Bite Your Tongue: The Podcast
Did you ever expect being the parent of an adult child would be so difficult? Introducing "Bite Your Tongue," a look at exploring that next chapter in parenting: building healthy relationships with adult children. From money and finance to relationships and sibling rivalry, we cover it all. Even when to bite your tongue! Join your hosts Denise Gorant and Kirsten Heckendorf as they bring together experts, parents and even young adults to discuss this next phase of parenting. We will chat, have some fun and learn about ourselves and our kids along the way! RSSVERIFY
Bite Your Tongue: The Podcast
Season 3, Episode 81 Bonus Rewind When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us
Ever felt the sting of disappointment when your adult children don't quite live up to your dreams for them? Join us in a special rewind episode where we sit down with the insightful Jane Adams, PhD, author of "When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us." Jane unpacks the emotional rollercoaster that many parents experience, offering her personal story and expert advice for letting go and allowing children to grow into their unique identities. Her years as a social psychologist and parent coach shine through, providing listeners with practical strategies to foster authentic and loving relationships with their adult kids.
We also tackle the heavy burden of parental guilt, especially in extreme situations like incarceration or drug addiction. We delve into the difference between guilt and regret, encouraging parents to support their children healthily without being consumed by unwarranted guilt. Setting boundaries and providing structured support are key themes as we also touch on the complexities of financial support and sibling rivalry. We wrap up by engaging our listeners for feedback and suggestions, stressing the importance of open communication within families. Tune in for a comforting and enlightening episode that promises to reshape your perspective on parenting adult children.
Huge thank you to Connie Gorant Fisher, our audio engineer.
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Hey everyone, this is Denise. Before we start today's episode, I just want you to know for the next few episodes we're going to do some episode rewinds, meaning playing episodes that we've done earlier that we think are really terrific and deserve a second listen. The first one is with Jane Adams, who's a PhD and author of the book when Our Growing Kids Disappoint Us, letting go of their problems, loving them anyway and getting of the book. When Our Growing Kids Disappoint Us, letting Go of their Problems, loving them Anyway and Getting On With Our Lives. Give them a chance to grow up. Jane says, before you make judgments and you know, we all know our dreams for our children begin as soon as they're placed in our arms. How can we let go and let them be who they are as they grow up? I hope you enjoy this episode. Let's get going.
Speaker 2:Well, some of it is a bit of narcissism. You know we still think of our children as belonging to us, as an extension of us. You know, when they're not first in their class graduating from Harvard, or they don't have the great job with whomever, it's like we've suffered a narcissistic injury. But in most cases it's not that as much as the fact that, you know, we haven't been able to let our dreams for them go. And the dreams begin the moment the doctor puts them in our arms. It starts so early. I mean, give your kids a chance to grow up before you make a judgment about who they are.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Bite your Tongue podcast. I'm Denise and I'm joined by my good friend, dr Ellen Broughton. We've been through many years of parenting together and now we're ready to talk about the ins and outs of parenting adult children. Your diapering days are over. Now it's time to consider when to bite your tongue. So let's get started. Hello everyone, it's a beautiful fall morning in Denver and I'm so happy to welcome all of you to another episode of Bite your Tongue.
Speaker 1:Today we're talking about disappointment in our adult children. What happens when you've given it your all, you've raised your kids and now you find yourself a bit disappointed in things like the lifestyle they've chosen, the partner they've chosen, or something worse? Today we're welcoming Jane Adams, phd. Jane is the author of the book when Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us Letting Go of their Problems, loving them Anyways and Getting On With Our Lives. This is a tough and we're thrilled that Jane has agreed to speak with us.
Speaker 1:She's also a parent coach, so actually she's the coach the parenting coach for all of our listeners, listeners of adult children. Her website says being a parent doesn't end. It lasts as long as you do. She is a social psychologist who studies how we handle our kids' transitions from youth to adulthood on time, late, or maybe they just haven't even gotten there. She's been interviewing, researching and coaching parents who want their grown kids to be happy and successful in life, but also want a mutual, loving and authentic relationship with them even more. You know, ellen. When we had our babies we thought you know we'd raise them and that would be it. But parenting never seems to end. What do you think?
Speaker 3:Oh, that is so true. And when we had those babies we thought there was nothing they could ever do that would disappoint us. Nothing we couldn't even imagine there were things that would happen that would make us anxious, other than maybe ear infections. We couldn't imagine there were ways that they could really make us very unhappy and very worried that lasted until they were two right.
Speaker 1:Maybe more, maybe more.
Speaker 3:So welcome, jane, and I would love for you to tell us a little bit more about yourself and why you decided to study this time in parenting, since we are all in desperate need of it at one time or another.
