Gail Parent - How to Raise Your Adult Children: Because Big Kids Have Even Bigger Problems

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Table of Contents

For Saul from Gail

For Richard from Susan

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Gail would like to thank her children Kevin and Gregory Parent, as well as her assistant Myles Gullette. And a very large thank-you to her mother.

Susan would like to thank Adam and Dana for being admirable adult children and Richard for being so wonderful to parent with.

We would both like to thank the people at Penguin, especially our very good editor Meghan Stevenson, as well as Steve Fisher and Alice Martell, who made this book happen.

INTRODUCTION

Should you lend your son money? Do you pay for his medical insurance when he cant? Do you dare to comment on how your child is raising her child? When your adult child gets in trouble and cant afford a lawyer, do you hire one for him? What happens when your gay son and his partner adopt a baby and his partner leaves him? What if your daughter is on her way to becoming obese? There are millions of questions parents have when dealing with their adult children. Until now, there have been very few answers. But this book will tell you how to get along with your grown children and, along the way, help them become strong, independent adults.

The idea for the book was formulated on a trip that we and our husbands took together. The men enjoyed the scenery and we women talked about our childrenacross seven different countries. Since we missed the scenery, we bought postcards. We wished there were a guide for parents like us, so we decided to write one. Thats how How to Raise Your Adult Children was born.

Figuring out the right format for the book was the most difficult part of the process. We tried answering the questions together, but that didnt work. Gail tended to have more practical advice. A lot of it came from her mother. As a comedic author, she also wanted to throw in a few punch lines. Susans answers were serious and rooted in psychology. She knew the behavior problems hidden in every question. We then decided to answer the questions separately, which worked. Many times we agree. Sometimes we dont, but the answers are always presented from two unique points of view.

Where did the questions come from? Everywhere. We started close to home, gathering questions from friends and relatives. Then they told their friends and relatives, who contacted us, until eventually we began to receive questions from strangers. The day we heard that a friend of a friend of a friend had followed our advice and it worked, we knew we were in business.

Writing a book is interesting, fun, and frustrating. But once we got into it, we kept our goal in mind. We wanted people to gain insight and stop walking on eggshells with their adult children. We both knew that what Gails mother had taught her was true: When kids are little, they have little problems. When they are big, they have big problems. We wanted to be able to help our readers be there for the big problems, but not cause them.

When our children are young, we feed and dress them. When they are old enough, we expect them to feed and dress themselves. We teach them to ride bikes and later to drive cars so they can move further and further away from us on their own steam. We make sure they have the right skills and know the rules of the road before sending them off to practice getting themselves around, independent of us. We worry, but we let them go anyway.

We should do the same thing when our kids are adults, especially regarding money. Money is the currency of adult life. By the time a kid leaves college, he should have mastered the skills of budgeting, financial planning, delayed gratification, working, spending wisely, and saving for a rainy day. College is a good time to practice those skills. We shouldnt send money on demand or bail a kid out of a jam. This is an area parents sometimes forget about when raising adult kids. Our children cant be independent unless they are supporting themselves, and they have to master the skills to do it.

Nor are they independent unless they live on their own. Living with us or in our guest room is not living independently. Living on ones own is a developmental step just the way driving a car is. We need to expect and prepare our children to live on their own after they leave school. It should be part of what a parent teaches his child to do. He can practice in college, when were usually still paying the bills.

When our children become adults, we need to rethink and rewrite our relationships with them. We need to treat them like adults and expect them to behave like adults. When our children are independent, we have no control over them. Independent children can make their own decisions about their lives, their money, and who they choose as friends and romantic partners.

We also need to accept that when our children are adults, the configuration of the family changes. The children no longer live with us and we are no longer the primary relationship in their lives. They have their own personal lives that are more important to them than their families are.

We and our adult children are separate. Our child is on his own life journey, which is different from ours. His may take him to another state, to a lifestyle different from ours. He is his own person, not an extension of Mom and Dad.

Although we raised him with our values, to be truly separate from us our child has to develop his own value system. His value system will be influenced not only by us but also by his peers and his own reading and thinking. So his values may, in various ways, be different from ours. We need to recognize the differences and accept them, even if we dont like or admire them. If not, we could lose the relationship with our child.

So our primary focus when answering the questions in this book was to point parents in the direction of making decisions to foster their childs independence. Its all too easy to get into the mode of reacting to the problem of the moment without looking at the long-term issues. Unless the house is burning down, in which case we should react instantly and call 911, we should think through decisions before we make them. Fostering independence should be our goal and we should make our decisions from that perspective.

We, like many others, thought that when our kids left home, our parenting days were over. We quickly learned that they werent. How to Raise Your Adult Children is here to help. This book answers questions that most parents never imagined they would have to ask.

CHAPTER ONE

Money

Money is a big subject when it comes to adult children. The question of whether Mom and Dad should pay for something comes up over and over. Its tempting to avoid thinking about money until we have to, then make the most comfortable decision and hope for the best. But thats not the mature way to handle the money subject. A better way is to use some principles to guide our money choices that help our children become maturely functioning adults.

First, a child who is dependent always feels ambivalent toward the person hes dependent on. We may think that if we provide our child with what he needs and make him dependent on us, he will feel secure. But dependence, in reality, means lack of security, because the one youre dependent on has control over your destiny. Being dependent means youre not free. Therefore dependence always breeds some resentment.

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