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

Holiday Greetings: And a reminder about stress and family get togethers.

The Holidays are upon us. May there be peace and joy in our lives and in family get-togethers.

But just in case, here's a column I wrote a few months ago about the behavioral stresses at play when our adult children are in our company for extended periods of time. May we all relax and enjoy our children's company and they revel in ours without pushing any emotional buttons. So as a reminder, here's the column on the baked-in stresses of holiday get-togethers with adult children:

The holidays are coming. Maybe you've been distracted by the disastrous hurricanes or the sudden outbreak of winter weather. But Thanksgiving is not that far away. That dinner often sits on the back burner because, unlike multi-generational family get-togethers around Christmas, it's supposedly free of stress and anxiety.

Don't you believe it! Thanksgiving may not mean gift-giving and big get-togethers at grandma's house; it may not have religious overtones or problems with someone drinking too much eggnog. But it still creates demands on family togetherness. 

One friend, whose son and daughter are both married with teenage children, is navigating a path between Thanksgiving "suggestions" from her children. The siblings had a falling out this summer and now their proposals for Thanksgiving dinner, though based on rational reasons, exclude the other one. A compromise has been hammered out: The grandparents (my friend and her spouse) will spend Thanksgiving Thursday dinner with their son, who lives nearby and travel to Boston on Friday to have a second Thanksgiving feast with their daughter and her family. It's not that the compromise is an unreasonable solution. In fact, many of us who can't be in two places at once, have doubled down (doubled up?) on Thanksgiving dinners. We did so last year.  For my friend, though, the double dinner makes it clear that the animosity between her children has not cleared up, and that's what's making her miserable about Thanksgiving.

There's another stress that may surface around holiday visits--especially when they include an overnight or two at our house or theirs. Some of our kids may be worried about spending too much time with us! This issue was posed and answered in a New York Times story with the provocative title: Your Mom is destined to annoy you

The column handed out suggestions to help our grown children survive a holiday visit with us. Since visits are a two-way street, here's the "sanity-preserving advice" they're getting that may apply to us as well.

Prepare for your inevitable regression. From our children's persepctive, "It’s not a question of if the regression is going to happen, it’s when."

Our kids are advised to ask themselves where there are "particular topics of conversation or physical places that tend to send your family into a tizzy" and then try to avoid those topics and places.

One solid piece of advice we can act on as well: "if the family dinner table always devolves into chaos, try going out to eat one night and see if it improves relations."

Get ready for parenting criticism. Our adult children--particularly our daughters--are on knife's edge waiting for us to criticize their mothering skills. How grandchildren are being raised is a major trigger for this dynamic. 

Our daughters are advised to “try to remind yourself that it feels like criticism, but it is an expression of caring. Your mother just wants everything to go well for you, and she’s trying to help (even if it makes you want to scream into a pillow)."

We are offered advice on how to keep that screaming to a minimum: "Bite your tongue, because even the most benign (to you) suggestion may be perceived as criticism." 

Make space for yourself. You will need an escape hatch from time to time.

Our kids are advised to create space in order to "get some emotional distance from your family." This could mean hiding out in the bathroom for 10 minutes to cool down, structuring the length of visits or springing for a hotel rather than staying in our guest room.

What works for them should work for us as well. It's not as though we aren't feeling similar tensions and need breathing room as well. Just don't let that bathroom get too crowded.

Don’t expect change. The holidays are stressful. "There won’t be a magical solution to your family trauma over the holidays."

This is not, our kids are advised--and we are too--"the time to bring up old baggage and expect to work through it."

Forewarned is forearmed. On with the holidays. Let joy be unconfined.

painting: Baillargeon

 

Observation: Meghan Leahy on parenting and grandparenting 101.

Are we ever 100 percent pleased with the way our kids are bringing up their kids? There's always something we think they're getting wrong. That's what's behind Meghan Leahy's  observation on our role as parents of adult children and as grandparents within their family dynamic. (Her comments are in answer to a  grandmother who is spending the summer with her daughter's family and is worried about her grandchildren's chaotic bedtime routine.) 