Speaker 2:Well, because I was in desperate need of it too. My kids are now grown and flown, and on their own, and a delight to me. But it took a lot of years after they were grown and flown before we got to that point. I'm a life stage psychologist. I'm always interested in the psychosocial aspects of each stage of our life and I've also found that if I don't know what I'm doing, the best thing to do is to get paid to go out and find out. And so I've written books about most stages of parenting, beginning when they were eight or nine, with a book called Sex and the Single Parent, because I was a single parent and I didn't know how to be a sexual person after all those years and not screw up my kids' future forever. So I went out and I talked to the experts and I talked to a lot of people who were dealing with it and figured it out and wrote that book. And since then, at every kind of key stage of my life where I've had an issue, I've been lucky enough to find a publisher who thought other people would be going through that too.
Speaker 2:And when I came up with the book we're talking about today, when Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us. It was really the follow-up to a book I had written some years before called I'm Still your Mother, when my kids were very young adults they were in college and what I heard from people whenever I spoke and wrote or did a lecture about that subject, people would always line up afterward and say can I talk to you privately? And they always wanted to talk about their kids who were problems. I had one kid who was getting to be a problem at that point and she was 25. And I decided to do the same thing I'd always done go out and find out how other people dealt with it, talk to the experts and write about it, although by this time I had gotten a PhD in social psychology and I was the expert. So it helped, but not as much as common sense helped.
Speaker 1:You know this might give some hope to some of our listeners because you said something in that introduction of yourself that your kids now are grown and flown and on their own, but it took some time. What do you think, those emerging stages, those ages in those emerging years that cause the most anxiety for parents, and are we rushing our kids to become adults, or what's changed that we get so anxious?
Speaker 2:I think we start, unless they have significant issues addiction, dependence, depression when they're in college. We start getting worried when, after they're finished with school, they don't seem to be getting a grip, they don't seem to be launching, and we begin to worry about whether grip they don't seem to be launching and we begin to worry about whether they'll be latched on to us forever, whether they'll ever be independent. And that's one of the things that troubles a lot of parents whose kids say they're independent and think they're independent, and the parents are still, you know, they're still on our phone plan. We're still the first resort rather than the last one when they need money or bailing out of some problem. And so the overwhelming feeling that many of these parents have is something we don't like to admit, which is that we're disappointed in our kids and we're disappointed in how they turned out if they're not doing everything on schedule without any major problems. And we feel guilty about being disappointed because this isn't supposed to be about us. It's supposed to be about them, but our feelings range from anger to frustration, to worry, to, ultimately, disappointment.
Speaker 2:I went out to talk to people whose kids had not turned out quite as well as they'd expected.
Speaker 2:I was one of them at that point because my 26-year-old married, happy daughter had developed a drug problem, and most of us also, when our kids get to be 21 or 22, are in no position to impose our will on them. If they really need hospitalization for something we can't do, that we have about the same influence as ex-presidents. The book is really more about coming to terms with who your kids are, loving them anyway, learning whose problems there are, letting go of the problems that are not ours and very few of the problems they have as adults are ours. In fact, I can't think of any unless they're really physically disabled and we need to take care of them any problems that are ours and getting on with our own lives. And we get stuck in this cycle of anger, disappointment, unhappiness, worry, and it keeps us from getting on with our own lives because there's still so much a part of it and because our relationship with them is not mutual or interdependent, but they're dependent and we're the ones they depend on and we're also not feeling great about it.
Speaker 3:Let me start by asking you about one of the easiest things from that list that you just gave us, about why this is so hard? And I think the easiest one but maybe this isn't, maybe this is just me the easiest one is to get on with our own lives. Do you think that's true?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's absolutely true, because A there's very little we can do for them right now. We can immerse ourselves in their problems, but we can't solve their problems. I remember when I went to a drug program with my daughter and she said Mom, stay out of my program. Well, she was doing well by then and I learned I stayed out of her program. I didn't ask her about what she was doing. We didn't talk about it. There's so little that we can do except to be there to pick them up when they fall and stand them back on their own two feet rather than cradling them in our arms for the rest of their lives. So it's essential that we learn to let go of their problems and get on with their own lives and put our energy there and our resources. You know, so many of us have spent so much of the money we counted on living on in retirement for our grown kids for bailing them out of trouble not just bailing them out of financial trouble, but bailing them out of all kinds of things that cost money.
Speaker 1:You know, ellen, I'm going to sort of differ with you. I think that whole step of getting on with your own life can be very difficult. And one of the things you addressed in your book, jane, is there are some parents that have nothing more, like they've put everything into their parenting and they can't seem to let go. So I think it's very difficult if your child is in drug rehab and your daughter says get out of my program. Mom, I applaud you for then not following up with questions. You know, three weeks later, how are you doing? How are you doing? And I think somewhere in your book you said something about we can't separate. I mean you need to, but it's a really hard job to separate them from us. It's important, but how does a parent do that if they can't make that step?
