airline luggage are hiding.) The Hax correspondent writes that when her oldest child (now 20 years old) went to college, "we took the app off their phone but could see where they were through AirTag/item trackers." Now the 18-year-old wants their phone to be tracker-free. The parent's question for Hax:

"I rationally agree and would have been horrified to be “tracked” in college by my parents. Am I in a bubble with my other midlife anxious friends who are parents of newly launched adults? I will deal with getting rid of the app, but I wonder if we are outliers with this technology."

Readers, am I the only one shocked by this tracking of adult children, of being able to see where they are every minute, of this intrusion on their independence and privacy?

Evidently not. So was Hax. The opening sentence of her answer was this:

I don’t care whether you are outliers with this technology. Or inliers, downliers or fierypantsliars. Stop tracking your kids. It encourages more anxiety than it eases, at the cost of their independence and your trust in one another. And yourselves.

She also makes this important point that underlies almost everything we do vis-a-vis parenting our children:

The part of child rearing where you control your kids starts ending in utero and ends-ends when they’re 18. It just does. Your job thereafter is all relationship, which is equally at your and your kids’ discretion.

Hax summed up her long answer (which tackled the role the reader's anxieties play) with this bit of perspective:

Yay to trackers for wilderness adventurers, solo travelers, at-risk minors, people with developmental, cognitive, memory issues that make wandering a serious risk. When trackers help families in hard circumstances, great.

But a typical launch isn’t a hard circumstance. It’s life. So please stop grasping for access on an it-won’t-help-to-know basis. You all will be fine, or won’t, and it 99-point-whatever won’t hinge on this.

Hax is a sensitive writer attuned to her audience. I picked up a similar sentiment on an impersonal  Q/A post about tracking apps.  It, too, said all there is to say about tracking our adult kids.

AirTags Can Negatively Affect Parent-Child Relationship

Things can also get tricky when it comes to older kids and teens. While it can reduce your anxiety as a parent, tracking without consent can erode trust.

painting: Emma Amos, Self Portrait

 

Grandparenting: Do our kids want our advice about how to raise their kids?

The question does not call for a "man bites dog" answer. Most of our adult children who are raising their own children do not want to be bombarded with our parenting advice. Not because our advice has no value. It's because they no longer want to be parented. They're the parents now! They'll ask if they have a question.

That said, I was struck by an advice column from Sahaj Kaur Kohli. She's a therapist who focuses on people with immigrant parents and on setting boundaries with parents. Here's what she told one reader who wrote about a parent who insisted on giving advice about how she, the adult daughter, was raising her child.

I'm offering up this commentary in that it may be the other side of the coin for those of us who complain to advice columnists--and to our friends--that our children are pushing us away, that they are limiting visits or not taking our phone calls. It's about how it feels to be on the other side of the relationship where boundaries are not observed or respected. With that in mind, here's an edited version of Sahaj's advice to a young woman (she signs herself "resisting daughter") with a parent second-guessing the way she and her partner are raising their child. She wants to stay connected to her parents but does not want to raise her children the way her parents raised her.

.... It doesn’t matter if you’re an independent adult, and it certainly doesn’t matter if you’re a parent yourself. To your mom, you’re the child and she’s the adult. She raised you, and you turned out fine. She has been through it, so she knows better. ...

This dynamic is incredibly hard to change especially when your mom may wrap her identity around her role as your parent.

So what's the solution Sahaj offers?

.... You may not be able to change your mom, but you can change how you respond and engage with her, and manage how her behavior affects you.

....Instead of trying to get her to agree with all of your choices, you can focus on how long you visit her, or how you respond and engage with her — especially because your kids are likely observing this dynamic, too.

You don’t have to agree with your mom, or do everything she says, to maintain a relationship with her. Instead, consider what you are willing to compromise on and what you are no longer willing to tolerate to help you focus on what is important to you.

Next Post: What we can do if our adult children are pushing us away.

painting: Tryptich by Oliver Lee Jackson.

Empty Nesting: The college dropoff blues

The college dropoff (freshman year version in particular) is a rite of passage as tearful as sending our firstborn to kindergarten and laden with plenty of meaning. Our kids are transitioning from the cosseted safety of home to the independence of young adult life. We're transitioning from controlling parents to advisory ones. In the moment of that dropoff, it's all about luggage and towels and how to find the dorm.  Once we leave the campus it's all about their new life and ours.