"Your daughter and grandchildren are very fortunate to have you for the summer. The most hopeful statement in this letter is, “My plan in being here was to help my daughter and accept things as they are, and to establish a trusting relationship with the children.” That is a worthy goal, and if you can do that in your time there, that’s enough. In fact, accepting things as they are is one of the most powerful ideas a person can aspire to: to not be feckless, but to understand how little we have control over. Keeping a stance of humility is the best way to be of true assistance. You won’t force your notions, opinions or judgments upon your daughter and grandchildren, and instead will be of true service.

painting:Renoir

 

 

Visits with Adult Children: The importance of time limits

 

I have long espoused my Blitzkreig theory: When visiting grown children who don't live near you, Get In, Get Hugs, Get Out. I have perfected the two -day visit for weekends, holidays or stop-bys on the way to somewhere else.

I have been vindicated about my approach. Science is with me, and the time is right to share this science with my readers since many of us whose children live far from us are now able to spend time together--whether our children (and their families) come to us or we go to them.

If you spent a long weekend or a week with your kids at your house or theirs and everything was perfect every waking minute, my hat is off to you. For most of us, though, there are tiny timebombs that go off the longer the visit goes on. When my mother used to visit me for three weeks at a time, by the end of week one I had broken out in hives, week two my ulcer kicked up, and in week three my back regressed to a painful past. So the Blitzkrieg is personal for me: I may not be the judgmental guest my mother was, but I still don't want to inflict an over-long stay on my children.

Let me digress no further. Here's the science I'm talking about. It has to do with our grown kids' reaction to us--not the other way around. But it explains why there are hiccups and occasionally unpleasant outbreaks during family visits.

A New York Times article had this commentary from psychiatrist Pooja Lakshmin:

 Psychologists have a term to describe the way we fall back into predictable, maddening behavior patterns when we’re with our family of origin. It’s called family systems theory — the notion that families have an equilibrium, and each person has a fixed role that “is in service of keeping the family system intact.”  So whatever your established role is — whether you’re the appeaser, or the family clown, or the petulant one — you’re going to be thrown right back there the second you walk through the door of your childhood home.

Research professor Kira Birditt, reported:

94 percent of respondents to her study on tensions between parents and adult children admitted there was some kind of strife in their relationships. Research also shows that the connection between mothers and adult daughters is especially fraught. Of all relationships, it is the closest and most irritating.

Speaking of the close-but-irritating relationship, author and linguistics professor Deborah Tannen notes the specific underlying tensions between mothers and daughters:

Mothers and daughters tend to expect more from each other than from anyone else. There is a constant struggle between mothers and daughters to balance closeness vs. distance and being the same vs. being different from each other.

Coming soon: A post on how we can, besides keeping them short, keep our visits sweet.

painting: Renoir, Madame et ses enfants

 

 

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

Holiday Traditions: A change in family customs

Let me not count the many ways the pandemic has changed the way we live our lives--the holidays chief among them. Last year was the outlier when the pandemic was a full-blown menace--we hope never to repeat a Zoom-only family Thanksgiving again.

This year we would have liked to return to our usual family traditions--some of us traveling by air (we the parents/grandparents) or by three-hour car ride (our daughter and her family of three) in order to pile into my son's house (family of five) for 48 hours of turkey, tofurkey and togetherness. But additional needs surfaced (an increasingly frail 92-year old cousin who doesn't live near any of us needed to be included somehow); traditions had to be adjusted.

Our family is not alone in changing holiday rites and passages. A friend who usually spent Thanksgiving with one of her nieces and their small children got squeezed out when each of the nieces went to their in-laws and the in-laws wanted to keep the gathering small. 

If the first post-quarantine Thanksgiving is a precursor for the other big holidays of the season, here's what we learned about what "new approaches" worked and which didn't.

In order to accommodate everyone, our family split up: Paterfamilias and I went to our son's house for three days, including Thanksgiving day. The next day we took a train to the city where our daughter and her family had spent Thanksgiving with our cousin. We had a day-after dinner with our daughter, her family and our cousin.

On the plus side: Both dinners were festive, celebratory and full of goodwill and laughs. They were small enough (six people at each one) that we could have inclusive conversations (and those with hearing challenges could hear everyone). We the parents/grandparents were able to spend in-person quality time with each of our adult children and our grandchildren--something that's not always possible when all three families are together.

