Adult Children Need Parenting Too!

That's right I said it.  Adult children need parenting too.  Whether it is parenting about relationship, money or one of a dozen other topics, they still occassionally need parenting.  It isn't the parenting that changes when your children become adults, it is the delivery of the parenting.  Things that need to change:  tone of voice, relying on natural consequences to steer adult children and your reaction when they don't take your advice.   It needs to take on the appearance of advice giving.  Be there when they ask for advice and occasionally when they don't.  Fight the urge to intervene all the time because they will just ignore your advice all the time if you do that.  Save your parenting for those times that they really need it.

Parenting doesn't stop once your child reaches adulthood, it just changes and your role in parenting needs to change to keep up.

Empty Nester Wishing for Down Time

I find my self in a time of life where I could be termed an empty nester, but I am not feeling much like one.  I think that due to the economy, the delay in becoming parents and the increase in life expectancy many of us who are "empty nesters" are not sharing the feelings of loss and loneliness that our parents experienced when we flew the coop.
Just like you, I am finding myself playing a larger role in my adult children's lives then my parents did.  I believe that we need look no further than the bleak employment opportunities and the economy, to find a reason for this.  Balance is the key.  I think it is important to balance our children's needs and our needs at this stage of life.  Helping them to the detriment of our health and financial stability is not good for them or for us.  Try to assist them in working within their means by reducing the number of times they eat out, cutting back on cell phone cost (I have a pay as you go plan instead of paying a monthly rate) and eliminating cable and high speed internet.  Some of these cut backs will probably be met with resistance because they will think that they will be returning to the dark ages but you can assure them that there are places like the library where they can access high speed internet for free.

At the same time as we are playing a more active role in our adult children's lives, we are shouldering the responsibility for caring for our parents who are living longer with each generation.  In my case, as with many others baby boomers, we have taken jobs out of state and therefore if we can't convince our parents to move to where you live what do we do?  I find myself spending weeks at a time, several times a year, away from my home and work caring for my parents.  Hopefully, you have many siblings who you can share this responsibility with.  But the reality is that families are getting smaller.  With only one very busy brother and no sisters, I feel a need to be there for my parents and when I can't be, I feel guilty for not being there. 

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.  Here I sit longing for my time of being an empty nester.  I know be careful what you wish for.  But I have spend two weeks this past month caring for a sick parent in the hospital and tomorrow I will begin three weeks of home healthcare with my parent doing medical things that I never dreamed I would be doing.  Maybe not the best frame of mind for tackling these very serious issues that are facing our generation of Baby Boomers, but these are issues that are very much on my mind.

Meeting Your Child's Future In-Laws

This weekend we finally met the people most important to the man my daughter is going to marry. It went very well and they were wonderful people, but what do you do if that isn't the case? What do you do if you don't get along with your child's in-laws?

I can only speak to this issue from the standpoint of the children, but maybe hearing my experience will help make your experience go smoother. My parents and my in-laws did not really get along when they first met due to some fundemental differences and beliefs. First of all my father in-law was a union member and my father worked for the management side of union negotiations (fortunately not for the same company). Secondly, we were of different faiths. Catholic and Lutheran. Both were Christian faiths but it was at a time that those two religions were not really seeing eye to eye. I will tell you that it was the cause of some very tense moments and many disagreements between my husband and I over the years. Even after all this time, they seem to compete with each other over things like time with the grandchildren and where we spend the holidays.

Being aware of these types of issues may help me to try to get along better with my daughters in-laws and be more understanding about the time that she spends with his family. Marriage is hard enough, I don't want to add any undo stress to my daughter's marriage by putting myself in competition with his family. I do realize that this will be difficult because I will be fighting against my maturnal instinct of wanting to keep her my little girl. Wish me luck.

Helping Your Child Choose a Career

There is no more important decision that our children make in their young adult life then “What am I going to do when I grow up?” What can we, as parents, do to help our children make this very important decision? Help your child to volunteer or tour places that are in their areas of interest. This will help them develop a better sense of what that job entails. Sometimes the reality of a job is not even close to what they are visualizing. Better for your children to find out now that a particular job is not for them, rather than after years of training for that job.