Speaker 2:Well, I think we find ways to stay in touch with them that don't deal with their problem. When my daughter was at the height of her problem, it was difficult, but occasionally we went to a movie, we went out for dinner and I didn't say anything, because being with her and letting her know I loved her, even though I couldn't help her, was important to both of us. I wasn't letting go of her, I was just letting go of her problem.
Speaker 3:But I think part of it also is that so many parents don't have a life outside their own children. They don't have an identity. Their identity is I am a mother. That's true, I am a father and so they need to find their own identity, and I do find that it's helpful for adult children and children of all ages really to have parents who have an identity.
Speaker 2:It's very important, but it isn't. You know, it was never our kids' role, once they left home, to provide us with an alternate identity or another role. That's our problem. That's our role is to find another one. And the other thing that many parents don't know when their kids are in their 20s is that once they are finally ultimately fully engaged in their adult lives, when they have a career rather than a job, when they have a family rather than an assortment of come and go lovers, they don't want to be in our lives. They don't want to spend that much time with us. They've got really busy lives of their own, regardless of whether they have problems.
Speaker 1:Right and when we look back to our own lives, we were just like that and I think what you said, Alan, is exactly right. But there's a lot of parents that gave 150% to raising their children. The children leave and they have no idea how to pick up. And that might just be a whole nother episode, because I think I remember when I had my daughter and all of my attention 192% was on her and I think it was damaging. When I had my son, I thought the best gift I gave her was having my son, because then she only got 50% or 70%. And you know, I feel like that's the exact same thing. When they become young adults, the best gift we can give them is for us to have rich individual lives. That's true.
Speaker 2:One of the things we find out when our kids leave home, when we have devoted all of our time and attention to them, is that we have nothing to say to our spouses if they're still with us.
Speaker 2:And not only have we been totally wrapped up in our mother role, but we've also begun to see them only as a partner in parenting, not as friend, lover, spout, not as those other things. And they've begun to see us only as a mother, not a lover, a partner, a friend. We've talked around them, we've talked over them, but we haven't talked to each other directly. I've found that for many of the clients that I deal with, the idea that they only see the other person as a partner in child rearing is a big surprise to them, and some of them you know one of them did a marriage enrichment weekend, which she said was better than their honeymoon. They had really beginning to discover each other again. Some couples look at each other and say you know well, we've done that and there's really nothing else holding us together and separate them. It's a really critical time.
Speaker 1:It's a very critical time. You see a lot of divorces happening around that time.
Speaker 2:Well, and you see just as many happening in a child's first year of college, which is, for your child's sake, the most dangerous time to divorce.
Speaker 1:Why do you say that Well?
Speaker 2:because many of them think that if they come home from college they can make mommy and daddy together again, or that their parents will be unable the parent who's remaining the mother usually will be unable to manage without them. It's a major reason that kids drop out of college in their first semester. The living arrangements and the marital arrangements until the end of their first year of college. You're going to do less damage to them In fact you probably won't do any, because they will be in their own lives now that makes sense Makes sense On the other hand too.
Speaker 3:I think that that time of transition can also be the other way, very hard on marriages, to the point where a lot of marriages don't survive through the 20s and the college years, when the child can't really make it. Sometimes it brings them together, but it also is a hard time for couples to manage.
Speaker 2:One of the interesting things to me I found when I talked to parents about their kids coming back home. It's usually the mother that doesn't want them back home. She's done her child. This is assuming their kid doesn't have many problems except no job or dropping out of college. And the mother says, you know, I've been there, done that. It's the father who says, oh, now that they're old enough to be decent company, let them come home. You know, why should she pay for an apartment when we've got a perfectly nice room here? And it's the fathers, much more than the mothers, who want their kids back when they boomerang back home.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to say something very sexist here. It could be because the mom did most of the housekeeping and all of that while they were growing up and the dad thinks, oh, they're home. That doesn't mean more food, more cooking, more laundry. It just means I get to enjoy them where the mother's thinking, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:No, it's actually. It's a very gender-related issue. It's not sexist, it's just. That's the difference between fathers and mothers. You know, and many of the fathers, by the time their kids are in their twenties, many of the fathers are close to retirement, they've got lots of time on their hands and their wives are busy either taking up a career they put away or starting something new. You know, they've invested in their lives as adults without children, as adults who are not caretakers and they don't want to be waiting up until you know, to hear the car come in or picking up after their. You know they don't want to do those things anymore. They've done them.