But: By splitting up, the cousins didn't get to see each other nor did our son and daughter get to spend time together. A brief FaceTime visit on Thanksgiving day helped but not much. And I sorely missed watching inter-family interactions and connections.

The other Big But: We were overly ambitious about travel, especially during a holiday weekend. In order to see everyone we wanted to see, we spent time in two cities within five days, taking one airplane flight north and two train trips south.  We are fortunate that we could afford the extra train fare to buy reserved seats and avoid the hustle of boarding a sold-out train and dragging our luggage while we searched for two seats together or at least near each other. We are aging out of that difficult train ritual.

Bottom line: Our post-pandemic planning for holiday get-togethers is a work in progress. New traditions take time to evolve, but splitting up--well, I don't like it.

painting: Carl Larsson

Post-Vaccine Adventures: Grammie and PopPop get their hugs

There is some confusion about what we can and can't do unmasked, how we should or shouldn't behave in close-together spaces. That confusion gets mixed in with social anxiety. As we inch toward the full opening of a post-pandemic world, a lot of us are nervous about how we'll navigate our former social lives. Going unmasked to a neighbor's outdoor barbecue party may be allowed (if you're vaccinated) but many of us are no longer used to socializing in groups larger than two people.

What it means is that a lot of us are tiptoeing into the re-opening world. But there's one place where we're jumping right in: We are visiting our children in person and getting hugs from our grown kids and grandkids. The Instagram and media photos I've seen of parents reuniting with children or grandchildren exude the simple pleasure of a warm hug.

For those of us who live far from our grown kids and grandkids, the hugs have been slower to arrive  but they're coming. We're going to get them. A lot has changed since I wrote this post in March when public health experts warned against air travel.

Paterfamilias and I take off on an airplane in a few weeks. We're vaccinated so we're no longer worried about the perils of catching Covid on the flight or at the airport. Our destination: Our daughter's house. Our expectation: XOXOXO non-stop plus the joy of watching a granddaughter graduate from high school--outdoors with distanced seating in pods. (We're not totally back-to-normal yet.)

All hail vaccinations. It's making what seemed impossible last summer (and even two months ago) possible and probable.

How do we "old folks" feel about these hugfests? The consensus was captured in this reporting from a Washington Post story:

Among the many who have endured long separations, the first highly anticipated reunions are finally taking place. For grandparents in particular, the need to guard against covid-19 has been weighed against the yearning to be close to children and grandchildren, and an acute awareness of the time being lost. But now, with the arrival of vaccines, dates are circled on calendars, flights are booked, plans are made.

After picking up his young children from an overnight visit with their grandmother--a visit delayed by a year due to Covid--a father told the reporter:

“It was like old times — they didn’t want to come home. Things are starting to feel really different from how it’s been, finally, and I’m really happy about that.”

Hug on.

 

Covid, Kids and the Comfort of a Hug: Is it safe to travel to see our kids and grandkids?

The headlines have been reassuring: "Grandparents are getting to hug their grandkids for the first time after getting vaccinated."

Well, that's fine for grandparents who live near their grandkids or within driving distance. Those of us who have to fly--well, that's another story. In the best of all possible worlds, we should hold off on airplane travel unless it's absolutely necessary.  Does a hug qualify? Our public health gurus tell us, Don't do it unless you must, even if you're fully vaccinated. Maybe by summer when even more people are vaccinated (and a fourth wave either doesn't rise or is under control)  it might be safer to go.

We're making plans to see both our grown kids and their kids later this spring and again this summer. We'll fly, as we did last fall.  This article spells out what we can expect if we take to the air.  Here's what I learned from it and from others:

It will be more crowded and busier than it was in September 2020 when we took our "see the kids" trip. Planes will be fuller. Delta is still blocking middle seats but that's only through April and may change for May and beyond. Other airlines are filling all seats on their flights. So we may be sitting cheek-and-jowl again. Here we go, back to normal but in way that we wish would be back better.  word.

Airlines required (but didn't enforce) masks when we flew in the fall.  The current Transportation Security Administration has mandated masks at airports and on airplanes through May 11; airlines have become stricter about enforcing their own mask-up rules. A T.S.A. spokesperson said it was too soon to say what will happen after the May date but given airline mask requirements, the rise of a fourth wave and the variants that are around, face coverings are likely to be required for the seeable future. Given concerns about that fourth surge and President Biden's plea to wear masks, we''ll probably double mask while traveling.  Just to be sure.

