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 host Denise Gorant as she brings 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
When To Speak Up, When To Bite Your Tongue: Dr. Lawrence Steinberg on Parent-Adult Child Dynamics
Dr. Lawrence Steinberg sheds light on the evolving relationship between parents and their adult children in today's challenging economic landscape, offering practical advice on when to speak up and when to bite your tongue. He explains how the elongation of adolescence and unprecedented financial pressures have transformed traditional parent-child dynamics.
• Housing costs have risen five times faster than salaries, creating barriers to independence for young adults
• Living with parents is now the most common arrangement for Americans in their 20s
• Financial support creates complex dynamics about expectations and boundaries
• Follow the "40-70 rule": discuss finances before parents turn 70 or children turn 40
• Only offer unsolicited advice when your child faces potentially irreparable harmful consequences
• Frame concerns as questions rather than directives to preserve your child's autonomy
• Adult children experience a "third autonomy crisis" around age 30
• When grandparenting, recognize that parenting advice changes generationally
• Focus on making your adult children feel confident and competent as parents
• Stop judging your child's progress by the timetable you followed at their age
Huge thank you to Connie Gorant Fisher, our audio engineer.
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Play along with guest contestants from the education world. Laugh some & learn some...
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I think that a lot of young people feel misunderstood and I think they feel unfairly labeled as lazy or self-absorbed or selfish or whatever, and I don't think that that's true. I think it's really hard to be that age today, because of the economy, because of the labor force, because of everything that's going on in the world.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, welcome to Bite your Tongue, the podcast. Join me, your host, denise Gorin, 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. 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. Hello everyone, we're back. Welcome to season three of Bite your Tongue, the podcast. I hope while we were on hiatus, each of you were able to listen to some past episodes, even for a second time. I find I actually get much more from certain episodes if I listen again. In any event, as many of you know, ellen is busy promoting her book and I'm actively looking for another co host. I just find the podcast works so much better when there's two of us. We can bounce ideas off each other and it just flows so much better. Give me some time. I'll find the perfect person, but please email me at biteyourtonguepodcast at gmailcom if you think you may be the one. Now on to the show.
Speaker 2:We're opening season three with a guest. Many of you may already have heard of Early. In the summer he released a book called you and your Adult Child how to Grow Together During Challenging Times. Because we were on hiatus, I scheduled him for our first interview of the new season. You may have even seen glimpses of him on many popular shows, but today you're going to get a deeper insight into his book, his ideas and why this whole topic of you and your adult child is suddenly so trendy. Drum roll, please.
Speaker 2:Today we're so excited to speak with Dr Lawrence Steinberg. His new book, you and your Adult Child how to Grow Together During Challenging Times, is a godsend. Truly, when I read the book, I realized that he's covering so many topics that we've been covering on our podcast, from finance and sexuality to weddings, partner choices, disrespect and so much more. But this is not just his thoughts and ideas. He's unpacking decades of research and interviews. But what I liked best is he doesn't really give us a specific right or wrong. He balances both sides of the relationship. That's why I think this is a great book, both for young adults to read and for us, the parents. The publisher touts the book as the first comprehensive guide for parents whose children are in the two most crucial decades of their life, and we've said that over and over again on this podcast these years are the longest relationship we'll have with our adult children.
Speaker 2:Let's make it a good one. I'm so honored to have Dr Steinberg with us today. Such a thrill to chat with him. So let's get started. Well, naturally, the first question I want to ask you is tell me why why you wrote this book. You know, when we started this podcast a year or so ago, no one was really talking about relationships with their adult children, and suddenly it's become an important topic and you've gotten great notoriety. So what was the catalyst? How did you decide to go ahead with this and really dig deep into this subject?
