Season 3 Episode 74 Mother's Day Special: Tell 'Em What you Want!

When we think of Mother's Day, we often envision breakfast in bed or a sweet card, but the truth is, the gifts that mothers cherish most are the bonds they share with their children, no matter their age. 

That is what we hear today from our guests. Mary Dell Harrington and Lisa Heffernan. They are the founders of Grown & Flown, the very popular website and social media stops. Together, we unpack the transition from managing a bustling household to adapting to an 'empty nest', and how this shift doesn't mean the end of parenting, but the beginning of a new chapter.

We get a behind the scenes look at how they started, what is the most valuable advice they've learned and what they see on the horizon.

We talk about so much including:

• Adapting different strategies for each child's unique needs
• Significance of Mother's Day to many and how to set clear expectations
• Multi-generation living and why taking the failure out of "failure to launch" is so important
• How the pandemic has re-shaped our understanding of family living situations.
• Complexities of financial support and how to handle it
• Spirituality, mental health and so much more.

Grown and Flown Links

Link here for College Admissions: Grown and Flown membership helps parents through the college admissions process. Sign up for theirnewsletter here.  Link here to join their community o parents of teens, college students, young adults. 

A big thank you to Connie Gorant Fisher, our audio engineer.  Send your thoughts to biteyourtongue@gmail.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

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Chapters

• 0:03 Grown & Flown
• 8:24 [Ad] Modem Futura
• 9:09 (Cont.) Grown & Flown
• 11:39 Navigating Parenting Young Adults
• 18:15 Navigating Modern Intergenerational Living
• 31:38 Parenting, Relationships, Spirituality, and Wisdom
• 40:47 Parental Guidance for College Mental Health

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

I love you so much, mom. Happy Mother's Day. You've been such an amazing support system for me over the last few years especially, and the only thing I would say is I hope I can also be a support system for you and help you view life a little bit more positively over the next year. I love you so much, thank you, thank you and happy Mother's Day. I love you so much. Thank you, thank you and happy.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Mother's Day. Hello everyone. Welcome to Bite your Tongue. The podcast. I'm Denise. And I'm Kirsten, and we hope you will join us as we explore the ins and outs of building healthy relationships with our adult children. Together, we'll speak with experts, share heartfelt stories and get timely advice addressing topics that matter most to you.

Speaker 3: 0:49

Get ready to dive deep and learn to build and nurture deep connections with our adult children and of course, when to bite our tongues. So let's get started.

Speaker 4: 1:03

Hello everyone. Happy Mother's Day to the moms out there that are celebrating and welcome to another episode of Bite your Tongue, the podcast. I'm Denise and I'm here with my co-host, Kirsten Heckendorf. Before we get started, we're going to do a tiny bit of housekeeping. We want to let listeners know that our very last episode of Season 3 will be strictly your questions and expert answers. So please send us your questions. You can send them directly to us by email, by emailing biteyourtonguepodcast at gmailcom, or you can record your questions by going to our website at biteyourtonguepodcastcom and look for the small microphone icon in the corner. You just press and talk Easy peasy. We'd love to hear from you. Now on to today's episode.

Speaker 4: 1:51

Today we're honoring Mother's Day and you may have noticed, in the beginning of the episode we had some messages from young and older adults about their mothers. We love these messages, so, as the episode goes along, we're going to share a few more. Stay tuned and listen to them. They'll come in and out throughout the episode, but today we're celebrating two moms who we believe have changed the landscape for understanding and parenting teens and young adults. We're talking about Mary Dale Harrington and Lisa Heffernan, co-founders of Grown and Flown, the amazingly popular website and social media stop for all parents with young adults and, of course, teens. They're also the author of a bestselling book called Grown and Flown how to Support your Teen, Stay Close as a Family and Raise Independent Adults. I personally follow them on social media and have noticed that they're moving a little bit more towards the young adult arena. I think you follow them too, Kirsten.

Speaker 3: 2:48

I do. Someone had sent me years ago a newsletter or a blog or something and I signed up for whatever it was, but it was perfect for whatever was going on in my life with one of my kids who was leaving for college Preparing for this interview today. I also noticed that they were named in People Magazine's one of the 25 women who are changing the world. I know they're alongside Jane Goodall, american Ferrera, a bunch of others. They're in great company. It just makes it even a bigger honor to have them here with us today. Welcome, mary Dell and Lisa, and happy Mother's Day to you both. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourselves and how you got started on the Grown and Flown journey?

Speaker 5: 3:26

This is Mary Dell. I'll go first, Since Lisa and I are both here together. I have a son and daughter, and they're both living and working in Metro New York City, not far from where they grew up in the suburban area north of the city. My professional background is in media. I worked for NBC and Lifetime in New York before stepping down to spend more time with them, but in a way that has some connective tissue to how Lisa and I started, Grown and Flown my background in the media and, of course, being a mom.

Speaker 6: 3:54

And we started Grown and Flown because there really wasn't much on the internet about that period of teens, late teen years, early adulthood years, having college students. At the time we started Grown and Flown. Maridel and I had both kids in high school and our oldest sons had just gone to college. We had a foot in both of those worlds. We felt very much out of our depth. We commiserated every time we got together about this stage of parenting, but we just couldn't find much on the internet about it and so we decided to start ourselves.