At the height of the pandemic, most airlines stopped food and drink service. They may start again--at least with beverages and snacks. What happens to our masks when and if the airlines roll those drink carts down the aisles? Can't eat or sip a soda with a mask on, so what do we do if we're thirsty or hungry? We may have to mask between bites.

Most food concessions remain closed at many airports--though that may loosen up as vaccination totals climb. When we flew in September, there were one or two concessions available to buy food. We ate our lunch while we waited to board the plane. The airport was eerily empty so we had plenty of space to ourselves. If more passengers show up at airports, concessions may begin to reopen and socially distanced space may be harder to find.

When we get to our destination there's the question of whether, even though we're vaccinated, we can carry and spread the virus to our loved ones. The research so far is unclear, though it leans toward non-spread.  Some of us may luck out in that our grown children may be vaccinated by the time we travel--and therefore immune from anything we pick up during our travels. Our New York State kids already have appointments for jabs. If we put off our trip till their second shots take root, we can visit with them in their home with fewer precautions--and more hugs. 

painting: Renoir, Oarsmen at Chatou

 

 

Holidays Together with Our Kids? Ways to decide how much risk to take.

Our grown children are in their households. We're in ours. We may be in the same city or not. We did whatever we did over Thanksgiving but now the Christmas-New Year holidays are ahead of us. So are worsening pandemic numbers. We all yearn for a "normal" holiday time together. And yet, there is danger in our gathering together.

So here we are again, grappling with the question of how much risk we to take to be with our grown children during the holidays--to say nothing of our siblings, aunts, uncles and close friends.

I've been reading some studies on how our brains work in assessing risk and bringing us to whatever decisions we make in life. Covid-19, it turns out, complicates everything.

How we make decisions:

Under normal circumstances the different regions of our brain assess emotions and information, tapping into our personality and tendencies for risk as well as our understanding of risk as it relates to our age and health. That's all factored into making a decision.

Covid-19 is not normal. The pandemic presents the brain with novel scenarios and information. Most of us have never experienced a severe pandemic and the many unknowns that come with it. That may lead us to look at how others are responding. We also draw on our personal experience of the pandemic itself, especially if we've witnessed someone becoming ill or dying. Our identity also affects our decision-making. Neuroscientist Gaurav Suri points to mask-wearing, behavior that early in the pandemic was influenced by how we identify politically.

The brain clings to signals that things are normal — supermarkets are open, the cat climbs on your lap, you take walks. We desire normalcy. Neuroscientists suggest that may be why people come to different conclusions about their risks and make decisions based on the interaction and strength of many different networks.

Challenges to our ability to assess risk: Not only are we dealing with pandemic fatigue and the yearning for a return to more balanced life, we're also experiencing the stirrings of memory, joy and meaning that are part of getting together during the holidays.

Decision-making suggestion:

Make a risk budget: “As people make decisions about doing different things, it’s important they understand that any risk you take is additive. So, if you engage in one area that’s risky, you should try to reduce risk in other areas when you can,” says Dr. Leana Wen. 

Kayt Sukel  suggests making a risk budget, which she describes this way: “If you want to get a haircut, great — but then maybe you don’t go out for a meal. If you are thinking about in-person school because it’s best for your family, then skip birthday parties and other social events."

The bottom line: "A budget can be empowering. It’s a way to live your values and still protect you and yours from harm," Sukel says. "It’s also a way to push some of those factors like stress and social factors to the side so they don’t have an outsized influence on your decisions."

These are the worst of times for Covid-19 fatigue. Vaccines are here. Enough of us may be immunized by summer. By then it will likely be safe to see friends and family in-person again--go on vacation, eat at our favorite restaurants and even take in a show at a theater. The end is in sight. But it's not here yet. Scientists fear we may let down our guard and not make the best decisions for our family's health during the December holidays.

No shaming here. We all have different tolerances for risk and different risk budgets. We need to respect that, especially in these times of stress.

painting: Picasso

 

Observation: A veteran health reporter puts this year's pandemic-afflicted Thanksgiving in perspective

He's a health and science reporter for the New York Times and was recently awarded the 2020 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism by the Columbia Journalism school.

