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

Paying for Vacation: Who foots the bill when you're all adults?

"It took a lot of courage to make that call." That's what my dentist tells me. We are talking about a vacation she took with her two sons and their families. One son lives in the middle of the country; the other on the east coast in the same city as my dentist. She wanted to have a mini-vacation where the sons could see each other and the cousins could play together and get to know each other better. I know that feeling. For several years, my two children lived on opposite coasts and I saw a me-organized vacation as a means toward cousin-bonding.

Her problem--one many of us face--was fiscal: She didn't feel it was fair to pay for everyone--her sons are, after all, adults who are able to support their families. But she knew it would be easy for one son to pay his way and a hardship for the other. That's when she made the call: To the son who was more comfortable financially. She asked him how he felt about paying for a condo unit for himself and his family. No problem, he said. "Well," she then told him, "I don't think your brother can so would you mind if we paid for part of his unit." "No problem, Mom," her son said. She then called her other son and he told her he really couldn't afford the trip. She offered to split the condo charge with him and the deal was sealed.

The 4-day vacation at a park in Ohio--two condo units (one for each young family) and a room at the main lodge for my dentist and her husband--went really well, she says. The cousins had fun together. Each son and family cooked dinner for the rest of the extended family one night; the parents took everyone out one night.

There were many things that made the vacation a success. Good weather. Fun things to do together and apart. But a key, my dentist says, was talking about and settling the financial issues in advance.

Your Money and Your Kids: Are they counting on a legacy?

At dinner with friends, paterfamilias mentions that his children--that's our grown children and their spouses--have told us, 'Spend your money; travel and enjoy yourselves; don't save it for us.'  In a way, he's bragging just a little bit. He's saying, in effect, his kids are doing well and don't need our help.

Our friends--she's a "new" friend, having just moved in with him, who's an "old" friend--laughs and says that's not what her children are saying. They're telling her: "Save some money for us. Our father [her former husband] is spending it all on his new wife."

We all chuckle over that. But neither of these dialogs deals with the real world--at least the real world I'm experiencing. Yes, I'm going to enjoy some of the money we've earned over the years, but yes, I'm also going to save something to leave for my children and grandchildren. Or, if I don't leave it, it will because they've already gotten it: either I've lent it or spent it--to or on them.  But even with that lend-or-spend attitude, I hope there's a small legacy for them [if old-age medical needs don't get in the way; how enjoyable a spend would that be?]--something to help the Grands through college or for my children to do something they've always wanted to do or just something to haveif there's an unanticipated need.

And I think that's what our friend's children are, in effect, saying. "We want to know a safety net will be there if we need help with some major expenses." Ours aren't articulating it because they still have the safety and stability of our Being Together as the same old us. We're not jetting off to a second youth or off on some other kind of spree. They can afford to say they don't care about a legacy, but it's not because they may not need it. That's a pretty comforting feeling for us--and maybe what paterfamilias was getting at by raising the subject at dinner with friends.

Children Grow Up: A poet describes that independence best

They've grown up and moved on. Here's poet Thomas Lux's take on the tempus fugit nature of it all and the ability--or is it need--to let go:

A Little Tooth

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It's all

over; she'll learn some words, she'll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.

Moving in Together: Giving grown children a home or vice versa

Hard times are here and there are lots of changes afoot: parents and their grown children are finding themselves more economically inter-dependent. Between 2000 and 2007, according to the U.S. Census, the number of parents living with an adult head of household increased by 67 percent. The numbers for 2008 and 2009 are bound to exceed those.
Sometimes, the move-in together is driven by the grown child's problem: loss of a job or a drastic cut in paycheck. (A growing number of companies are shaving the base salaries of employees by 5 percent--or imposing furloughs that take a salary down several pegs. Or the parents suffer the same layoff/salary decrease issue or their retirement savings are greatly diminished or gone.
Here's a story from the Chicago Tribune that catalogues some of the variations on this theme. One of the trends it takes note of is of parents moving to be physically closer to their children--even when the move means pulling up stakes and resettling in another city. They may settle in a place of their own or with their children. Many are doing so to provide babysitting--grandparents as nannies.