Speaker 3: 4:24

So I'm happy that you did.

Speaker 4: 4:27

I happen to love the personal essays that people write. It's really amazing, all of you that are listening, if you've not gone on and read some of these personal essays. We have some amazing writers in the world, don't we? From young people to the very oldest. You have some teens write in and some young adults that have crafted articles that are pretty amazing. We've had Tracy Hargan on. I just love her. I don't even know how well you know the people that write, but they've been pretty amazing.

Speaker 5: 4:56

I've had 900 writers. It started with Lisa doing most of the writing. She's a New York Times bestselling author, so it was a natural occurrence for her to take that side of things. But now we publish content daily and we're always looking for new voices, and I've loved the people who've written for us, both the experts and sometimes the parent who just has, you know, one really great story to tell. And we happen to know Tracy in real life.

Speaker 4: 5:24

Oh, you do. Oh, that's so funny. So where do you two know each other? Tell us the connection with you two, and then we'll get into the interview.

Speaker 6: 5:31

Third grade with our youngest kids. Like many adults, we met through our children and some of those are the most wonderful friendships, and in this case, both a friendship and a business partnership. We're lucky enough so our younger children were in the same third grade together.

Speaker 4: 5:45

Isn't that something? Well, congratulations to both of you. So we're using this episode to celebrate Mother's Day because we think you're two terrific moms and you've also helped a lot of moms. Tell us what you think about Mother's Day. Do you celebrate Mother's Day in your families? Some people are like, okay, we're done with this, so where are you guys?

Speaker 6: 6:09

in this whole idea of Mother's Day. Lisa, do you want to take that one?

Speaker 5: 6:13

No, I'm going to let you jump in there First of all. I think Mother's Day is a great holiday and I encourage all of your listeners to celebrate it in whatever way works for their family, not only for their children, but also if they have their own mothers or mother-in-laws or important older generation of women in their lives. I think that's one thing that I love about it. I'm lucky enough to have my mother still living. She will be 97, may 57. And she is sharp as a tack and physically a little, maybe slightly, diminished. But it's wonderful to see the connections that our two children have, who are only grandchildren, and that I have with her. That's the piece that I love the most is the multi-generational component of Mother's Day.

Speaker 6: 6:56

Go ahead. I want to go ahead. 280,000 parents in it and there's a lot of conversation about Mother's Day. I think two things really rise to the surface in that conversation. First of all, the number of moms who feel disappointed about Mother's Day. So come the Monday after Mother's Day, we will have a flood of parents coming in, moms coming in saying that Mother's Day wasn't what they hoped to do, and every year other mothers remind them. Tell your kids what you want it to be, make it happen.

Speaker 6: 7:25

Sitting and waiting for our kids to wake up and realize how important this is to us isn't a winning strategy. If you want that brunch, tell the kids we're having brunch. It's Mother's Day. You can give me this, give me your morning, and we're going to do that. So that's one thing that really rises to the surface about Mother's Day. And the second thing that really rises to the surface we just asked parents, I think in the last week, what they want for Mother's Day and it's overwhelming. People want. They want quiet, they want some time, they want a little break, they want to see their kids. The whole thing that gets pushed at us about flowers and gifts and cards. I got nothing against flowers. I have nothing against gifts I love gifts as much as the next person but what we really want is quiet time and family time. The evidence is overwhelming.

Speaker 4: 8:08

I agree with you. I could care less if I ever get flowers or a box of chocolate, but a phone call from my kid, that's really all I want.

Speaker 5: 8:16

So true. We see that in our group, as Lisa said, the Grown and Flown Parents Facebook group.

Speaker 8: 8:20

for people who may be curious what Lisa was referring to, Facebook group for people who may be curious what Lisa was referring to. So I'm super grateful for my mom. She has taught me so much and she is such a special lady. She taught me the difference between being a lady and a woman, so I do love that. One thing that I would say is great advice for any mom is to always remember that your children will remember the things that you say. They are very impactful. So, especially when it comes to appearance as women, we sometimes are very difficult on ourselves about that and I know my mom tended to be a little bit difficult with me about my appearance or what I should do or shouldn't do. So those words were impactful and lasting. But she's a wonderful lady and I thank her.

Speaker 10: 9:48

Mom, I know you're up there looking down at me saying look at you, you're 88 and a half years old and you're still wasting time. No, I'm not wasting time. I'm sending a little love note to you to remind the world what a terrific mother you were and are and you've meant so much to me. And I still remember your words. I still remember your good advice, your good thinking. I love you. Happy Mother's Day, mom.

Speaker 4: 10:20

Okay. So I have noticed a little bit that you're moving a little bit more towards young adults. For a while, you guys were completely teens and college students, but I see more now in the young adult arena. There's a huge difference, don't you find, now that your kids are getting to be young adults, between teens and college and then young adults, You're stepping back even further.