All  that background noise is by way of saying that in an interview with a fellow New York Time's reporter, Donald McNeil put the current sorrows over curtailed Thanksgiving dinners in perspective:

The holiday season is just around the corner. What advice do you have for families eager to celebrate with their loved ones?

Do it by Zoom. Don’t let Junior come home and kill Grandma. Think of this like World War II — our soldiers didn’t get to fly home to eat turkey. My father was at Normandy. My mother was with the Red Cross in occupied Austria. They missed the holidays. Life went on. There were happier years later.

painting: Rebecca Lemov

 

Pandemic Travel: Tips on a safe and comforting visit with grown children who live far away.

I have perfected the fly-by hug. When we finally made our way to the cities where our children live, I found I could not greet them with an awkward elbow flap of a hello. We have not seen in person either our children or grandchildren since last Thanksgiving, I could not deny myself hugs--even if they were quick and fleeting. 

So I started with my youngest--a 12-year-old. We were standing on the outdoor patio and I told her, "We'll run toward each other, grab a hug with our faces turned away from each other and move on quickly. And so it was with each member of the family. I found it immensely satisfying in a way that's hard to put into words--just to hold, however fleetingly, each precious member of my family was a joy and a reminder of the necessary warmth of physical contact.

To arrive on that patio we had to get to an airport and board a plane. This felt surprisingly safe. The airport was sparsely populated. Almost all concessions were gated closed. The airport was a depressing ghost town (and a reminder of the hundreds of jobs lost in just this one place). That said, we felt safer for the lack of crowds.

We flew on Southwest which has promised to control the sale of tickets on each flight to keep middle seats empty. Twas a pleasure not to be crowded in, but it was eerie nonetheless. Southwest also demands passengers wear masks. One man, seated a row in front of me and across the aisle kept taking off his mask. What to do? It made me feel unsafe. I signaled the stewardess and let her handle it.

When we landed and made our way toward baggage claim we were greeted by the staff at a "health desk." We were asked where we came from. When we said Maryland, a list was checked. "You're Okay," said the health checker. "Welcome to New York State."

We stayed at a hotel and asked for a room in which no one had stayed the night before. No problem. The half of the lobby where we used to order breakfast in the morning or a drink in the evening was dimmed-light dark with chairs upended on the tables. A gloomy sight. 

Our daughter-in-law was concerned about our spending time in her house. (Concerned for us, not for her family.) The grandkids had started back to school,  attending in person classes two or three times a week. That means they were now more exposed to the virus than they had been--a risk for us. Our DIL had planned in advance and borrowed a heat lamp so we could safely eat together outdoors. But a sudden cold spell--40 degrees at night--made sitting outside too chilly, even with the heat lamp. We went inside. Everyone stayed masked except when actually eating. We sat well distanced from each other, plates on our laps rather than on the table.

Despite the masks (with their muffling of sound) and physical distancing we had a wonderful time talking,  laughing at family stories and catching each other up on individual "adventures." At the same time I felt I was like a squirrel who needed to hoard these moments for a long winter of no visits.

Two days later we headed an hour east into Massachusetts for a 24-hour visit with our daughter and her family who drove west to meet us. We stayed at a small family-run inn in Great Barrington. Our rooms were the only ones in a small annex where we had a shared communal space. In the evening it was, once again, too chilly (and we were too tired) to try to eat outside. My daughter and I walked into town, picked up two pizzas and a big salad. We all sat in our communal space, dropped our masks to eat our pizza and otherwise stayed safe while we relaxed in each other's company. 

We are fortunate that both our children live in states (New York and Massachusetts) that have been able to keep the Covid infection rate under control. Our state (Maryland) is improving--we are no longer banned in New York State. Traveling within states that have very low infection rates and are making Herculean efforts to keep it that way made us feel we were taking controlled--and worthwhile--risks in traveling to visit our children. 

We dare not think ahead to the usual family gathering in Albany for Thanksgiving. Except to  squirrel away the memories of this visit to revisit when the weather turns cold and travel more challenging.

painting: Pissarro, Charing Cross Bridge, London