Speaker 1:Well, I hadn't thought about writing this book until I got a call from my editor at Simon Schuster, who had been contacted by AARP, the organization that advocates for and supports adults who are 50 and older. Right Saying that a lot of its members and AARP has 137 million members, so it's a big organization A lot of its members were having trouble raising adult children, living with adult children, taking care of their adult children whatever verb we want to use there, right right but they were puzzled by it and had a lot of questions and couldn't find resources out there to turn to. I then was invited to write this book. It actually fit nicely with where my own thinking had evolved over time in two different ways. The first is that I'm the parent of an adult child and during the time I was writing this book, I was living this book and we get along just fine. But what I realized is that you don't have to be going through a crisis in order to need help with this stage of life, in the same way that you know books and they buy books on cobblers and they buy books on teenagers, and not a lot of them who buy those books are going through a crisis. They're going through a transition and they don't understand what the transition is or how they should act. Also, in terms of my own academic interests, I was moving more and more toward an older age group than I had specialized in, so I've been specializing in adolescence and been working on that age group for 50 years.
Speaker 1:One thing that I wrote about in my previous book, age of Opportunity, was that adolescence has been lengthening. It's been elongated because the end of it really comes at the point when people make the transition into adulthood, and that's socially defined. It's not a biological transition for the most part, and what we know is that more and more people are taking longer and longer to move into their careers, to become married, to become parents, to become economically dependent, to set up their own home. And I had already been thinking about that and had been writing about that. But what I hadn't written about or thought about was how these changes are affecting parents, because when we scholars of development write about people in their 20s, let's say, or people in their 30s, we write about them as students or workers or spouses. We don't write about them as children.
Speaker 1:In fact, one of the difficult things in writing this book was coming up with a phrase to describe who these people are, because we don't have one in our language. A lot of people don't like calling them adult children, but that's about the best we can do. I mean we could say adult sons and daughters. That's a little cumbersome to have in the title of a book and adult children has some weird connotations, as I like to say. It makes you think either of Donald Trump, who's an adult child. It makes you think either of Donald Trump, who's an adult child, or young Sheldon, who's one of those precocious, obnoxious sitcom stars. And I don't mean that I'm not making a judgment or passing a judgment on people's maturity when I say that somebody's an adult child. I'm simply saying that there are adults who are still actively involved with their parents.
Speaker 2:I think that's great, because I do think that whatever age you are, people say to you how many children do you have? They don't say how many adult sons or daughters do you have. So whatever age you are, I don't care if you're 80, if, for some reason, your parents alive, you're still a child to that adult parent. And think about it when you read an obituary. They say they leave behind blah, blah, blah and four children. But what I really liked what you said was and I loved your no one can see this because it's a podcast your expression when you said I have one adult child and everyone does this. We get along fine. You know, it's like this sort of I didn't write this because I had problems, but that's what I love that you said. This isn't about people that are just have deep problems and their kids. This is us learning a new transition in parenting, one that hasn't been approached before, and so I really love that. You said that.
Speaker 1:But you wouldn't know that. So one of the first things I did, once I agreed to do the book.
Speaker 1:As most authors do, I wanted to see what else was out there. I went to bookstores, online and in person, and what's out? There are books written by and for parents who are estranged from their adult children, and so if you were to judge the situation only by looking at what's been written already, you would think that everybody was having a tough time raising their adult children, and some of them weren't on speaking terms with them, and we can talk about that if you want. I mean, I think that that whole issue estrangement which is a serious one, has been really overstated in terms of its magnitude. My guess is that, like me, most adults with adult children get along with them fine, but have issues that they need help with and they have questions that they haven't confronted before. Right, a big part of the book is discussing how times have changed in ways that transformed the parent-child relationship.
Speaker 2:And that's exactly my next question. You talk about challenging times. What does that mean? You say in the book towards the end. If there's one crucial takeaway from the book, it's that parenting an adult child today is very different than it was a generation ago. This has left many parents perplexed about their relationship with their adult children. Can you explain this and the factors that contribute to it, because I think we'd all be interested to know that for sure.
Speaker 1:Sure. Well, we used the term we meaning my editor and I used the term challenging times to mean two different things. One is that it's a challenging time for the relationship period. The second is that it's a challenging time in history that affects that relationship in ways that were not present previously, and so by that I'm talking about a couple of things. The first is that, because it's taking longer for young people to make the transition into these adult roles, so they're staying in school longer, for example, into these adult roles, so they're staying in school longer, for example, each of these transitions, when it gets slowed or delayed, has cascading effects.
