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

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

Post Pandemic Equation: A new calculus for moving closer to the kids

Pre-pandemic, my yoga class ended the "semester" with a dinner out together--beer, pizza, mellow discussions among mostly women who knew little about each other than their down dog limitations.  The subject turned to adult kids and how tied we are to them. More specifically, the question was raised about whether, if your children live in a city far from you, would you move to be near them when they start having children. Do you pull up your roots, leave your job  and move to be near your grandkids and to help your grown child with them? My dinner companions--all of a certain older age--told stories of friends who had done that and found themselves babysitting 3 out of 5 weekdays. Some felt it was a gift to be such an integral part of their child's family; others shuddered.

This was not a road I considered when my grandkids were born in cities far from me. I was working in an office at a job I loved; so was the grandpa half of the equation. We were going to stay put and live our lives independently of our children. Three out of four of my fellow yogis felt the same way: No way, they said.  Taking the job piece out of it, my fellow yogis felt they still had active lives--networks of friends;  activities they pursued; dentists, doctors and hairdressers they depended on. They weren't ready to be full-time nanas and poppies. Moreover, the fear of being socially dependent on their children was enough to keep them where they were. 

Comes  Covid and the calculus may be adjusting. The ripple effects of the pandemic may mean that some of us don't have to quit our jobs to make a move and that it might be energizing to try a different way of living. Here's an example of what I mean.

Within the past five years. friends--he's a financial adviser and she's a speech therapist--have been blessed with four grandchildren. Two are by a daughter who lives north of New York City; two by a son who lives in Ohio. The parents live in a Virginia suburb near Washington D.C. They have decided to sell their house and move to New Jersey. They'll have an hour's commute to visit the New York kids and access to an easier drive or direct flights to Columbus. Since the pandemic, their jobs have moved online so they are no longer tethered geographically. Moreover, they won't live close enough to either set of grandkids to be regular babysitters but they'll be near enough to be more active in their lives and be helping hands in case of an emergency. They'll be within range of visiting friends from the old neighborhood and near enough to Manhatten to take in its cultural delights. 

Variations on arrangements like this could become the new norm for those of us who want to live closer to our kids and grandkids and yet maintain our independence--and maybe try a new lifestyle while we're still energetic enough to do it.

photo: Maia Lemov