Speaker 6: 10:40

Some of the reason why you might be seeing more of it is that our audience has just come along with us on this journey. So many of them started when they started reading us. They had 13 year olds or 14 year olds, and now those children are much older than they are. One of the things that makes this so difficult is that we struggle to look back on our own experience as being young adults with our parents. So, because of the technology and just because of changing generational norms, we can't really look back at our experience of calling our parents, maybe once a week, maybe sending a letter, if that was in your family's behavior patterns. So we're very much lost and looking for our own ways to connect and to continue conversation with our young adults, and I think that's probably why people feel a little bit. So we're very much lost and looking for our own ways to connect and to continue conversation with our young adults, and I think that's probably why people feel a little bit disoriented and why they look to Grown and Flown for guidance.

Speaker 4: 11:29

And there's very little written about it until this year. Well, I guess, jane, I say walking on eggshells, but very, very little in comparison to what you read now about teens and particularly. I wish I could just tell parents those early years you're reading, reading what's my kid doing at nine months? What's my kid you know? There's thousands and thousands of books we find overwhelmingly from our listeners. They say the hardest part is this young adult time when you are no longer in the picture and yet you have to learn to connect in a less obtrusive way. Does that make any sense? It does.

Speaker 6: 12:02

And many of us may have mentored younger people in the workplace. I think there's a lot of analogy there with our young adults trying to slip into that role of being advisor, sounding board there when they need us. As you say, treading lightly, I feel like it's a little less eggshell. I feel like the eggshell years were very much the teen years where you just didn't know what reaction you were going to get. A lot less of that with our young adults, but they still very much need us. There's a lot of research into this. I know you guys have had a lot of researchers on with you. There's a lot of research in this about how much closer we are with our kids than our parents ever were with us at the same age and how much they still need that guidance, that support, that love, that sort of underpinning in their life that parents can provide.

Speaker 5: 12:47

Sometimes parents of our generation, lisa, have feared that they were doing too much because they feared the branding of oh, I'm harming my children because I'm a helicopter. When we did the research into the book that we wrote that came out in 2019, it showed just the opposite that closeness really was nurturing our kids. It wasn't intrusive. It was something that was supportive to them as they grew up to be independent adults. But I think we do fear this Are we doing too much? Are we doing too little? It really is hard to find the balance all along, all along the ages that you're trying to raise these little kids to be independent. You just are always looking for that line and not cross over it.

Speaker 3: 13:28

Is there anything that stands out to you guys as far as mistakes that parents make as their kids are transitioning into this?

Speaker 5: 13:36

young adult phase. I think maybe not doing what Lisa said, not recognizing that your role really does change as your kids get older. You know that, transitioning into a mentorship role, a sounding board being there not with a quick suggestion but like just a good ear.

Speaker 6: 13:53

I think the other thing is thinking that their world is our world, the number of times where I have said something to my kids and they've had to say, mom, it's not 1993. We're going to need to move on here About. The social norms have changed the way they behave with each other. The romantic norms has changed. When we're not cognizant of that, we're not as helpful to them as we can be. There's a lot of ways we think the world is and some of those are outdated and we need to be really careful that we're looking at the world they're in around careers as well. It's very easy for us to think stay at that job, Don't switch jobs, you don't want to be job hopping. Tons of evidence to show that people move jobs more often, they get better pay. You know, some of the old norms that we knew professionally or personally are out of date and we need to recognize that with our kids.

Speaker 4: 14:39

I find that the very most difficult. Sometimes I don't even know what our young kids are doing today, what their jobs really entail. You have a section on your website now on young adults. We went through it and I'm just going to go quickly down some of the things that you talk about on that website. Kirsten touched on a few of the mistakes. You also have the feathering, the empty nest, I think. Several years ago I read an article in the New York Times that featured Mary Dell working as an architect to reformat her kitchen to accommodate a crowd. Most empty nesters are downsizing, whereas I think in the article you said I'm making it so everyone can come home, and I find that's a really interesting thing. Right now People are saying I'm going to move out of my big house and I'm in this conflicted situation because neither of my kids are here. They may come back. I want to have the space, I don't want the space. What was your thought process when you did that?

Speaker 5: 15:30

Well, first of all, our house is almost 100 years old, so you know, we had done the kitchen 30 years ago and it really looked old. Anyway, we took out one wall and enlarged our island and did some other things, but it's a beautiful space and I have now my daughter, my son, my son's wife, my daughter's fiance, our young adult nephew and, when we're all there, in the old kitchen there were collision courses which meant we were the ones who ended up doing most of the food prep and most of the cleanup. Now there's space for everybody to participate. It's really been a great thing. It was well worth it, but it's also they live in Metro, new York City, where we are, so we do have an opportunity for them to see us much more frequently than we might otherwise.

Speaker 5: 16:14

I was intrigued by your sense of what most empty nesters are doing, so we asked I put a little question in our Facebook group to see if people were really thinking of downsizing. We have almost, I think, lisa. What is it? 280,000 members and 66 of the respondents said that they have not made one change. So, denise, you're in good company if you've not made one change. And then all the other answers were raised. The gamut from selling the house, moving to the beach, you know, expanding the house, moving to a smaller house, moving to where my kids are, but really most people haven't. And our who answered that? Hundreds of people who answered that question? Yeah, every time.