Speaker 1:If you stay in school longer, then you're putting off earning money. If you're putting off earning money, then you have to get money from somewhere, and it's probably your parents. And so many parents now find that they're helping to support their kids for a far longer period of time than they expected. And, by the same token, many kids are finding that they're having to depend on their parents for a far longer period of time than they expected, and that's one way in which it's changed. And, as we'll discuss, this combination of economic dependence but emotional independence is a very challenging one for families to navigate. So that's one way. A second is the incredible increase in the cost of housing. Housing, whether you're talking about rent or purchase housing, has gone up five times faster than salaries have, and so more and more young people are having to either depend on their parents to pay for or subsidize their housing, or to move back home with their parents.
Speaker 1:So, as I note, we have the highest proportion of people in their 20s living at home as we've ever had in modern times. Right now, it is the most common living arrangement in America for people in their 20s is to live with one or both of their parents. That was never the case at any point in time in the 20th century, even during the height of the Great Depression. It wasn't even the case toward the end of the 19th century.
Speaker 1:So, in America at least, it's very unusual and because it's unusual and because it's new for lots of families nobody knows what the rules are, nobody knows what the guidelines are, nobody knows how to navigate this, and it's not the same, as I explained, as when your college student returns home for summer vacation or for Christmas break. So what are the expectations that you have and that the adult child has for living together Everything from the mundane like are they expected to do household chores, are they expected to be at dinner every night To the kinds of things that we don't talk about. Like what, if they want to have an active sex life? They're having a sex life down the hall from their parents, their parents. You know, as parents, we don't like to think of our children as sexual beings. I should say that our children don't like to think of us as sexual beings.
Speaker 2:I was going to say I think that goes both ways. It does go both ways.
Speaker 1:I was going to say, I think that goes both ways, but it's a little too close for comfort, you know, to know that your son or daughter has just come home with somebody they maybe met that night and that they're planning on sleeping together. You know, two doors down the hallway, as somebody said when I was doing a talk show and somebody said I don't want to come down to breakfast and find some dude sitting in his boxer shorts at my kitchen table, and so I think that probably doesn't happen all that often, but you get the point. Yeah, but what do?
Speaker 2:parents do. I mean, we can talk about it, but what are the steps they take? I mean, you know, internationally, kids have been living with their families. In Italy, it's a normal thing. In China it's a normal thing. The grandparents raise the kids and no one seems to have a problem. I wonder. I just want to ask something. Go back to you know, kids are in school longer and that sort of thing. Do you mean getting further degrees? Or also, some kids aren't able to finish school in five or six years, and is that part of our parenting error? You know, have we been too indulgent, as they've been growing up and paying for college and, okay, well, they don't make it through in four years, we'll make it through in five. You know, is it partying going on? Where do they have to step to the plate and say you know what? You either get through in four years or figure it out, bud. I mean, what is that? How does this play into it?
Speaker 1:Well, both of what you said turn out to be true. So it is taking students longer to complete a bachelor's degree. There's no question about that. In fact, you know, we insist on calling it a four-year degree, and it's not a four-year degree for the majority of people. So more people take more than four years now than four years or fewer, and so we have to stop thinking of it that way. Now, why that is? There are a number of reasons for it, some of which are out of the control of the students. So, for example, at my university, temple University in Philadelphia, big school 30,000 or so undergrads there are requirements for graduation. To be a psych major, you have to take a certain number of courses. Well, we might be understaffed as a department one year and we may not be able to offer all the courses that students need in order to graduate, and this isn't unique to my university. This is across the country.
Speaker 1:And then if students decide into their careers as students to change majors and then they might not be able to complete the requirements for the new major within four years. Now the question that you raise and it's a very good one is how long are parents supposed to be paying for this? And on top of that, we know that more and more jobs require more education than they did in the past. Whether they should is a different matter and maybe not part of our conversation. But if you need a master's degree to do a job that you only needed a bachelor's degree to do five years ago, that's two more years of schooling that somebody is going to have to pay for. Plus there's all the add-on ancillary training that students need. So you graduate from college and then you realize I never took a course in computer coding and I'm going to have to code when I get out there. So now you're going to have to pay for and take a semester long coding class someplace, and this happens all the time. So I'm not one of those persons who is on. The millennials are lazy bandwagon.