In 2013, Michael Gerson, a writer for the Washington Post who passed away a few years ago, penned the feelings that coursed through him as he anticipated dropping off his son at college. Here's an excerpt but you can tear up through the whole thing here.

An education expert once told me that among the greatest fears of college students is they won’t have a room at home to return to. They want to keep a beachhead in their former life.

But with due respect to my son’s feelings, I have the worse of it. I know something he doesn’t — not quite a secret, but incomprehensible to the young. He is experiencing the adjustments that come with beginnings. His life is starting for real. I have begun the long letting go. Put another way: He has a wonderful future in which my part naturally diminishes. I have no possible future that is better without him close.

There is no use brooding about it. I’m sure my father realized it at a similar moment. And I certainly didn’t notice or empathize. At first, he was a giant who held my hand and filled my sky. Then a middle-aged man who paid my bills. Now, decades after his passing, a much-loved shadow. But I can remember the last time I hugged him in the front hallway of his home, where I always had a room. It is a memory of warmth. I can only hope to leave my son the same.

painting: Lovis Corinth

Observation: Philip Galanes on our role as parents.

When our children were young we were on the frontlines: Hyper-vigilant when it came to keeping them safe and confrontational when we feared others posed a threat. Even as our children grow into young adults, we have our super-protective swords at the ready.

But it's time to back off. At least that's what Philip Galanes in his Social Qs column advised a distraught mother. The column's headline and deck spells out her dilemma:

My Ex Risked Our Daughter’s Health for … a Photo Op?

A reader asks for permission to scold her former husband (and his current wife).

Galanes did not go down the scold road. (The dad behaved badly: He took his asthmatic daughter on a vigorous hiking vacation without telling her that's where they were going; the daughter became ill.) What Galanes advised the mom applies not only to her situation but is a reminder to all of us:

Your role is to prepare your daughter for the world, not to fight her battles for her.

 

 

Empty Nest: Letting Go of our college kids.

Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and for some parents, that means more than turkey: The freshman they dropped off at college just a few months ago will be returning home for a few days. Probably for the first time since they left in September.  My experience with this happened years ago and yet I still remember the poignancy of that "first Thanksgiving." How stunning and joyful it was to be reunited with our eldest child and to have her sleeping in her room on the third floor again. I also remember how excited she was to be off to visit her friends. A reminder, if we needed one, of how our adult children are moving away from us.

More recently, Kelly Corrigan  wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times of the emotional experience of dropping off her daughter at college and of her excruciating awareness of the split path. Corrigan tells us that before she drove her child to campus she (and all other parents of incoming freshmen at her daughter's college) received an email from the campus psychologist. The message: limit contact with your child, including texts; this is a time for your child to "individuate and separate."

In grappling with this dictum--and coming to terms with her sudden awareness that she doesn't "own" her child--Corrigan writes that even though shegave birth to her child and she could trace many of her daughter's features to parents and grandparents, "I didn't have any ownership over her. Wherever she came out of and whomever she looked like and however much she needed from me, she didn't belong to me."

Corrigan turns to psychologists to square this realization. Here is what she says she learned from Ariel Trost about "letting go":

“If we can let go of this notion of ownership and see us as our own and them as their own, it can create a space to marvel,” she said. “Ownership is not closeness.”

Borrowing from Buddhism, Dr. Trost suggested aiming for a compassionate detachment. Not detachment from our children but from the outcome of who they are becoming. “We are working toward a place where we can enjoy each other,” she said.

painting: The Ferryman, Ivan Canu

 

Grown Children and Their Romantic Partners: Are we allowed to express an opinion?

As our young adult children move through their twenties and onward, chances are they've had at least one romantic relationship. And chances are that we the parents have met at least one of those romantic partners.  I look back at those years when my children were part of the dating scene (it was a while ago; my children now have children who have romantic partners) and remember that not everyone they dated (am I dating myself by using that word?) was my cup of tea. I found most of them wanting in one way or another.

At a time when our children are ranging far from home and tribe to make friends and meet possible mates, it's not surprising that they came home with people we weren't comfortable with, disliked or found inappropriate. When that person looms as a possible life partner, is it okay for us to share our misgivings with our child? When we don't like their choice, is it okay to say something?