Speaker 1:So I want to talk a little bit about this whole idea of disappointment, because you say something in your book about where your expectations overblown Are. You, you know? Is it narcissism? Is it our problem or their problem? You know you can have a really tough situation your child's in jail, your child's having drug issues, but your child didn't go to medical school like you expected or law school like you expected and you're harboring disappointment. Where does disappointment lie and why do some parents feel very disappointed, even when the child might be living a pretty happy life?
Speaker 2:Well, some of it is a bit of narcissism. You know we still think of our children as belonging to us, as an extension of us. You know, when they're not first in their class graduating from Harvard, or they don't have the great job with whomever, it's like we've suffered a narcissistic injury, but in most cases it's not that as much as the fact that, you know, we haven't been able to let our dreams for them go. And the dreams begin the moment the doctor puts them in our arms. So true, you know, we think about names in terms of how they'll look on a political poster or, in my case, a book jacket. You know it starts so early. We may raise a child who isn't the least bit interested in math and science but is a great reader and writer, and we can't let go of our dreams that he become a doctor or she become a doc, and maybe they've got a job at Target while they're writing a book in their spare time and we still are thinking that they're not fulfilling their potential. Well, they are, but it's their dreams and they may have a different dream for themselves. One of the hard things to do is to separate your dreams for your child with his or her dreams for themselves. Sometimes it's nice to ask you know, where do you see yourself in five years or in 10 years? If you could design the perfect life, what would it look like? And you need to ask those questions in order to say, okay, I guess I better put that dream away. But our expectation is certainly that they be the happy, productive, generous, civic-minded, educated adults that we raise them to be and we did.
Speaker 2:We were the first generation and we invested much more in it at a psychic as well as a financial level and time level, than the parents of the greatest generation did Then. You know, parents in the 50s and 60s did? I mean, as far as they were concerned, if they raised us reasonably and could educate us and get us out the door, they'd done their job. They didn't really think about being a. They knew what a bad parent was. You know. A bad parent was intentionally neglectful or abusive. They weren't that. They did the best they could and while they had dreams for us, mostly they were dreams that we'd be able to support ourselves. Because they were the children of the depression we wanted our kids to be much able to do much more than support themselves. We wanted them to be happy and you know, happy is not. It's not that our parent, my own parents, wanted me to be unhappy. They just didn't think being happy was the most important takeaway in adulthood.
Speaker 3:Well, it's also delusional. Like happy is an emotion. Happy is not an aspiration. You know and I hear this. It's also delusional. Like happy is an emotion. Happy is not an aspiration. You know and I hear this. It is the number one thing. Almost every single patient that I have, every parent that comes in with their child, the number one thing they will put on the sheet on the question where it says what are your dreams and hopes for your child. It is to be happy, and it's an impossible thing and also we don't generally like people who are happy all the time, and we also forget that happiness, like intimacy, is not a solid state, it's a dynamic state.
Speaker 3:And it comes and it goes.
Speaker 2:I mean my father used to say happy.
Speaker 3:Who said you were supposed to be happy and I thought who did you know, and also, yeah, that they were supposed to be sort of the, you know, move mountains. Everyone is a leader, everyone. You know, our child is going to be extraordinary Well, and they got trophies just for showing up.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But you know that goes to the point. Okay, a couple of things. You say we created the word parenting and our generation put more into parenting than probably any other generation. Very true. Which also causes our generation, then, possibly to feel the most disappointment when the child doesn't go in the direction that we had hoped they were going to go in. That's right. We need to sort of give some thoughts to our listeners, or advice. How do we let go of those dreams number one and number two when it's really bad, how do we not blame ourselves? I mean, there isn't a parent that doesn't say, oh, I should have done this, I should have done that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the shoulda woulda couldas the shoulda, woulda, couldas.
Speaker 1:So, how does a parent go on when they see their child and this would be an extreme situation in jail or long-term addiction to drugs or really tough situations how does that parent move on?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, let's go to blame and guilt. We are not to blame, we have nothing to be guilty about. First of all, as all the data points out, our kids, from the time they start going to school, are much more influenced by their peers and their peer culture than they are by us. That's not to say we don't have some influence on them. I mean, if we want them to be educated, we provide them with education and we make sure that they get their homework done and that they go to school and that they work as much as we're able to instill in them up to their level of ability. On the other hand, if they don't do that, if they do their hardest and then they flunk out of school or they don't get into the college that we want them to go to, it's not our fault. It's so rarely our fault Unless, as I say, we have intentionally abused them emotionally, physically, other ways, neglected them, them emotionally, physically, other ways, neglected them, abandoned them. Then there's some fault and then there's a reason to feel guilt.