Speaker 4: 16:54

I get concerned about it or think about it. I say my prayers or something and say first world problems. I get a little bit like slap myself in the face kind of thing, because we're fortunate we can make some of those decisions. Some people don't even have those choices. So failure to launch you make your house maybe too comfortable. Sometimes it sounds like your kids are out on their own and everything. But you have a lot about failure to launch on your website, in the Facebook groups. What advice do you give to parents and when they come back home? A lot came back home during COVID how long do you let them stay? Is multi-generational living maybe something that's coming to be healthy and accepted? What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 6: 17:34

One of the things I wish we could take away the word failure, because a couple of things. First of all, kids. The data shows them. I know you've gone over this. Kids are doing everything later. So getting the apartment is later, getting the marriage is later.

Speaker 6: 17:46

Having children all the milestones of adulthood that we saw 30 years ago, 40 years ago, certainly 50 years ago, have all been pushed out later. So when a kid at 25 doesn't have the final job, doesn't have the partner, doesn't have the family or the apartment, they haven't failed at anything. That's just not the norm anymore. So I think we need to get rid of that construct. The other thing I think it's important to think about this whole notion that we would have the wherewithal to buy a place to live, to start a family, to move out, is very much a artifice of the late 20th century. Until that point, in the United States that is not how families constructed themselves, and the rest of the world still doesn't construct themselves that way. So until that point, young married people moved in with one of the parents, they moved in with the parents or they moved in with the in-laws. Nobody had the kind of money or the kind of jobs where they could expect that Our economy did so well and we had such prosperity for some periods during the 20th century, that became available to people at a younger age, but that is certainly not the norm.

Speaker 6: 18:49

So I think if your kids are living with you and they're trying to find their footing with jobs and they don't have a partner yet, you should not look at this. The word failure should not be attached to this. It means that they're still looking for those things Now. If your kid, of course, is sitting playing video games all day and not doing anything to join the adult world, that's perhaps not the best thing. But if they're looking for a job, doing a part-time job, the way kids earn income looks like a lot of different things than it looked like when we were their age Consulting and gig work and different opportunities that they can jump in on that, quite frankly, weren't available to us. Their relationships are different and constructed differently, as we talked about earlier. We need not to take the construct of our world and bring it and impose it on their world. We very much don't look at it as failure and we think it's pretty much okay, and things that keep families close are good things.

Speaker 3: 19:42

Speaking of close, we do have a number of listeners that have written in or called in and their kids live far away and they're feeling very disengaged and lonely. Do you have any advice for those parents?

Speaker 5: 19:56

I think that what's helped me. We aren't always in the same place where our kids are, but we have a very lively family text thread and we have a very lively. My husband doesn't participate in this, he's not really on Instagram but Instagram sharing thread. Probably half of it has to do with Labradors, which are the dogs that our kids grew up with and we still have. We're the only ones with a dog and they miss the dog very much when we're not in town. But it's a way that I feel very close to our kids, without ever having an actual conversation with them or being in the same place. Not to diminish that feeling of being ignored or lonely, using technology to its full advantage is something that I think people should embrace and if you're not on social media or you're not participating in Instagram and that's where your kids are on TikTok, jump in. There's no harm in it and there's potential upside with closeness.

Speaker 4: 20:51

Get with the program. I wanna go back to the failure to launch a minute, because when you said all of this sort of started changing when the economy, I wonder, was there more tolerance If kids moved in with their parents or their in-laws? We'd hear more of it because the angst is on social media. Sometimes it could be the smartest thing they could do. The housing market is crazy. You got four empty bedrooms in your house. What's the big deal? But why is there so much intolerance out there?

Speaker 6: 21:17

I think that the reason is since the housing crisis of 2008,. There's been a steady progression of young people living with their parents more and more, so it's actually now incredibly common. The parents of these young people are the only generation for which that was uncommon, for our parents and their time in a generation that wasn't used to it. If this had happened to our parents or our grandparents, they wouldn't have had it. So I think it's because it happened quickly and it happened in very large numbers, and much of it is what you're saying. Housing costs, compared to what our kids can and do earn, are astronomical. You know, to look at your kid and somehow feel that they're a failure when the economy over the last eight, 12 years hasn't allowed them to do what you could do at the same age, has nothing to do with your child. Your child's doing great. They're doing everything they should be doing.

Speaker 5: 22:11

And let's layer on the housing costs, on college debt. You know, really people are financially in not great shape to be able to buy their own first home. People are financially in not great shape to be able to buy their own first home. I think one benefit of COVID is that it did kind of break these norms of where people live and how they spend their time. And certainly I don't know about you two, but we had our young adults living with us off and on in various places and their friends and partners and nephew, and it was actually really kind of amazing that we had this opportunity. I think, in a way, I would hope that people would be more tolerant and more open minded about different, again multi-generational living options than they might have before COVID.

Speaker 9: 22:57

Happy Mother's Day, mom. I just want to say that I love sharingital stuff and problems with home, because that's my dad and you're my therapist, but I don't want to be your therapist. Anyway, happy Mother's Day.

Speaker 3: 23:41

One of the things that I was just thinking about is, you know, it brings up this idea of having to reestablish all these rules again. You've had this period of time where you've been empty nesters whatever you want to call it and you've got this quiet and this peace. And then they all come back and you really do have to reestablish what are those rules, what are the boundaries? We're all living together. How do we make this work collectively?