The quick answer--and almost every advice column I checked backs me up on this--is no. The only exception is if the relationship is abusive--physically or emotionally.

But what if we see trouble ahead for a variety of reasons--the person seems adrift or is too young or too old for our child.

Here's what Amy Dickinson had to say to a mom whose daughter was in a serious relationship with a man 17 years her senior.  "I am wondering," the mom wrote, "whether I'm negligent as her mother by not pointing out the possible challenges, should this relationship continue."

Amy's answer is one for all of us:

Unless there are mitigating circumstances, which you don't mention (he is married, was married, has children or a previous unhealthy history with relationships), you must trust that your daughter will make her own way, as we all must.

A child's job is to grow up. A parent's job is to let them.

A friend of mine found an indirect way to make his concerns known. He not only disliked the man her daughter was seeing, he also found him inappropriate. He and his wife made it a point to encourage their daughter to bring him to all family events; they invited the couple out to dinner often. "We wanted her to see how poorly he fit in with that part of her life that was her family," my friend says. It worked. The daughter broke up with that partner.

The Pain of Parting: Lessons in Letting Go

Our son sent his oldest child back to college and his oldest daughter off to Roma for a gap year of study abroad. He still has one child at home but his heart is aching. As his two eldest headed off, he managed, he tells me, not to tear up in front of them.

He also tells me he has come to appreciate how we did the same for him and his sister. "I had no idea," he says, "how hard it is and how hard it must have been for you and dad." I am not violating his privacy when I repeat the following words since he posted this wry take on his Facebook page: "Two of my three kids are leaving in the next few days, starting this morning. If I'd known how hard their leaving was going to be, I never would have encouraged all of this "go to college" business when they were little."

On the morning after his daughter flew off to Rome, he called to let me know she had landed safely, made her way to the appartamento she and two other students had rented, registered at the school where she would be taking classes and bought supplies at a nearby grocery store. Dinner will be ramen and nectarines. The other girls will not arrive for another day or two. My Grand and her parents were texting every step along the way--from airport landing to getting a sim card to figuring out the tricky lock on the appartamento door. She did all this with only 4-weeks worth of Duolingo Italian stuffed into her brain. My son is so proud of her for the confident way she figured things out and so happy that she is embarking on this avventura.  But he is heart-heavy. She is now so far away. He misses her.

He wanted to know how we managed to keep the pain of parting from him and his sister. I reminded him that when he left home for college, there was no Internet, no texting, no email. There was only a landline and the mailbox. We couldn't have shared the immediacy of our sadness even if we had been inclined to--which we weren't. Like him today, we did not want to weigh him down with our blues. We only let him see the pleasure we were taking in his launch.

So excuse me while I deliver pats on our own backs. We were able to show our children how to let go gracefully. It wasn't intentional and it may not seem like much. But evidently, it was.

painting: Monet. Bridge at Argenteuil

 

Observation: Carolyn Hax on what to do if a grown child pushes you away.

The comforting way to put it is that our grown kids need space. But the far end of that need can play out in a way that translates into "they don't want us around."

In answer to a reader's complaint that her daughter won't take her phone calls, discourages her from visiting (even though she's now vaccinated) and otherwise is putting a lot of distance between mother and daughter, Carolyn Hax addressed the estrangement issue. The thrust of her advice for mending a rift, be it between mother and daughter or any other meaningful relationship, is to become a good listener.

If I start listing reasons grown children estrange themselves from their parents, I’ll still be typing when the next pandemic hits.

What matters is that you become a better listener, stat: “You’ve been saying no [to phone calls and visits], and I’ve been so caught up in changing your mind that I forgot to listen. I’m sorry. I will take no for an answer and stop pushing. I’m here when you’re ready. And, if I haven’t said so already or enough, thank you for being so good about putting the kids on FaceTime with us.”

This might leave you feeling resentful, as if you’re the one doing all the sacrificing here. That’s a common complaint when I recommend a full retreat — but it’s also a trap. It tempts you into looking for fairness when fairness doesn’t apply; reality is in control. And reality says you can’t make your daughter do anything (in fact, it’s probably tired of repeating itself), whether fairness demands it or not. You can work only on your side of the problem.

So, you offer her respect, space, grace — and give yourself the best chance of mending the breach.

painting: Rebecca Lemov