Speaker 2:But in most cases, as a parent, guilt is a neurotic response to having your kids not be perfect. And if there are things that you can point to. All you can say is that you regret having done them. There are things I regret that I wish I'd done differently with my kids, but regret is guilt without the neuroses. I can regret that I didn't put, say, more emphasis or more of my energy or time into, say, having a religious education, which I didn't. They blew it off. You know I want to sleep in on Sundays, so I won't take them. Now I kind of regret it because I think faith, especially in troubled times, is important to have and if you don't have a religious background it's harder to get it. But I don't feel guilty that I didn't, I just regret it. You know there are other things that I regret but I don't feel guilty about and all I can say is that guilt is an entirely wasted emotion. If you can get rid of that guilt and remind yourself that this isn't your problem and that their problem was not caused by you, it was caused by them. They are adults. Their depression, their addiction, their dependence was caused by themselves and how you respond to it. Responding out of guilt is never a good idea, because responding out of guilt just makes it worse.
Speaker 2:Responding out of regret and a sincere desire to support what you can is a much more useful approach, but we talk about separating. What you can is a much more useful approach, but we talk about separating. I'm not saying, you know, tell your kids to leave and lock the door or leave no boarding address, right right. I'm saying that you get to draw some boundaries.
Speaker 2:For instance, if you have a drug-addicted child who is still using, despite your first efforts to help, which probably included paying for rehab or maybe your second or third ones, all you can say is I don't want you home when you're using. I'll be glad to go for a walk with you or to see you, but you don't get to come into the house. You can draw boundaries, and you can draw boundaries around money. You can say somebody lost his job and can't make the payments on his car, and you can say I'll pay your rent for three months and if you haven't found work by then, maybe you need to give up your job and move in with somebody else. You can offer help on a limited basis so that the end of it is in sight.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I want to say something to that. But I also want to say something to what you said earlier about guilt and regret. Do you sometimes wonder whether the guilt is more embarrassment and we sort of talked about this before when we talked earlier the dirty little secret that you're embarrassed because your child is not doing as well as you had hoped or thought.
Speaker 2:We are, and when we're with people whose kids apparently have turned out wonderfully, it's even more difficult. I tell a story in my book about my friend Lila, whose kid, peter, has never been anything other than a perfect child. And there are times and she's one of my oldest friends and there are times that I hate her because Peter is so perfect. He's never done one thing to make his parents anything but proud and happy, but he's her only child. I have just as many friends who have two or three kids and only talk about the one who's doing fine, and they either lie or brag, and sometimes both about the others. We're all embarrassed as if we had much more to do with it than we had.
Speaker 2:There's somebody I quoted in that book who wrote a book about her problems with her daughter and she says if a factory turns out a bad product, we blame the factory. I turned out a bad product. Is there something this I'm blaming? Everybody else is blaming the factory, I'm the factory. We're not the people that are to blame if our kids don't turn out well, you know, especially if we know that we have done everything we were supposed to do and probably more. So I'm saying that getting rid of the guilt is a really important psychological tool to help you change your relationship with your grown child. You know it's the same way as when grown kids are on the couch they blame us first and as long as they can blame us, they never had to take the responsibility themselves. So not allowing your child to blame you is as important for them as it is for us.
Speaker 1:Say that one more time, because I think that's a really good line.
Speaker 2:When you allow your child to blame you for their problems which so many kids do then, as long as you accept the blame, they never have to take the responsibility for solving their own problems. So when your kids blame you for their depression or their anxiety or their inability to hold a job or to stay in a relationship, if you let them blame you without saying, you know, as long as you blame me, you don't have to do a thing about it yourself. As long as you let them blame you, they will never take responsibility for themselves. My favorite example is the woman and I have been one of those women and still am sometimes who blames her extra pounds on the fact that her mother used to give her candy or cookies to calm her down. Well, I've been putting solid food in my own mouth for a number of years. Now. It's no longer my mother's fault if in fact it ever was and I remember that every time I look at my daughter and want to say something, I just shut my mouth.
Speaker 1:You know, with adult children, with parents of divorce, sometimes each of those parents let's say the kid's struggling, then each of those parents are blaming the other parent for what happened. Well, it's because your mother wasn't home, it was because your dad did this, it was because and they're just, you know, fueling the fire.
Speaker 2:And they're just fueling the fire. Exactly, I was divorced when my kids were very small and there was a time when my son blamed me for that a lot and I said you know, if your father hadn't left, we'd probably still be married and you wouldn't be any happier. And then, years later, when he was living with his father, I went down to visit him and them and his father and I got along very nicely that weekend and I said to Cam afterward you must wonder why your dad and I got a divorce. We were so nice to each other. And he said no, as soon as you started talking politics, I knew he was right.
Speaker 2:Again, all you can say to a child who blames you is one out of every two or three kids you know has a divorce in their family. Provide our children with a two-parent happy family. But it's not our fault if we couldn't, and letting them blame that for their problems is a cop-out we can't let them get away with. We can just say you know I regret it. I wish I had been able to give you a two-parent family and a white picket fence, but it didn't happen.