Speaker 6: 24:05

Those rules might include your kids paying you something. This may not be a free option to them. It may just be a less expensive option to them. For families who are struggling with their own mortgages, having a young adult who's able to earn some money should probably be helping out in some way food costs, utilities, rent in some small way. So every family is going to have to find that place that works for them, both financially and in terms of the rules of people's lives and how they can continue to live together.

Speaker 4: 24:33

Right, I love this and I hope we've opened the door to being more tolerant and accepting of this. You know, if your child's still living with you, people look at you and say, hmm, you know that it's not by choice, it's that they've failed. When you look around the world Italy, greece, japan, china everybody lives together as an intergenerational family. There's something to be said for multiple generations living together. It's a pretty rich experience, I think. All right, let's move to money. We were sort of talking about it a little bit.

Speaker 4: 25:03

This is really a source of conflict. Some parents do have a lot of money and can give their kids a down payment for their house. Many cannot. The kids are stuck or whatever. Everyone's stuck. But a lot of situations where parents are paying for lawyers when the kids get in trouble. Down payments on houses first, and last month's rent cell phone. The Pew Research study said that most of the kids, even into their 30s, are still on the cell phone and streaming because they think the parents are lazy and don't want to change. I'll be honest both of my kids are on my cell phone plan and they're both doing well, but it's such a good plan I just don't even want to mess it up. So when do you stop? How do you stop? Are there phases in stopping? We're always trying to save them.

Speaker 6: 25:45

Of course it's different for every family because every family is in different financial situations To what we were just talking about. You may need your kid to help you with rent, and they certainly should. I think the rule of thumb here, if there is one, is having them have some skin in the game. So, whatever it is, like you, my children are on my cell phone plan and they're on my cell phone plan because they can't get the plan that we have and I should probably and I'm going to admit this right here, I should probably have them paying some part of that. They should not be freeloading on my cell phone plan. So, whatever it is, if your kid let's use the example you just gave if your kid got a DUI and paying for a lawyer is beyond their means, you really don't want them to not have a good lawyer and whatever help they need in the situation they've got into. But they certainly should have some responsibility for what they did. They brought this on themselves and the cost of what they did. So while you may not want them to just pay for whatever they can afford, because it may put them in a very bad situation, but it doesn't mean they pay nothing. So the answer is never all or nothing is the point I'm making.

Speaker 6: 26:45

Whatever it is that you're helping with them, try and make sure that they have some responsibility as well. This is how you know. The whole thing's a transition, everything's a transition. We're trying to get them more and more and more to have adult responsibility. So if you're helping them with their rent, you're not paying their whole rent. They need to pay something. If they can afford 20% of their rent, have them pay that. If you're helping them with 20%, that's even better. If they can pay 80%, try and find those places where they are taking adult responsibility, adult financial responsibility, even if they can't pay for everything.

Speaker 5: 27:16

I think, a time to do this, and I don't know how many of your listeners still have kids in college, but that college price tag is massive. It will be the single biggest thing that most families pay for outside of their homes. If you have not already begun to have these conversations with how much we're all contributing, how much we can contribute, to college, this is absolutely the time to start doing it. So many parents neglect that piece. They send their kid to the best school that they got into because they don't want to hurt their feeling. You know they want them to have that dream school experience at the detriment of their own financial well-being Robbing their retirement accounts, for instance, to pay for their kid's college education, or going further into debt with a parent plus loan Backing that up even into high school.

Speaker 5: 28:01

And beginning to have those frank conversations about what we, as your parents, can afford to help you with in life and what you really need to be able to work for. Take out your own government loan for. Think about a less expensive college. That's definitely the time to begin to have those frank conversations. And then what Lisa's talking about with God forbid a DUI or a down payment or things that may come later in life. It may not be as shocking to your kid to hear that you really need them to participate in this discussion on what to pay for.

Speaker 4: 28:37

Yeah, that's really good.

Speaker 3: 28:38

Do you think we should be sharing our financial situation with our kids?

Speaker 4: 28:44

How much should they know about us? I guess financially, at what age?

Speaker 5: 28:48

I know Lisa and I have both said this it really varies depending on the family. I think there are ways to sort of approach it. Certainly there is a baton pass when your kid turns 18. And there are certain documents that they need to sign and they need to take responsibility for. Maybe that is the time when you also need to sit with them, if you haven't before, and say you know, dad and I have a will, we have made provisions for for you all. In certain ways, we're still working, contributing to our retirement plan. Kind of give them big picture. That would be my suggestion.

Speaker 6: 29:23

If you don't want to give your kids minute information about your financial situation. Some of that actually depends on how mature your kids are. Young adults mature at vastly different rates and understand money at different rates. The conversation about what we can and cannot afford may be where the conversation begins. You know this is outside of our family's budget. A vacation like that is not available to us and our family can't afford it. As Marydell said, towards college, we have these funds available and beyond that it's going to be loans or different colleges. So talking to them about what is and is not in our family's budget in a more granular way is maybe a first step to beginning that conversation.

Speaker 4: 30:01

Yeah, this whole college thing is really scaring me when I open the paper and see a hundred thousand dollars a year now for college. That's a year's salary for many, many, many people.

Speaker 3: 30:11

Well, it's also a salary that they're not going to attain for a number of years, depending on what they go into, and that's just with. An undergraduate degree may be required, depending on what they do, for a master's right or or beyond. It's a real problem, right?