Speaker 1:I don't think that that's true. I don't think there's any evidence that it's true. I do think it's harder to establish your financial footing today for people in their 20s and 30s than it has been in the past, and every family is going to respond differently. And I have to say that was a challenge in writing you and your adult child, because you know it's fairly easy to write a book for parents of babies. Most babies are pretty similar. I mean you don't have to adopt different diapering techniques for different babies. But once you get to be in your 20s or even 30s, I mean life just varies so much from person to person, and so it was hard for me to give blanket advice on lots of issues and instead what I thought would be helpful was to say to parents here's what you should be thinking about. I can't tell you whether you should pay for a fifth year of college or not. A lot of that depends on your own finances. A lot of that depends on whether you think your child has a plan and that this makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:Without knowing the answers to those questions, I can't tell you what I think you should do, but I can tell you that what you should think about is is this going to be okay with my finances as an adult? Is this going to interfere with my retirement plans, for example, and is my child serious about education in a way that I think this is going to be a good investment? Or maybe my kid should just take some time off until she figures out what she wants to do with her life? So sorry for kind of winding around a little bit here, but it is linked to the earlier question you asked about challenging times, because the other thing that makes these times challenging is the fact that this generation of parents was super involved in their kids' lives from the beginning. You know I mean, choosing a preschool was life or death, going to every back-to-school night with notebooks to write down everything the teachers said, standing on the sidelines and screaming at all the soccer games.
Speaker 1:You know, I said I don't think I wrote this in the book, but I gave a talk in which I said wanting to be the cool parent who has relationships with all your kids' high school buddies, being involved in the college application process, writing the college application essay, and so a lot of these parents are used to being really, really involved and they wonder should I remain this involved now that my kid has grown up, has finished college, is in their 20s or even 30s, what is the right level of involvement? And so it's a kind of boundary problem that exists.
Speaker 2:Well, and sometimes they're not able to stop being involved. That brings me to the next question. Early in the book you talk about conflict versus autonomy, and I think a lot of my listeners and myself how to let go when we've been so close to them for so many years because really they are adults and they have to make their own decisions. And how do we then back off?
Speaker 1:You can't be so engaged, but some parents are forced to be there sort of face to face. In other words, it's easy to be less engaged when you're not living with each other, but now that you're living together with your adult children, you see a lot of things and you're tempted to ask questions or to say something about it. And so I love the name of your podcast, because biting your tongue is a big part of being the parent of a young adult. When I was first talking about this book with my agent, he said that a friend of his joked that the leading cause of death among parents with adult children were extensive lacerations to the tongue, because you are in that situation so often and you don't know what to do.
Speaker 2:But you give some suggestions that you should ask yourself. You have a whole chapter on biting your tongue, and so I have to ask you outline questions to ask yourself before you decide should you bite your tongue or not bite your tongue. Can you talk about those?
Speaker 1:Sure, I mean, the most important one is is my child about to do something that's going to have irreparable harmful consequences? And so there, I think you should not bite your tongue. I mean, you need to speak up if they're going to be making a dangerous decision that's going to affect them, or their partner, or their child. So let's say that you've cleared that and you decide this isn't a dangerous decision, it's just one that I'm not happy with. Well, is it just a matter of taste and you and your child have different taste, or is it? Is it substantial in some way? And if it's just a matter of taste, you're just going to have to, you know, hold your nose and look the other way, um, and. And then a third one is you know, on the other hand, how is it going to affect your mental health? The feeling like you're walking on eggshells which, by the way, is the name of another book?
Speaker 2:I've interviewed her, jane. I say, yeah, she's terrific yeah, um.
Speaker 1:so you, that can't be easy, that's not easy, and so you've got to figure out. You know, we say to parents of younger people pick your battle right, don't fight about everything. And I would say, with respect to biting your tongue, pick carefully the times when you're not going to bite. But you know, as I say in the book, generally speaking, if this is not a dangerous, harmful, irreparable decision, don't offer advice unless your child asks for it.