Speaker 3:So how do you help parents find more joy in their life? I mean, we talked about how important it is to have your own life and to separate.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things I do is I give them some tools and techniques for changing the relationship with their child. A lot of the tools are cognitive behavioral tools, which have to do with things like putting a rubber band around your wrist and snapping it every time you hear yourself about to nag your kid or about to say something you know you shouldn't, or your frustrated feelings or your disappointed feelings again in a sort of cognitive behavioral way, by finding something that you can put those feelings into that represents them. A mortar and a pestle is my favorite tool. There's nothing to work out a feeling than grinding a nut to bits with a mortar and pestle and then flushing what's left down the garbage disposal. That's not the same as repressing your feelings. It's literally destroying them, feeling them, allowing yourself to feel that anger, to feel that frustration, to feel that disappointment, and destroying it. It's kind of like Jews, during the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, put their sins metaphorically in cubes of bread and drop them in the river and let them dissolve. There needs to be, I always think, to make those tools work. There needs to be a kinesthetic action that goes with the metaphorical action. You need to grind those nuts in the mortar and pestle. You need to squeeze that bread and throw it in the water. You need to do something physically that reinforces what you're doing psychologically, which is ridding yourself of those feelings, not suppressing them, ridding yourself of them. So that's a very useful tool.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I'm responsible for selling lots of mortar and pestles. You know, bed, bath and nowhere, or whatever it is. There are other techniques like that that work. Sometimes. The best technique is I find that one of the things that suffers most from problem-grown kids is a relationship between the parents, for those parents who are still married. So I give them the homework of allowing themselves 15 minutes a day out of the house to talk about their problem kid Out of the house, because when you clean up crap in a room it always smells like a crappy room and to time themselves. They get 15 minutes to talk about the problem and that's it, and they have to do something else without the rest of their time. Like you know how, about having sex? How long has it been since you've done that? It's amazing how many parents don't even think about that Because they're so wrapped up in their child. Their relationship has withered, so they need to do things to get their child out of their relationship.
Speaker 1:That's a very interesting point. Yeah, one of the things I also wanted to mention when we talked about sort of our generation of parenting. Sometimes the kid says, yes, I'm independent, I don't want your advice, I don't want to know anything, but you're still kind of supporting them. And I had a situation someone told me about. Their son got a DWI. It was $10,000 to pay the attorney to clear this kid's record. When do you stop? Or how do you stop? What support do you give them when troubles come?
Speaker 2:Well, again, I think you have to consider two things. One is the pattern of how many times you've bailed them out before. Is this the first time? Another is your resources. And you know, one of the things we forget when we talk about our resources is that they are marital resources. They're not just ours, and that includes when a child comes back home to live. We don't usually ask our husbands if it's okay and that's a marital resource. We need to talk to them before we make any offers about help, because it's not just our money we're spending. So that's an important thing. Again, you know, a $10,000 lawyer for DWI is probably going to end up, if it was the first offense, with the same thing. A public defender or a regular lawyer would you know? I think that's way out of line. But if your son is determined to have the $10,000 lawyer, then I think all you can do is to say we'll give you $1,000 toward it. If you want this lawyer, you're going to have to figure out a way to pay the rest of it yourself.
Speaker 1:And there's the embarrassment versus the guilt. The parent wants it off their record as much as the kids does for their own embarrassment, so they're almost willing to put more so that the kid does have this great lawyer to make sure it really happens.
Speaker 2:I think the only time it pays to bankrupt yourself for your child is if they have a medical condition and they don't have insurance. And I mean a medical condition, I don't mean the kind of thing that they can set up a payment plan to pay with. But if they have a significant medical problem and you have exhausted every other possibility of help from the government, from the hospital, that's probably a place where I would bankrupt myself, but that's the only thing and that's not something that they will probably need my help with for as long as they live. And you know, in the same way for my spouse. I think that the amount of help that you give your child say they graduate from college has to be limited and it has to be conditional. I mean, you know it doesn't cost anything else or only a few dollars extra to keep them on your cell phone plan, but it also doesn't cost them that much to get one of their own, and it's a move toward independence.
Speaker 2:I think that, again, if they don't have medical insurance, if they don't have catastrophe insurance at 21 or 22, and they don't have a job that gives it to them, I would march them to the nearest state affordable care plan and if they needed help with that, I would probably give that. I'm not sure that I would pay for car insurance In most states you can't drive without it and let them figure out how to deal with that. I would probably, if I had the resources, help them with a down payment on their first house. If they had been financially responsible and wanted to buy a car, I might co-sign a loan for them, but I wouldn't buy it for them. Again, it depends on what kind of child you have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a lot depends on that and how responsible they've been about repaying you.
