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

Money Matters: If there are strings attached to a gift, tie them on in advance

Sometimes we surprise ourselves with our generosity. We give our children a large gift-----enough money to, say, buy a car, put a downpayment on a house or take out a first-rate health insurance policy. But then they use the money in ways we did not intend-- they go on a lavish vacation or buy themselves a designer wardrobe. We end up frustrated and angry.

What's our recourse? Here's an answer from Philip Galanes and his Social Qs.  It's to a widowed mother who offered her only child the gift of the family home. While the gift is a house per se, Galanes' answer covers all the gift bases:

The mother in question wrote Galanes to say she had offered her son and his fiance, who live in another city, her home if they would "come back here to raise a family." The son accepted but when she suggested he build a guesthouse on the site for her, her son demurred. "They assumed," the mother writes, "I would move into a condo. I was shattered! The next day, he said he was sorry if I felt they were kicking me out of my house. I do. I also think if I don’t go along with them, they will stay where they are. "

Here's the gist of Galanes' answer that applies to all of us gift givers. (bold face are mine):

Your impulse to give your home to your son was a generous one. But even with gifts — maybe especially with gifts — it is crucial to express any conditions we have in mind when we make the offer. Here, I don’t think a reasonable person would expect the gift of a home to include your continued residency in it — unless you mentioned that fact.

Now, I also know how natural it is to daydream about happy situations. For you, that may include living in an extended-family household with your son and his fiancée. And it’s easy to assume that other people want the same things we do. That’s why communication is so important: Sometimes, they don’t.

art credit: Hilary Pecis, "Piecemeal Rhythm"

 

Observation:"No Comment" when it comes to an adult child's appearance.

Whether it's their weight (too heavy, too thin), a tat, the breakout color of their hair, their clothing choices--whatever--we are unwise to say anything about our adult child's appearance. The following observation from Philip Galanes, he of Social Qs, started life as advice to a reader who wanted to comment on a stranger's tattoos. The core of Galanes' advice is as germane to us vis a vis our adult children as it is to the querying reader.

....[C]omments about appearance are often unwelcome, end even compliments betray an unappealing entitlement to judge.

painting: Van Gogh

 

Relationship Advice: What to do when an adult child pulls away.

Our adorable children. Sometimes it's hard to realize they're adults now. They may not be quite as cuddly as they were when they were three years old but more to the point, they probably don't want us hovering over them or offering advice.

Here are two tales that tell you what I'm talking about--plus bonus pointers for "what to do" if our adult children want to keep us at a distance.

Case One: Writing to Carolyn Hax, a parent is concerned that her college-age daughter doesn't want to answer the parent's texts, emails and phone calls--the daughter wants to determine when and where to communicate. The mom writes:  I think we should talk to her and maintain contact even if it’s not the “right” kind; my spouse thinks we will make fewer errors of omission and none of commission if we stay silent and let our daughter take the lead.

To this question of giving a young adult space, Carolyn Hax had this to say:

Back off. A lot. For a bit. Treat this like it’s pre-telecom-revolution times and she’s studying abroad. Treat this like she needs it. Because she needs it — and has the spine to say so.

You can apply the 1980s treatment to your side, too, and communicate with her via snail mail. Assuming she has a mailbox, much less checks it.

Case Two: A mom, writing an essay in Better after 50 admitted to a deteriorating relationship with her grown daughter and then talked about how she righted the ship. Key excerpts:

This complaining about my adult daughter diminished when I started to view her for what she is in that order: ADULT then DAUGHTER. Once I changed my perspective to treat her as an adult first, my daughter second, our relationship became much less strained and tenuous. 

Some lessons she learned along the way:

 Do not give unsolicited advice.... If she does ask for advice, give it. If she doesn’t heed it and fails, keep your mouth shut.

Do not ask about partners: not new ones, old ones, potential ones. ... Let her offer as much information as she wants when she wants. You do NOT need to know everything about her dating life. 