Speaker 2:How can we develop a friendship rather than this? You know give and take and I try very hard to say the right things all the time, but I mess up here and there and I think there's just a way to say hey, mom, you know you don't say that anymore or whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I have those moments with our son when he calls me Archie. So I think that you can be friendly without being a friend. You are never not going to be their parent and that carries a lot of psychological baggage with it, and that's where we get into autonomy as an issue, and it occurred to me. As a psychologist, I know that there are two periods in a child's development when autonomy often comes to the fore as a big problem for families. One is when they're toddlers that's why we call it the terrible twos and when they're always saying no One. When they're teenagers, we call it the terrible teens.
Speaker 1:And as I was thinking about this stage of life, this stage that we're talking about for being an adult child, I think there's a third autonomy related crisis that's going on. Then I don't have a specific age. I would say it's in the late 20s, somewhere around 30. And it's worth thinking about this in comparison to the other two autonomy-related periods. When your two or three-year-old is asserting their autonomy, what they're saying is I realize now that I'm a separate person from you. What they're saying is I realize now that I'm a separate person from you and I have an opinion about something. When it's a teenager, it's slightly different. It's not only do I have my own opinions, I have the right to assert them to you too. I can disagree with you and I can argue with you about whether I should have an 11 o'clock curfew or not. This autonomy issue during the adult years is about demonstrating to themselves and to you that they can handle the challenges of adulthood without you To answer your question.
Speaker 1:When you point something out to your child that you disagree with or that you think they're doing wrong or that you think is a bad decision, it isn't like saying that to a friend, because they always will be carrying around you in part of their psyche and it might make them feel like, oh, maybe I'm not quite mature enough or as mature as I should be if I need to ask their advice on this or if I need to take their advice on this. But I think it is a problem when you start saying, hmm, this doesn't seem like a very good apartment to rent. Do you want to rent that Like? I noticed that there are lots of clubs on the street and it's going to be noise. Did you think about that that it's going to be noisy at night.
Speaker 1:And then so when you say that, and they say to themselves, boy, it was really stupid to not think about that. Like I thought about all kinds of other things. I love the cool you know oven, the chef's oven that it came with, or I love the view out the you know bedroom window, but I didn't think that it was going to be hard to sleep at night because there are clubs and restaurants right nearby. And then I think that makes them feel, makes them question themselves. In a way, if their friends said the exact same thing to them, it wouldn't make them question their maturity or their competence as a person, but because mom said it or dad said it, I think it has that effect.
Speaker 2:That's why so I also think sometimes we don't always know what's right or wrong. Possibly that rental with all the clubs around is exactly what the kid wants. So I hesitate a lot to give those kinds of even work advice. I'm not sure we know what the work life is like nowadays.
Speaker 2:It's changed completely. So even when we think they're making a mistake, I might say in my day I would think about this, but things are so changed you really need to depend on your own opinion or whatever. I might offer it in a sort of a backpedal way.
Speaker 1:So that's why I think that the middle ground in lots of these situations is to ask a question rather than to give advice. In other words, you can say you know lots of people think that it's important to see a place both during the daytime and in the evening before you make a decision to buy it, because the environment may be very different. Just saying that maybe you should think about doing that. Or, you know, I've never worked in the kind of office that you work in, but sometimes this following kind of thing comes up and I wonder is that something like what's going on here for you? And I think that asking the question serves two different purposes. The first is, in a way, it helps you give advice, in a way that doesn't sound like you're giving advice, and secondly, it may actually help clarify something in their own mind that they hadn't really understood or that they'd been confused about.
Speaker 1:Now it also goes back to something we talked about earlier, about how involved today's parents of adult children have been. I bought there isn't a single house that I purchased or that my wife and I purchased that my parents even saw before we purchased it, so there was no opportunity for them to weigh in on it because I didn't need them to weigh in on it and it wouldn't have mattered. True, true, right. But I think today, and this also then gets tangled up with the finances- A lot of parents are helping with down payments in houses.