Speaker 4: 30:28

Okay, let's move on to love. And we've asked this question a few times in certain episodes, but I keep hearing it over and over again. I was just with someone recently that literally sent to me okay, I finally accepted, she's going to marry him. What do you do when you know in your heart of although no one ever really knows, but you think in your heart of hearts this is not good, Is it? None of your business?

Speaker 6: 30:54

I suggest we all start by being a little humbled by how little we know about what works and what doesn't work, the number of times I have thought that some friend or somebody I know well was in the perfect relationship and the next thing I hear is they're getting a divorce. So there's two things we don't understand from the outside what other people's relationships work or not, and we also don't understand what other people need from those relationships, since we all need very, very different things from our long-term relationships, slash marriages. So the first thing is just to be humble about it and admit that the longer we live, the more we realize we don't know anything and the answer is you have to be quiet. There's no choice. You are going to have a relationship with that person that you may or may not have thought was a good idea, and those words will never go away. You want them not to come out of your mouth. Never go away. You want them not to come out of your mouth.

Speaker 5: 31:42

So bite your tongue.

Speaker 4: 31:43

Bite your tongue.

Speaker 5: 31:44

And your podcast is what everybody should just have going through their mind. When they want to say something negative Because what do you expect your adult child to do Are they going to say, oh sure, mom, you know, I'd much rather satisfy you and not marry this person I'm in love with. That's a very quick way to be estranged from your child, as well as their partner, to be and heaven forbid, you're estranged from future grandchildren too. So there's a lot of riding on this relationship.

Speaker 3: 32:12

I have one little caveat to that. What if they ask? What if they ask your opinion? What do you think about blah? What I mean Do you like her Right, Do you like, do you like her?

Speaker 6: 32:26

How do you answer that? Change the conversation. So no, I don't know. I don't mean the subject. I don't mean the subject. Turn it around and say it's not about whether I like her or not, it's about what you want and need in your life and whether this person helps you and gives you those things. So talk to me, say to your kid, talk to me about that. What is it that you want from a relationship, and does he or she help give you that and does that satisfy you and make you happy? And then you turn to your kid and say I'm not living with this person. My goal in life is to hope that you're happy. So have the conversation, but our approval in a sense, as we're all saying, doesn't matter. It's not. That's not the conversation. So when they ask it, turn the conversation around and ask them if they're getting what they need in a relationship sort of go into sounding board mode.

Speaker 5: 33:14

As hard as that is, it is not easy.

Speaker 6: 33:18

Yeah, if they press and press and press you and you do see that your kid is happy in this relationship, even though you feel that there are perhaps thorns and roadblocks in them, you can honestly say I am happy this person makes happy and when I think about him or her and think about how he or she makes you happy, I very much feel good towards this person. You can say positive things. It doesn't have to be. I think this is a great idea. You know full steam ahead. You can find positive things to say, couched in terms of your child finding what they need.

Speaker 11: 33:52

I lost my beautiful 90-year-old mother last July to pancreatic cancer. My mom taught by example how to be loving, kind and patient. She taught me the importance of helping others and she oh-so-wisely told me when I was a discouraged 12-year-old girl that you can always wear a padded bra, but you can never wear a padded brain. I got through four years of college in two and a half and, as a young adult, asked her why she didn't tell me to slow down and enjoy those years. She said because you wouldn't have listened. She was a world-class mom, but I think she should have tried harder.

Speaker 3: 34:30

With your own parenting both of you. Are there things that you wish you had done differently? Own parenting, both of you.

Speaker 5: 34:37

Are there things that you wish you had done differently? Yes, of course we made I well, I'll speak just for myself, but I know Lisa and I have shared many anecdotes through the years about things that we wish we would have done differently. Some are really small and trivial and others that are more substantive. I think I, with my first child I was probably you know, he was my training wheels child, as all of our first children are and I was probably much more kind of, involved and over functioning with him, but he also had a different personality and different approach to his you know things he needed to accomplish than our younger child.

Speaker 6: 35:10

I think one of the mistakes I made is I have three sons is when something worked with one child, I then did it with the next child, and my kids, like many people's children, are very, very different from each other, and when it backfired, I looked at them sort of blankly, as opposed to not assuming that anything was. There were no rules. Every child is different. I need to adapt my parenting. I think I wasn't quite as adaptable no, I wasn't quite as adaptable as I should have been with a kid who was very different. You give yourself a little pat on the back. That worked. I'm going to do it again.

Speaker 7: 35:40

And you do it again, and you think what's wrong with this kid?

Speaker 6: 35:42

Well, there's nothing wrong with the kid. You have a different child and you're not changing your strategy.

Speaker 5: 35:46

Right. I think there's also been so much study and research about the teenage brain and brain development. Had I known then, when my oldest was just entering the teenage years, about that, I would have probably put his development into more of a context, a scientific context. That would have really helped me understand why he may have taken certain risks or what was behind all of that. Or you know, he wasn't. It wasn't like you're a super risky kid. That is something that especially teenage boys are like. He's seeking missiles for risk and I didn't really fully appreciate why that was and I would just say how could you possibly thought that was a good idea?