Do not whine if she decides to miss a holiday/family gathering/birthday party… Okay, no lie. This is a difficult one for me but I’ve learned the hard way not to guilt her into doing something she doesn’t want.

You do not need to hear from her every day. ...We compromised that I would be her ‘in case of emergency’ contact. Guess what: most days I do hear from her as she walks to the subway or gym.    

photo: Maia Lemov   

 

Observation: Parenting Coach Meghan Leahy on solving our grown children's problems

When our kids were young, we were their problem solvers. It came with the parenting territory. We had to keep them safe, help them understand how the world works and show them how to move toward independence.

Now that our kids are adults, does that territory need to be trimmed?

That's an issue parenting coach and Washington Post columnist Meghan Leahy addressed in this Q and A session.

The guest asking the Q was concerned that her 24-year-old daughter is depressed about her job and making little effort to find a new one. The mother writes that she is "trying to solve her problems for her, which leads to further issues."

 

Here's how Meghan suggests this mother deal with her daughter's problem.

 

"Back out and be supportive."

I would ask on the phone, "Would you like my advice or would you like me to listen?"

You could say, "I have noticed, Amira, that you've disliked this job for a while...what is standing in the way of changing that?" And then see what she says.

Otherwise, keep saying, "I trust that if and when you need support making a change, you will do it. I am here for you, no matter what. I love you."

Then, keep your boundaries.

That last line may be the most challenging. But what Meghan is telling us is this:  We're no longer in charge of solving our grown children's problems. Our job is to be good listeners and, if the opportunity seems right, make observations.

painting: Picasso

 

Are We Still the Boss? Experts have their say on the wisdom of being advisors to our adult children

Best if we had started when our kids were teens but it's never too late to remember that we have moved from being the boss of them to being consultants to our grown children--even as it's hard to act on that in the heat of a "moment."

This is what Amy Joyce wrote about in one of her On Parenting columns in the Washington Post. Her topic was more precise: It was about parenting teens and how to go about transitioning away from the boss model. She focused on the science-based research of Stixrud and Johnson in their book “What Do You Say? How to Talk With Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance and a Happy Home.”

Stixrud and Johnson underscore the importance of resisting the urge to solve a teen's problems. This holding back can help kids take responsibility for their decisions and thereby let them grow into independent adults. Those adults can in turn look to their parents for advice. They won't need us to tell them what to do. Stixrud and Johnson point out that the stakes during these teen years are high:

"We need to remind ourselves that we’re going to have a relationship with our kids when they are adults longer than we ever did when they were children."

Naturally, the same need to resist problem-solving goes for when our children are fully grown adults. Not that it's easy to keep our views and advice to ourselves, as suggested in this letter to Carolyn Hax from a mother about her 40-year-old son.

The son, who lives in a city 900 miles away from his parents, called to tell them that he is getting divorced. The writer is surprised that the marriage has turned sour and that her son (the father of two young children) is in love with someone other than his wife. The mother/grandmother is "horrified by his behavior" and wants to tell her son how far short he has fallen "in becoming the person" she raised him to be. She wants to, in effect, be the boss and let him know his decision is wrong, that she doesn't approve and he should make things right--or else. The "or else," is that she refuses to meet the "other" woman.

Hax's advice circles back to the ideas spelled out by Stixrud-Johnson. So if we needed one more reminder of the dangers of being bossy, here's how Hax puts it:

  "At this stage in all your lives, "parent" is your title but not your job."

credit: painting by Picasso

What if we don't like the way our children parent their children? Part 2

A few weeks ago, I posted an observation from Meghan Leahy on the limits we should impose on ourselves. That is, we should not offer our adult children advice on parenting their children--unless they've asked us for it. In that post, a grandmother was concerned about the chaos of her grandchildren's bedtime. In this post, it's mealtime issues and a 2-year-old's tantrums. Like the grandparent upset about bedtime routines, the mealtime-worried grandmother is dealing with an adult child whose marriage is falling apart.