Speaker 2:When it's a loan, I'd also look at the difference between a loan and a gift. You might want to give your child a gift rather than a loan, and that's fine, but a loan is a good way for them to get used to establishing credit and paying you back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I do think this makes it hard, though in a different way, when you have more than one child, because what happens is you're willing to give more to the child who has done well, who has finished college or going on to medical school or has a successful job, who needs your help less than the child who didn't do those things, the child who is struggling, and then you've got the sibling rivalry to contend with.
Speaker 2:Well, I know a number. I have a number of clients whose sibling that's doing fine says to them you know, it's not fair that you're giving Greg all this help and all this money and he's 27 and you're still paying his rent and I'm living on my own and I'm paying mine and it's not fair that you're giving it to them. And, first of all, I think there's a problem if you're paying a 27 year old's rent.
Speaker 1:You don't know how often that happens. Let me just tell you oh, it happens a lot it happens a lot.
Speaker 2:And you know, I say to them, to these clients well, if your kids are concerned, that you are favoring them rather than you ask them what you think you should do, and if they say I think you should stop helping them because they're perfectly capable of helping themselves and you know that too I think that's another reason to get your kid off the dole, another thing you can do. I grew up with a sister who was mentally ill and was in and out of mental hospitals for 15 years, and I knew how much money it was costing my mother and father. And at one point my parents said to me we'll even this out when we die, don't worry, we're leaving money in trust for her, but we'll even this out. And I wasn't even aware that I was thinking that far ahead, but it made me feel better, because occasionally I would have those thoughts about she's costing them all this much money. What if I need it someday?
Speaker 1:But I think when it's a health issue like that, a mental health issue, you understand a little bit more. What I tend to see is it's almost like you're rewarding the child who is? Messing up. That's exactly right. So the son or daughter, that's succeeding. I don't want to say forgotten you're proud of them Is penalized for succeeding.
Speaker 2:yeah, and again. I think that goes back to the issue of why are you continuing to support a 25-year-old?
Speaker 1:You know a situation that I heard of their parent was supporting them way into I mean 40s, 50s, and it was because they had had grandchildren. They were more concerned about the grandchildren being homeless. We have to continue to support him because he has these three children now.
Speaker 2:Well, I do hear a lot of grandparents more concerned about their grandchildren than the child, but in most cases a non-working parent of three children has access to some kind of other aid and helping the children is not the same as helping the parent, but it's hard not to. You know, a parent who is homeless and has children usually has some recourse to some other help and I understand helping that child with a home for him or her and the children. But again, it needs to be a limited time and a limited amount.
Speaker 1:I really agree with that, and that's certainly true of babysitting also.
Speaker 2:You know, the young woman who, with children, who takes a job assuming that her mother or mother and father are going to care for her kids, needs to have a real talk. The parents need to have a real talk when the daughter says, oh, I've got this wonderful job. And you say, what are you going to do for child care? And she says, well, I figured you'd take care of them. And that's when you get to say that's not my plan. I'll be a backup in case your child care provider can't do it once or twice, but I am not going to be your child care provider, Unless, of course, you want to be Right right In that case, why not?
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:But I would still draw some boundaries around it. I would still say I will do it three days a week or whatever.
Speaker 1:This leads into somewhere in your book you say the parent who gives too much. What does this mean and how does it help or harm? Is that in what we were just talking about or is it something different?
Speaker 2:I think it's in what we were just talking about. The parent who gives too much is not helping a child to be more independent unless there is an interdependence, unless that child is also giving the parent something, whether it's help of some sort. I think interdependence is where, ultimately, we want to be with our kids, which is the best chance for a mutual relationship.
Speaker 1:What do you mean by that? Explain what you mean by interdependence.
Speaker 2:I mean being able to call on your kids for help when you need it. Okay, for instance, I'm about to have my hip replaced. I'm going to need my daughter, who lives in a different town, to be here for a week. And she said to me when we talked about it well, of course I'll be there, mom, but what about Cam, her brother? And she said you know, just because he's a guy, he's just as capable. And I thought you know you're right. So I called my son and he said I can be available from, you know, five o'clock after work to nine o'clock. Fine, good, okay, I have to ask. They don't usually offer unless I ask, but when I ask I feel okay because they ask me when they need something and I ask them when they need something. And I think, as I get older, that interdependence is going to be an even bigger part of our relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I worry a lot about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah set the stage.
Speaker 2:I mean, none of us has kids, so there'll be somebody to take care of us when we're old. That's usually not the reason, but it's really nice to know you can count on them to do it if you need to, and that comes from having a mutually successful relationship when they're younger.
Speaker 2:So we're getting towards the end of this conversation no-transcript other parents who are going through the same things, who are not embarrassed. That's number one. Number two is you probably will hear stories that will make your problems seem much smaller. And the other thing, I think, is to tell your closest friends. I think the way to banish disappointment and embarrassment is to tell people.