The Loneliness of the Empty Nest: A novelist describes that empty feeling

I turn to Olive Kitteredge again. Elizabeth Strout's novel told in a series of stories zeroes right in on the heart of what hurts parents of grown children most. Oh sure there are joys--watching our children mature, start careers, marry, raise children, lead interesting lives. But there is also a loneliness that can bear down on you at unexpected moments--especially those of us whose children don't live close by. Strout's story, "Starving," is ostensibly about a young girl suffering from anorexia, but the main character is Harmon, a man of a certain age who owns the local hardware store. There was about him, a character in Strout's story tells us, a certain sadness. As this woman friend observes, "His four sons had grown and scattered. They visited, appearing in town as great grown men, and she remembered when, in years past, you never saw Harmon alone. Always one or more of these small, then teenage, boys were with him, running around the hardware store on Saturdays, yelling across the parking lot, throwing a ball, calling out to their father to hurry."

On a walk by himself, Harmon recalls how one of his sons "had been a pack rat with a sentimental streak. Harmon walked along...the air like a cold washcloth on his face. Each of the sons had been his favorite child."

Harmon also notes that he had thought his wife "might have had a bad empty-nest time of it, that he'd have to watch out for her." But he finds "she seems calmer, full of a new energy."

That's what I love about this book. It captures in such fine phrasing what it is that we're experiencing. When our children grow up and leave home, it is a mixed blessing. There is renewed energy, yes! All of a sudden, we're Number One. But we also lose our admission ticket--to the soccer games, swim meets, piano recitals, opening school night. The house is no longer full of noise or excitement. Sundays at the soccer game may be an annoyance when we're in the midst of it, but now that our children are grown, we miss the interaction with them and being part of the community to which we belonged with them. Watching a grandchild's soccer game is not the same thing. We're just spectators.

Starving isn't just about anorexia. It's also about the loss when our children move away and the feeling we have in the aftermath.

When Your Grown Child Needs You: The loneliness of the long-term visitor

Have you read Olive Kitteredge? Do. It's all about us and our interior lives, emotions and fears--of growing older, of our children moving away, of our spouses dying or worse, losing their minds.

For those of us whose grown children live in another city far from us, there's one particular story in Elizabeth Strout's series of linked short stories (they all revolve around Olive, a big woman with a big persona) that hit home. Olive, who has a dysfunctional relationship with her only child--her son has moved away and avoids contact with her--is suddenly invited by her son to come visit him and his new wife and her children from former relationshsips. The story touches on the tumult of emotions we go through when we visit our children, especially on our own without our life's partner--the joy of being needed and embraced by them and their family; the awkwardness of fitting in, of being a fifth wheel, of being part of things but not; touched by the affection within the little family; dismayed when a discipline of a child is [from our point of view] mishandled; the disorientation when you witness a nasty spat between spouses. And the surprise--the shock really--of the overwhelming desire to go home, even after just a few days in residence. Or, as Olive tells herself, "After three days, I stink like fish."

Strout also captures the almost inexplicable need and desire to touch base with our home base--a spouse, a close friend. To do so is almost an affirmation that we haven't melted into the woodwork. I think it gets back to that notion that we are no longer center stage. We know it. Intellectually, we accept it. When we go visit en force--paterfamilias and the momma bear--we're an exciting event; the center of things. And that's why we tend to wrap up the fish in a day or so. Leave while you're still ahead and still the Star Turn. But when we stay for longer--usually because we're needed for emergency babysitting-type purposes--the reality of how much on the periphery we really are hits home. And this despite all the kind words and attempts at inclusion our children make. Of course, Olive didn't get that from her son. But I leave what happened to her to the story (within the larger story), "Security." Read it and feel sad--for Olive and for all the losses that come along with getting older and being the parent of an adult child whose focus is, rightfully, on his or her growing family.