A website that I have directed many students to, careerkey.org, may provide your child with valuable information about jobs that fit their particular skill set, values and financial needs. The website provides access to the Career Key Test which is a Holland Personality Test. This test asks multiply choice questions in order to determine your child's personality type. It provides lists of jobs that fit their particular personality type. Your child then picks the jobs that interest them from this list and they are able to find out valuable information about each of these jobs. The information includes: education required, current job availability and salary, and projected job availability and salary in ten years. The cost of using this website is about $10.00, but I believe that this information is priceless in today's job market.

Boomers and Boomerang Children...Successfully Managing this Phenomenon

Many Baby Boomers are finding themselves faced with caring for their aging parents and having their children return to the nest. These can put undo stress on a marriage and greatly affect their financial planning for their golden years.

Children are returning to live with their parents for many reasons. Some have lost their jobs and their homes, and move their entire family into their parent's home. Many find themselves returning home from military duty, discharged with no employment opportunities. Others find themselves returning with a diploma in hand and no job prospects. How can you as the parent of an adult best handle this situation? Below are some dos and don'ts to consider.

Don'ts. 1)Avoid the urge to begin parenting them right where you left off. Your children are adults now and have lived on their own. Holding them to the rules that they lived by as children will only encourage them to rebel. 2)Do not just give them a "free ride". This will just set them up for future failure. Don't just bail them out, help them to restructure their debt and teach them how to avoid new debt. 3)Don't put yourself in a financial bind.

Dos. 1)Have a serious discussion before they move back in. If they are already living with you, have that talk ASAP. Talk about the whys to their moving back in, and about their plans for the future. 2)Set clear expectations for living in the household. Include a discussion about their expenses, chores, what to do about dating/spending the night, and calling if they will be gone all night. Setting ground rules should not be seen as treating them as children because you would set ground rules for a renter as well. 3)Set a time limit for how long that they will be staying with you. It provides your child with a goal date to get their life in order (motivation). This time limit can be revisited if circumstances change. 4) Charge them rent. This suggestion will probably be met with the most resistance but there are some very good reasons to do this. It helps to prepare your child for independent living and it will help you avoid getting yourself into a financial bind. It is important to share with your child the financial strain that you are going through having them there and how they can help easy that strain.

Boomers and Boomerang Children...The Stats

How do you handle your adult children returning home? This was a question e-mailed to me by one of my loyal followers, Susan from Oviedo, Florida

Susan be reassured that you are not alone in this problem. Whether it is due to a lost job, inability to land a job out of college, discharge from the military, or a foreclosure, the results are the same. Adult children are moving back in with their parents at an unprecedented rate. These children are referred to as boomerang kids. A recent survey by Pew Research Center reports that 13% of parents with adult children has one or more of them living in their home. Monster's 2009 Annual Entry Level Job Outlook reported that 40% of the 2008 graduates and 42% of the 2006 graduates live in their parents homes.

Problems occur with these new living arrangements because parents continue to treat these adult children as if they were children and the adult children do not take on any adult responsibilities when it comes to the house but expect to be treated as an adult. My next post will talk about how you can avoid these pitfalls and make this arrangement a win-win situation for all parties.

Thanks for the question Susan. I hope my response helped you. If you have a topic or question you'd like me to address, please e-mail me at parentsharing@aol.com.

Using Those Teachable Moments to Start a Conversation about Sex with Your Children

Sex is all around us. It's not only on billboards, commercials, magazines and T.V. shows but staring us in the face in our own neighborhood everyday. Maybe you happen upon a neighbor who is pregnant, the T.V. show you're watching has a pregnant teenager on it, sex is eluted to on your favorite program, your child is reading a book that has a relationship in it that they tell you about or there is a particularly sexual billboard that you drive by. Consider these to be teachable moments. Use these teachable moments that come up in your everyday life to begin a conversation with your child about sex. I believe that using these as a jumping off place to begin "the talk" will lessen your anxiety about having a sit down, planned out conversation and by making this talk less formal you may just disarm your child enough to have an open and honest conversation.