Speaker 2:And again, unless you feel guilty about it, and if you feel guilty about it, the first thing you need to do is to work on transforming that guilt into regret. And when you say to a friend, you know, my kid is not doing very well, she's got a drug problem, he's unable to hold a job, you're going to find a lot of. You're going to hear a lot of me too, that you didn't expect. You're going to get empathy, not judgment, and I think for most parents you're not going to get judgment. You're going to get empathy. And it's very hard to open up and it may be that all you can open up to is, you know, your running partner or one friend, which is where a support group, I think, can be really, really helpful.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really good idea. A support group would be a good idea.
Speaker 2:Sharing the burden is lifting it.
Speaker 1:Say that again the burden is lifting it.
Speaker 2:Yes, it lightens it, it really does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, when our kids were young, we oftentimes raised them in communities with other moms especially women, yeah, so we knew that, if he was still wetting the bed at four, that very few kids graduate from high school in diapers. We learned that kids develop differently at different stages throughout their childhood, and that's true about adult children too. I mean. There's a lot of research that says their brains are not fully formed until they're 25. Kids grow up in different ways at different times. Your kid may be a straight-A student at college and unable to keep his finances straight. Your daughter may be a gifted athlete but completely unable to deal with relationship angst, and probably in a couple of years she won't be such a great athlete, but she'll have had enough bad relationships to show her what a good one is. I mean, give your kids a chance to grow up before you make a judgment about who they are.
Speaker 3:I think Denise might have already asked it, but I'm going to ask it again what are the last two or three pieces of advice that you would have? And I'm going to add one, which is kind of what you just said, which is start talking to other parents, about your kids, in ways that are supportive to you and them, just like you used to do when they were one. And I think this goes awry sometime around when kids are applying to colleges and everybody gets so competitive, yes, and then we never kind of pull it back together as parents.
Speaker 2:Exactly. You know. One good way might be, when your kids are out of school, just to have a summer party and invite all those parents that used to parent in the communities and say bring your kids who don't Brag or lie, we don't care, just come and let's get together again.
Speaker 1:The brag or lie party, if you say brag or lie everybody will be very open. Yeah, no, what I wanted to say is, Jane, we end every episode with our guests giving us two or three takeaways, even if it's been mentioned before that we really hope that our listeners will take away from this. What are the two or three points you want our listeners to take from this?
Speaker 2:Who they are now is different from the child you raised. Life has taught them lessons or taken blows that haven't happened to you, so you really don't know who they are now. Take a few minutes and find out. Ask some questions like what are your dreams? What are your expectations? Where do you want to be in a few years? Ask them, they really do want to talk. Often they're just waiting for an opening. And the other thing is when you want to give them, loan them, support them in some way. Really consider whether what you're giving or offering is going to further their independence or further their dependence on you.
Speaker 1:That's wonderful. I think those are great closing points. Jane. We really appreciate your joining us today. This has been so interesting, and it's just interesting to me that this whole area of emerging adulthood has become such a big deal lately.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, it's a relatively new phenomenon historically speaking, because, you know, kids grew up, went to high school and went right into the labor market. They didn't really have a young adulthood. They went from late adolescence to adulthood without any place in between Kids. Today, 30 is the new 21. Now they're taking a lot longer than we did, it seems like, and that's a cultural as well as personal choice.
Speaker 2:And it's also economic and social. The same guiding posts that we had that marked adulthood, graduation, real job, child, family or family child those don't come in the same order any longer. Yeah, yeah, and some of them don't come at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, thank you again and good luck with your hip replacement. I hope it all goes really really well.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm sure glad I have grown kids who are able to help and willing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right, thank you, Thank you, thank you, okay, take care. Thank you, listeners, for joining us again today. A bit of a difficult topic, but I think Jane encourages us to get rid of any guilt we may have. We can have regret, we all have regrets, but guilt is what really brings us down. I remember when my kids were little ones, I read the book the Good Enough Parent by child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. The part I remember most is that he said parents must not indulge their impulse to cry to create the children they would like to have, but should instead help each child fully develop into the person he or she would like to be. It gave me a ray of hope. I did not have to be perfect, I just had to be present.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed this episode and, as we head to the end of our first season, I'm going to ask our listeners again to send us ideas and topics you'd like us to discuss. This is really helpful. Also, make sure you share this episode or one of your favorites with a friend so we can grow and keep on producing. Follow us on social media and give us a review. We appreciate that too, and remember you can visit our website at any time for all the episodes biteyourtonguepodcastcom. You can also email us at any time at biteyourtonguepodcast at gmailcom. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks again, thanks for listening and remember, sometimes you just might have to bite your tongue.