The Criticism Factor: Everything we do can be taken the wrong way.

It's almost universal--parents all over the world tell stories about how they tried to help their grown children only to find their assistance was taken as criticism. Here's my latest story, from a pediatrician I met from Sweden.
His grown son and wife live a few blocks away. Now that they have a baby, the doc and his wife are regular visitors. The beloved grandchild is now 15 months old and the grandparents have finally been asked to babysit. The assignment came with this warning: Not to worry. The little girl cries herself to sleep. It's just part of her going-to-sleep routine.
The young parents leave and the grandparents take over. Sure enough, when they put their grandchild to bed, she cries. "So," the pediatrician tells me, "I tiptoed into her room and sat by her crib and held her hand. She wrapped her litle fingers around mine and fell asleep. No crying."
The outcry came when the parents came home and learned what had happened. They were not pleased. "It gets particularly difficult," says the doc, "because i"m a pediatrician so my daughter-in-law tends to see everything I say as a criticism."
Pediatrician or not, a lot of us run into the same buzz saw--based in part on the fact that we've raised kids so, presumably, we know something about it. We can't help for hurting.

Lending Money: What to do when your adult child needs financial help

 These are hard times. The Great Recession is taking its toll--not only on our 401ks but, for some of us, on our jobs and worse, our children's jobs and financial well-being. Just to put things in perspective, a recent survey by Fidelity Investments found that 41 percent of U.S. households did not have emergency funds sufficient to cover three to six months of living expenses. What to do if your child runs into trouble and needs some money to tide him or her over? Here are some pointers from financial and other experts:

First point: Can you afford to make a loan? Here's the measure Ira Bryck, director of the University of Massachusetts Family Business Center, uses: "It's the same rule as gambling: Don't loan what you can't afford to lose."

Point two: What's the loan for? 'lf your finances are at the edge, what they'll use it for can make a difference. If the loan is to launch a new business or buy a house, maybe it can be delayed; if it's to keep the foreclosure wolf from the door, maybe you'll want to stretch your own finances. The answer to point two can temper the answer to point one.

Point three: Sibling rivalry runs deep and can crop up when you least expect it. Will you be accused of playing favorites? Will the sibling in need by charged by brothers or sisters of draining their inheritance. It's your money to do with as you please but it might be a good idea to keep any assistance just between you and the kid in need--unless everyone's getting tapped for aid.

Point four: Do the math. Let's say your investments are earning 7 percent a year( don't' we wish!). If you're asked to loan $20,000 for five years, the real cost to you for sidelining that amount of money is $28,000. This is not to say you shouldn't lend the money--it may be a good investment if it lets your child finish school or buy a house, but it should be factored into the "what's the money for" calculus. Point five: Your needs count. If the loan tips you into financial instability, you may have to say no. There may be other ways to help.

Visiting Adult Children and Missing Home

When my children were young, my mother lived in another city. I always thought her visits were the joy of her life. She was widowed and I saw her visits--she planned them; they lasted three weeks each time--as a welcome break to her loneliness and to her routine of playing bridge and canasta with her friends.

I am rethinking that view. Yes, she planned long visits and yes they broke up her routine and brought the company of our young family. But how pleasant a break it was in terms of her routine is what is up for revision. I have written at length on this blog about how tired most of us feel--especially those of us with children living in other cities or even other countries--when we visit our children and their very young children. There's the physical exhaustion of being around all that energy that is compressed into small children and the energy it takes to care for them. And, the change in routine takes a toll.

But there is another factor. The loneliness. Yes, our children are companionable and absorb us into their lives while we are there. We are not excluded. But there is still a longing to go home. I am reminded of this by an email I got from a friend who has been recruited to care for grandchlidren who are  9 and 13. Her son just got divorced. This summer, custody was split by five weeks each. Her son had to work and didn't have the money for camps or babysitters. So she flew out to California to be chief cook and driver for two weeks. She took the kids to the community swimming pool every day, to doctor appointments, to Target to get their school clothes. By the time she made dinner each night, she was wiped out. But most of all, she was lonely--even though she lives alone and here she was in a house full of people and the bustle and spats of pre-teen and early-teen children. Her email to me said it all: "How I miss my little house and my daily regime." 