Some Thoughts about What to Include When You have the "Talk" with Your Children

When is the right time to have the major talk with your children about sex? Having been a child who found out about my period when I got it, I would like to encourage you to talk to your children when they begin to show any signs of puberty. In today's society that can be as early as 8 with all the growth hormones in our food. I can still remember how frightened I was when I started bleeding. I thought that I was dying. I had learned about sex from my friends, but what it was like getting your period was not part of that discussion. A big thank you to my friends who were with me at the time, they provided me with comfort, support and elevated all my fears about what was happening.

I believe that breaking this talk up into two or three parts may help you and your child feel more comfortable. Your children certainly will absorb more of the information if given in smaller chunks. One way to break up these talks is by starting with what they can expect will be happening to their body, then move on to what is happening to the bodies of the opposite sex a few months later, and end when they are 11 or 12 with a discussion about sexually transmitted diseases, birth control and your beliefs on being sexually active at a young age. I know that many parents believe that talking to your children about birth control constitutes giving permission to your children to be sexually active, but I think if you include a good dose what your beliefs are, this will not be the case. I think that by not including this part of the discussion, you run the risk of becoming grandparents much earlier than you wanted to.

For those of you who think that 11 or 12 is too soon to discuss these topics with your child, take a really good look around at your children's friends because according to ETR Associates 7% of teens reported having their first sexual experience before the age of 13. This message was brought home to me when my son came home from fifth grade one day and stated that one of his friends had had sex with a 12 year old girl.

Try to keep current on the signs that your child is sexually active. Who would have thought that children would wear different colored gummy bracelets to signify different sexual acts that they had participated in. When I was working in the elementary schools, many children in the fourth and fifth grade were proudly displaying these bracelets. A case can be made that some of these children were lying about what they were doing, but what concerns me is that I know that not all of them were lying. I don't believe that children of this age are emotionally mature enough to handle being sexually active.

Better safe than sorry is my motto when talking to your children about sex.

Having the Sex Talk with Your Child

There is a new way of thinking when it comes to having "the talk" with your child. The feeling now is that you should begin laying ground work at a very young age and keep adding information as your child matures. After hearing this, I began thinking that this really isn't a new way of doing things, but just an added twist to the old way. Our parents taught us the names of our body parts, and their uses at a very young age also. What they didn't do is break up the main talk into doable chunks. Breaking the big talk into smaller chunks that are age appropriate may take away some of the uncomfortable feelings that we get when thinking about talking to our children about sex. It may also eliminate some of the confusion our children experience when they are given a lot of new information. In addition, they may not feel as embarrased when you are talking about sex, if it is something that you have been talking about for most of their lives.

Choose Your Battles Carefully When It Comes to Your Children

Is it really that important for children to dress the way you want them to, wear their hair in the style that you like and participate in the activities that you think that they should be participating in? We are all trying our best to raise children who will become productive adults. Consider that if you are making all the decisions for your children, you are making it very difficult for them to have confidence in their own decision making ability. Next time that they want to paint their nails pink or wear clothes that are typically worn by the opposite sex, support their decision. It will be difficult to do, but the benefits will be great.

Save your battles for the important issues like drugs. If you are constantly correcting your children, they will start tuning you out. Start today letting them make some of their own decisions (mistakes) on the smaller things, they may just start listening to you again in time to hear your words about the big stuff.

A Few Words about Divorce and Adult Children

Don't forget that your adult children are still your children no matter how old they are. They will experience some of the same emotions that younger children experience in a divorce. Many parents lean on their adult children when there is a later life divorce. Eventhough they have a better idea of the true nature of their parents, don't forget that your ex is still their parent. Use restraint when venting to them.