Speaker 6: 36:28

I also think one of the big mistakes we make and I certainly made this one is trying to undo my mistakes with them, so things that I wished I had done, choices I wished I had made, I tried, a life I wished I had lived. I tried to push them towards that You're not to live out your mistakes and your misgivings and your regrets in their lives. These are their lives, they're not your lives, and I struggled with understanding that as they were going through.

Speaker 4: 37:01

And that's huge overall. Even now, they're their lives and not your life, whether they're two or 32. I want to move to something that's very close to my heart and again we've asked about it before, but I love to get different opinions. Spirituality this is a big thing. Right now, many, many young people are moving away from the church.

Speaker 5: 37:14

I wonder how do parents deal with this? Back to the pandemic. You know churchgoing has really not recovered from the pandemic. I think, for better or for worse, church attendance across the board has really just continued to fall Again. It's a landmine your values, the way you were brought up and what may be important to you spiritually, on a couple, on your adult child, or if they're in a marriage or relationship or if they're grandchildren. It's something they really have to sort through. You can offer your advice, you can invite them to Christmas Eve services if they're visiting, but it's really up to them to make that plan for themselves, which of course you know. But what you're talking about, denise, is sort of the heartache that goes involved with that.

Speaker 4: 38:02

I really want to hear what you have to say, lisa, but some parents this spirituality is really really important to them and to see your child not go in that direction, I think it causes some estrangement and I think if we can do anything, we have to encourage parents to let their kids take their own journey. I don't know. How do you feel, lisa?

Speaker 6: 38:23

I think you're absolutely right. We have to encourage them to take their own journey, and I think what you said at the beginning is also important to remember is really is fundamentally different in their generation. The numbers are really clear. So, again, what we've talked about a couple of times is not bringing them back to the 1990s, because they will never be there, and not taking the values of what might've been the 1970s or the 80s or 90s, or our parents' world even earlier, and bringing it into this world. If your child is walking away from, maybe, the religion that they were brought up on, they're the norm rather than the exception, actually, and we need to remember that. I think, yep, that's really true.

Speaker 12: 39:03

My mom is like the true backbone of our family. She means the world to me and she's always checking in to see how I'm doing. She's someone who I can go to for anything and she'll always listen. My mom is a true giver and puts herself second to everyone else and makes sure those around her are always doing alright. I'm just very lucky to have a mom who cares so much about me and our family and my friends.

Speaker 13: 39:31

What our mom means to us is someone that provides constant support and comfort and someone that is always there for us when we need her. Yeah, and our mom is a very giving and passionate person. She started a non-profit and so she really has, you know, relayed that to Sarah and I, always growing up and teaching us to be compassionate people and have empathy for others, and we're just so lucky that we have a mom like ours. We love her so much. And happy Mother's Day to everyone who celebrates.

Speaker 4: 40:04

Okay, one last big question and this is really a big one and we have an episode coming up on this but want your take on this. There's a lot of more difficult situations facing young adults. I don't know if you've read Judith Smith's book Mothering Difficult Children. There was a big article in the New York Times but it's a really wonderful book about the very difficult young adults or even teenagers mental health, drug abuse, alcohol addiction, this fear of suicide. They're away from you. You sense they're depressed. I think what they say is boys. If they're going to be schizophrenic, it's usually between 19 and 20, something, 24. So they're in college. You're not around. Any advice for parents when they're struggling with this or staying on top of it. This is a tough one.

Speaker 6: 40:46

We certainly are not mental health experts. I don't want to step into a place where we have no expertise. We have spoken to a lot of mental health experts and one of the things is to touch on something Mary Dell said earlier that parents are so worried about being helicopter parents and don't want to over-function when your kid goes off to college. They are in a world full of strangers who do not know them and they will not pick up on sort of quieter signals that something's wrong. If you sense that something's wrong, act. Don't ignore it. Their roommate met them six weeks ago and does not know them. Their friends are brand new and aren't going to understand if there's a problem.

Speaker 6: 41:23

So I think parents very much need to trust their own instincts they know their kids better than anyone and don't let that over-parenting thing you know that sit on your shoulder and tell you they're all grown up. If you're concerned about their mental health, urge them to act and speak to them. That's the one thing that we see that parents are concerned whether they are overstepping, and there's nothing more important than their mental health. So you're not overstepping. You wouldn't think twice, if they were ill with a physical ailment, of giving them advice, urging them to see a doctor, making sure they got the care, following up and say did you make that appointment? Did you go? Since you wouldn't, if they had a sore throat or they had some other ailment, you wouldn't hesitate. Don't hesitate around their mental health as well.

Speaker 5: 42:08

It's much harder when they're not. You don't see them every morning when they come down for breakfast, when they're going off to high school. But we have I hope we've developed kind of a sixth sense a little bit. Obviously, parents Weekend is a great opportunity to go and, if you can go and check, see them with your own eyes. But we see this a lot, just so that parents know that they are not alone If they both have concerns about their kids' well-being. I think the colleges are now much more attuned to helping parents and students find the help and support that they need. I think the conversation is much more open. It doesn't have to be a hidden one about making sure that your kid has the mental health support that they need, you know.