Why do we feel the longing for home? I ask myself that when I am at my children's homes. I want nothing more than to be helpful; I love my grandchildren and they are well-behaved. And yet, something there is that wants to be surrounded by your own things and the routine of your own life. It is a contradiction in reason. It makes me wonder how much my mother liked her visits here.

Ask your grown kids when they're planning to have a baby--at your peril. Doonesbury explains.

If there's one thing most of us know (or should), it's that there's one place our advisory counsel should not go: Suggesting to our grown children that they have a baby. Or asking them when. The opening line of such forbidden dialogue would start with, "It's time." I say this because I remember it happening to me (my mother and father thought that was the point of getting married), and I suppose that's why I consider it forbidden territory. It's a personal and private decision and touches on a fiery nexus of sex, money and independence.

Doonesbury now joins me in those ranks. He's always followed along with the concerns of our generation and now there this: His Sunday, August 23 strip has the mom, sitting around the table with son and daughter-in-law, start off with a conversation changer: "So when are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?" When asked what elephant, she answers: "The grandchildren that aren't sitting around this table." Things deteriorate from there. But for any of you tempted to make a similar point, check Doonesbury first.

When the grown kids move back home: Here are some survival tips.

The economy's been brutal, and especially so on the generation that's just getting started on its careers and on those the next rung or two up. We who have retired or are close to doing so are probably in better shape--despite losses in the 401k. So it's not surprising that a recent poll by Grandparents.com finds we are the well-tapped Bank of Mum and Dad. Three-fifths of 10,000 recently surveyed grandparents said they have been providing some sort of financial support to their grown kids and grandkids in the last 12 months.

For some, that helps includes housing: the adult children move back in, some with their kids. Whatever the arrangement, financial advisers say parents need to take steps to protect their own finances, such as making sure their homeowners and auto insurance will cover the adult children and even grandchildren that are now in residence.

For more tips, check out these ideas from the experts. Here's a shortened form of the tips that go beyond the usual.

Avoid reverting to decades-old behavior, from when the adult children were still teenagers, when it comes to bill paying.

As emotional and relationship issues collide with financial issues, the older parents need to be wise and cautious. At the same time, they can demand that their adult children share personal financial information.They don't have to share theirs.

Older parents should try to keep a budget while their adult kids are back at home so that they can avoid going too heavy on withdrawals from retirement accounts"Just give kids a place to stay and help them until they get back on their feet." one expert says. "They just need to have a reasonable lifestyle."

Retirement funds should be kept separate from funds used to run the household.

If you were planning to give gifts anyway, don't be afraid to spend money on them now. It just means you'll leave less in your will or give smaller presents in the future.

While older parents are the executives of the household, rules--about buying food using the phone or computer--should be crafted together.

Vacationing with Grown Kids: Serial togetherness is the charm

When our grands were 1,2 and 3 years old, and again when they were 2,3, and 4, we spent our summer vacation by renting a large condo in Vermont and inviting both uber son and his two children and alpha daughter and her one to stay with us. All of us--under one roof. My reasoning was simple: Alpha lived on one coast; Uber on the other: if we didn't have this family-together time, how would the cousins get to know each other?

Readers of this blog may know that these vacations didn't work out so well. Oh our grown children said they were fun--they even requested repeat performances. But I felt so divided--always wanting to ease the way for a Grand who needed a cuddle or a parent who needed a mini-break--and was worn out by the end of the week. Since then, the Grands have grown--they are now 6,7 and 8 plus there's a new 1-year-old--and Alpha daughter has moved east to the same coast as her brother. They now live a mere 3-hour drive apart. So the compelling need to vacation together under one roof is no longer so pressing. Nor so desirable. Different parenting approaches can make for hard feelings when you're all under one roof. My daughter-in-law summed up one of those vacations best: "It's like a great play date--that goes on too long."