So here's Megan Leahy again, this time in answer to a grandmother concerned about the way her son is handling his 2- and 5-year old children. The grandmother has an up-close view of the family dynamic because her son is getting a divorce and has moved into her and her husband's home where, a few days a week, he has custody of and takes care of his two small children. The grandmother complains about the son's lack of parental discipline at mealtimes--he allows the 2-year-old to have ice cream before dinner or an ice pop for breakfast. The grandmother cannot abide the way this small child throws tantrums "to get her way, and her dad always gives in." She has been holding her tongue but says it's getting increasingly hard to do so. Here's Meghan to the rescue:

"I can feel your grandparenting (and parenting) frustration loud and clear. Many of us have been in situations where we want to yell, “Just say no to the darn kid!” But we don’t, because we know it could embarrass and undermine the parent, make a bad situation worse, divide loyalties or start a heated disagreement in front of the children. Holding this frustration in is you staying mature. And trust me: Many parents can (and do) lament how their own parents nagged, lectured and shamed their parenting choices. It really is a relationship killer, so good on you for holding your tongue."

Is there a middle ground between telling her son what to do and keeping her lip zipped? Leahy thinks there's room to have her say:

"Because he doesn’t have the kids half the time, maybe you could take him out to dinner and just listen to him. Let him vent about the divorce or single parenting or whatever is on his mind. I could be wrong, but I bet he knows that the ice pops, wasted food and whining aren’t great, but he could be too overwhelmed to see it clearly or know what to do about it. By offering a compassionate, nonjudgmental ear, you free your son to put down his burdens for a bit, and when people do that, they are more likely to find the courage to do something different."

Leahy acknowledges that these parenting "mistakes" are unfolding under the grandmother's roof, and doesn't that give her a say in how to deal with her grandchild's tantrums? Leahy suggests the grandmother make herself scarce when meltdowns are going on.

"Go for a walk with a friend, go to another floor or put on some headphones. Do anything to make yourself feel less provoked.

Some people may read this and feel affronted: “It is their house, and the grandparent needs to hide?” Well, yes and no. I am suggesting that judging, critiquing and losing your cool in the moment are not going to work out well for any relationship in the house. Instead, stay out of it (in the moment), and find another way to support your son. You can keep your boundaries, just don’t do it during the tantrum or while eating."

painting: Renoir

Leaving a Legacy: Is there a fair way to divide our assets?

The two most boring words in a parent's vocabulary: Estate Planning. Within that world, the most volatile words are Unequal Shares.  Whether we have a gargantuan billion-dollar estate to divvy up among our children or just a small savings account to apportion (or somewhere between those two extremes), we may have reasons to deviate from the mean.

The mean, of course, is to divide whatever we have equally among our children. That way we are likely to head off squabbles--and possible litigation--among our heirs. It's true that we're no longer around to witness any ugliness that may ensue but as financial advisors are fond of saying, "Most of us would like to be remembered for who we were, not for what we had." (Backing that up, a 2020 Merrill Lynch study found that two-thirds of us want our family to remember us as the people we were; only 5 percent ticked the box for wanting to be remembered for our accumulated wealth.)

Would a positive memory be besmirched by our kids fighting over what we've left them? Let's go to the research again. An Ameriprise survey found that, after we were no longer around to adjudicate, 70 percent of the fights between and among siblings involved how an inheritance was divided.

“With unequal inheritances, you run the risk of causing sibling animosity,” one estate planner said. “If you go this route you need to manage expectations so you don’t have one sibling blaming another.”

Why go the unequal route? A friend of mine with a disabled daughter has set up a special trust for her care and asked her sons to manage that trust. Most of my friend's assets will go into that trust. Her sons understand why and what their family responsibilities are.