Speaker 6: 42:52

Denise for our book. I interviewed the head of student health services at Columbia University, who's very much an expert on student mental health in every aspect, and I said something about parents don't want to get in the way they don't want. She said I am happy to hear from parents if they have some level of concern about something that's going on on this campus. She said I have a level of concern about what's going on and when. They can give me a piece of information that I don't have. Maybe your kid has had an episode like this before. Maybe they're following a pattern that you've seen this pattern before. Of course, your school hasn't seen this pattern before. She said those pieces of information are invaluable to me, so parents should not hesitate.

Speaker 4: 43:31

That's really really good advice, and I'll give a little plug for Grown and Flown. Here there's a lot of columns. Tracy Hargan's column on her son is a wonderful, wonderful column and we'll link that in our episode notes too. I think there's a lot of help in listening to other people's experience and advice you get from them. Walking the walk, kirsten, why don't you ask the last, the takeaways?

Speaker 3: 43:55

So at the end of every episode, we do like to ask our guests to give us two or three takeaways that you think would be important for our listeners. Could you share a couple of those?

Speaker 5: 44:04

I think the name of your podcast is at the top of the list. We've talked about some of the places where you have to bite your tongue. I think it's biting your tongue in terms of answering your kids' questions with what you want them to do and learning to be. You know, just keep your mouth shut. Learning to be the soundboard. Lisa had this idea and I think it's really brilliant, like if you're trying to think of how to help your kid in a tough situation, almost like think about okay, this is like a family friend's kid, this is a nephew, somebody who obviously care a great deal about. But maybe you can take the emotion out of it If you think that it's maybe not your flesh and blood that you're giving an answer to, but definitely you got to buy your time when you're, you know, blunder. You're about to blunder in with giving your opinion when it's not being asked.

Speaker 6: 44:52

The other thing we talk about in our book is this is the longest relationship you're going to have with your child. We spent a lot of time as we talked about at the beginning of this conversation. There's a lot on the internet about the zero to 18. And there's it's a lot of focus on the zero to 18. And, of course, there's good reason for that. But the longest relationship, hopefully, is the 18 plus, hopefully, the many, many, many decades of a relationship. So work as hard on this relationship and think about it as building it. The same way you did when they were tiny. You're going to build a new relationship and that relationship is going to last for decades, we hope, and put the same sort of effort and thinking and focus and caring and researching and everything that you did when they were little, because this one is as important Boy, that's wonderful.

Speaker 4: 45:40

Great. Thank you both so much for giving us this time. Thank you for inviting us.

Speaker 6: 45:45

It was such a pleasure to talk to you both.

Speaker 3: 45:48

Great Thank you to both of you for doing this today. It really meant a lot to us. Your resource is tremendous for so many different people and you are right that we need more of this. We need to be talking about all of this stuff. It makes it easier for all of us.

Speaker 14: 46:07

I talked to my mom probably like three or four times a week, but I feel like for me, I try to talk to her a little bit more often just because my parents are getting older, and I feel like for me, I try to talk to her a little bit more often just because my parents are getting older and I feel like I really value the amount of time that I do get to have with them. Two pieces of advice you would give parents Listen, sometimes we don't want advice, we just want to feel heard. Mother's Day message to your mom. Thank you to my mom. She actually recently helped me with my job. She was in a video for me and I'm very grateful because I made her reshoot a lot of times and she was so sweet going through it all, even though this was probably not my dream job for her, but it is mine.

Speaker 7: 46:48

I think once my mom and I set healthy boundaries, our conversations are much more friendly and we just talk about catching up with each other's lives. And so we we have much longer conversations, like an hour to an hour and a half, and it just feels so much easier that way. Happy Mother's Day, mom. You're the best.

Speaker 4: 47:10

So that's a wrap. Thank you so much to Mary Dell and Lisa. They are really two women to be reckoned with. I know some of the questions we've asked before, but it was nice to get their viewpoint. They've been in this for so long. Sometimes, you know, Kirsten, we talk about this, but the repetition helps us remember. That's why I do those rewind episodes, because you forget and you need to put it into practice. I really thank them. I thought it was terrific.

Speaker 3: 47:34

I also think sometimes you hear something one day and it didn't necessarily jive, but then you hear it again, said a little bit differently, and all of a sudden it means something to you. So I thought it was great. I love the resources, I love what they're doing, just having the conversation. We talk about that with so many different topics, but really that is something that should carry through everything, whether it's parenting or mental health or our own health, whatever we should be talking about everything. We're all having the life experience.

Speaker 4: 48:09

We are. Why not share? And I love the way she said it isn't failure to launch.

Speaker 12: 48:14

It's a journey.

Speaker 4: 48:16

Anyway, thank you so much to our listeners. Happy Mother's Day for you mothers celebrating. Thanks to Connie Gorn-Fisher, our extraordinary audio engineer. Again, I want to thank everyone for supporting our work. Remember, you can log on to our website BiteYourTonguePodcastcom. You can buy us a cup of coffee for five bucks or you can become a sustaining member. If you do it a year in advance, it's 50 bucks. If you do $5 a month, it ends up being $60. And we always want to hear from you. Please, you go to our website biteyourtonguepodcastcom. You can either email us or there's a little microphone. Send us your message. We are going to do a question and answer episode at our very last episode for season three.

Speaker 3: 48:58

Send us your questions and remember sometimes you just have to bite your tongue.

Speaker 12: 49:04

Thank you.