The whole issue of family vacationing was taken out of our hands this year. Uber son rented his own place for a week and invited us to join him for part of the time. So we, in turn, rented the same place for the next week--thereby letting him extend his stay a few days. And we invited alpha daughter to haul  herself and her family to that condo while we were there. For three days of those two weeks, we were all together--the "big" cousins romping and playing and giddy with the delight of seeing each other. Alpha daughter and her family stayed in a nearby motel that allowed dogs [she came with her rather large puppy and several of us are allergic to dogs] and it all worked out really well. The natural break at bedtime--one family to bed upstairs; the other to the motel--gave the cousins time to unwind. The dog was a big hit with Uber son's baby and there was scarcely a meltdown or scene to be seen.

We got to spend time with each of our children and their family exclusively--and expend all our attention on the Grand or Grands at hand. But when we were all together, magical things happened. My daughter-in-law taught her niece to ride a bike; my son-in-law taught his nephew to catch frogs. The dog cozied up to the baby and let her explore the wonders of her pelt. I say magical, but it's really what families are all about. It's just that when your grown children live in different cities--from you and from each other--these "normal" moments don't have too many chances to happen. And that's what made this serial vacation [with overlap] so wonderful: the time and opportunity for the miraculously normal things to happen.

Visiting Privileges: Put down that broom; don't lift that dust rag

A friend's daughter lives in London. She's gone and married a Britisher and has three sons--all of whom speak with a marked British accent. When she visits and they want their dessert, they ask, "May I have some pudding, please." Christopher Robin, where are you?

But I digress. On her most recent visit to her daughter, my friend, MaryEllen, was asked by the daughter to make her famous lamb dish--famous within the family and a favorite of the daughter's. Off to work went the daughter and son-in-law; off to school, accompanied by the nanny, went the children. There MaryEllen was, alone in a strange kitchen. She didn't know where things were kept but she did know she needed a big pot. So she looked in all the cabinets and finally found a big pot in a high-up cabinet. When she climbed up there to take it down, she noticed there was a lot of dust. Her first thought: Tell her daughter that the once-a-week housekeeper needed to clean up there. And when her daughter came home--the house sweetly perfumed by the lamb dish--that's what she started to say. But before she could get it all out, her daughter launched into an outburst: "Is this why you come to visit? To search around and find things that are wrong? Why don't you just stay home"--and lots of other words to that effect.

MaryEllen is not alone. Another friend, Cesar and Marcia, went to visit their daughter and her family in California. They stayed in their apartment, providing some babysitting for their grandchild. One evening, when guests were expected for dinner and the grown children were at work, Cesar took out the vacuum cleaner and started vacuuming. His son-in-law came home in the midst of the clean-up and started yelling at him--a diatribe similar to the one MaryEllen experienced. Only more shocking, since it wasn't his child who was lambasting him. It was his son-in-law.

We may think we're helping our children and their families--pointing out that the maid should dust a closet; cleaning up when guests are due--but whatever we're doing is implied criticism. We are not, in fact, minding our business. We're minding theirs. Only we just don't know when we are doing that and when we are actually being helpful.

 

Re-Nesting: Advice on the move back home

If your grown children and their children are moving back home--out of economic necessity or for a temporary but long-term visit--there are lots of challenges ahead. Here's a blog that's detailing how one family is working things out. I like the tone of it. Here's part of an opener to one recent entry:

"When you invite your children to come back home for whatever reason (in this case a bad housing market) you can’t make them feel as if they are imposing.  It is very important to let them know that this is their home now also.  With a few simple ground rules laid out in advance, everyone can feel comfortable."

If you're interested in reading more, click here

Anger Management: A poet's perspective on who's to blame for the mess they're in

Nobody's perfect, least of all us as parents of grown children. But here's poet Philip Larkin's misanthropic perspective on how we may feel about our parents, and how our kids may feel about us--on rare occasion, of course. Pass the blame, anyone?

This Be the Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

--Philip Larkin