There are families where one child is super successful financially and the other works in a worthy but low-paying field. In some families, one child has remained close to her parents while the other is estranged or one child manages to visit often but the other doesn't, or one has several children and the other doesn't.

As parents we may have all kinds of valid reasons for carving our estate into unequal shares. And a number of us are doing so. In fact, the percentage of parents who left unequal inheritances to their children more than doubled between 1995 and 2010, rising from 16 percent in 1995 to 35 percent in 2010. 

The key to avoiding sibling spats over unequal shares is pre-planning. As I've noted in my posts here  and here , while you're still in good health or of sound mind, it pays to sit down with your child (especially the one with the diminished share) and explain what you're doing and why. Facts alone may not be enough. Their emotional understanding of the unequal share may be helped by our reassurance that their share of our worldly goods is no reflection of how much we love them.  Estate plan aside, it never hurts to remind our children of our unmeasurable love for them. They're never too old for that.

art: Robert Rauschenberg

Observation: Dealing with disputes between a stepfather and a son.

After an argument with his step-father, a 29-year old son slammed the door and left the house. He then began pulling away from his mother. Their communication, the mom says, "dwindled to a slow trickle of texts." One point her son made on one of those texts was that during the 20 years of being parented by his mother's new husband, the mother had never stood up for him with his stepfather. Now, the mom, who describes herself as a natural peacemaker, is "hurt and paralyzed with fear about how to handle this."

This is the plea for help as it appeared in Philip Galanes' Social Qs column: What to do if you're a mother caught between two important men in your life.

Galanes began by reframing the situation with the good news: The son loves his mother enough to lay out his feelings.

Then he looks at the world as the son, who was a young child when the stepfather moved into his life, might see it: The mother's constant peacemaking--that is, her searches for compromise--may have felt to the son like abandonment.

Galanes' advice to the mom is of a piece with much of his sound counsel: "Get out from between these two men."

How to do that? The mom should repair her relationship with her son by apologizing for making him feel unprotected. Then, since she cannot control the behavior of others (her husband or her son), she should seek counseling for the family of three to work on family dynamics.

painting: Diego Rivera

Walking on Eggshells: Our children and their grooming habits

Friends have returned from a two-week visit with their daughter, her husband and their twin sons. We are having a dinner debriefing on the trip--the tales about the warm weather (the daughter lives in Florida), the sunshine and the beach plus, most importantly, their daughter's hospitality and the chance to spend time with their grandsons every day. They have returned home looking refreshed and relaxed, the visit coming after 18 months of confinement in their home in the northeast where the wind chill is threateningly low.

As we drift past the positive highlights of the trip, they start joking about how they, as parents of adult children, have to keep their lips zipped and not express disapproval at some of the choices their children make. When we get down to specifics they seem almost relieved to tell us about their major zipped-lip challenge. While their middle-school grandsons marched off to school clean and neatly dressed every morning, the parents were, sigh, disturbingly ill groomed--at least from our friends' point of view. Their daughter hasn't had her hair cut since the pandemic hit; it is now down to her waist with the grey growing in above formerly dyed hair. To our friend--the mom--the hair makes the daughter look a decade older than she is and ill-kempt. The son-in-law hasn't cut his hair either, or shaved. His beard is long and straggly and his long hair is tied into a topknot but only when he's working outside.

It's partly a generational thing. Many of us aren't as comfortable with the half-shaved look or the full beard or the long, long hair. And the pandemic has readjusted the younger generation's aesthetics. Our friends, fortunately, kept to the high road during the visit: "I kept my mouth shut," one of them tells me. " I didn't say a word about it, but it was killing me."

She is exactly right. It may be killing them to say nothing, but there is nothing to be gained by alienating a child by commenting on their appearance--whether it's weight, or dress or hairstyle. We may be mortified about the way they look but better to suffer in silence and live with that than risk a fractured relationship with an adult child. Bottom line is, our children have control over their bodies--we don't.

painting: Romare Bearden

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.