Speaker 1:And I think that, as you know from having read the book, this is a topic that I raise in a couple of different realms. And this is the question that parents wonder about Does my financial assistance entitle me to have a say in how the money is spent? You know, whether it's the choice of a house or the choice of a car, or if I'm subsidizing my kids. You know month to month expenditures. Do I get to know how they're spending their money?
Speaker 1:And you know, I'm sure it's a common situation, because I know we have a lot of friends who help their children out monthly, not for something specific, but maybe they give them 200, 300, 500 a month, and then they discover that they're, that their kids are going out to you know expensive restaurants to eat, and you start to think well, I thought you said you needed the money. Obviously you don. You needed the money. Obviously you don't need the money if this is what you're spending it on. And so then, where do you draw the line about speaking up or biting your tongue when it comes to that kind of issue?
Speaker 2:Well, what do you do in that situation? You write a whole thing about that, about this parents who were lending their daughter money and then finding out the kid was planning a trip to Scandinavia. What do you say? How do you approach that?
Speaker 1:I think that I wouldn't do it. When there's one, when there's one expenditure that bugs you, you know. But I think if it's a pattern, I think you say something like you know from a distance, it seems like you don't need as much help from us as we've been giving you. Should we discuss? You know a new amount. And if they say, what are you talking about? If they get all huffy, you know about it then I think you can say seems like you're going out to eat a lot, when you could be bringing stuff home from the grocery store. I know right.
Speaker 2:Those are hard conversations. That's really judgmental.
Speaker 1:It's very judgmental. And, as I say in the book, you know, just because you're helping your child doesn't mean that this should mean that they can never go out to dinner.
Speaker 2:Right, right, that's a hard, you know a hard. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:But I think you just have to sort of do it softly without pointing to something. Just have to sort of do it softly without pointing to something specific. It turned out in that story about the young woman who was taking a vacation with her partner to Scandinavia that her partner's mother had given them the airplane tickets as a birthday present. And of course, the young woman's parents didn't know that. They thought, well, she's spending the money we're giving her on, you know, going to Sweden for the month of August. Well, that turned out not to be the case and they also said you know, we stopped going to Starbucks for, you know, for our morning coffee. And we realized how much money you can save if you don't have coffee out every morning and every coffee break.
Speaker 1:So, you know, you may not know where the money is coming from that they're using for things that you think are extravagances, and, after all, it's a matter of bookkeeping, isn't it? I mean, if you give your child a subsidy to pay for daycare, you're not actually writing the check to. Maybe you are, but most of the parents are giving the money to their kids and just assuming that they're spending it the way that they're saying they were planning on spending it. And you know, as I say, the relationship has to be based in trust. Right From the beginning, you have to say to your child we can help you out to this extent, but I'm going to trust you that when you no longer need the money or when you no longer need as much, you're going to come to me and tell me that. And if you can't trust your child to do that, I would say you've got bigger problems than figuring out the finances. Because the relationship has to be grounded in trust.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense. You know when we're talking about finances, so I'm going to bring this up. One listener wrote my son has lost his job. He has three children. They've never managed their money. If I don't pay their rent, they'll be homeless. I don't see he or his wife spending money wisely or even trying to get a job. What do I do?
Speaker 1:Well, I think a lot of it depends on whether they can move in with you temporarily, which is a way to make sure that they're safely housed. I mean, I don't think very many parents would willingly want their child to be homeless. That seems like a bad response to you know you're managing your money. I mean, you know, I think you, I think you can sit down with them and say let's talk about a budget. Down with them and say let's talk about a budget, and because it seems to me that you're a little spendthrift in the way that you, in the way that you go through money so quickly, and I'm comfortable helping you find a place to live. You've got children to take care of and I don't want them to be threatened out on the street or wherever. But I think you could use some help with managing your money and I'm happy to help you figure out a plan to do that.
Speaker 1:And you know, I think there are times of desperation where parents finally just say I'm sorry, I can't keep doing this, I just can't keep doing it, and I think then that can lead to estrangement and you have to, as a parent, you have to know that that is a possible consequence of taking the hard line and I will try everything you know before doing that. Now we're talking as if the parents have the money to do this. That's exactly right, right. We're talking as if the parents have the money to do this. That's exactly right, right, Right. And I don't think we should assume that that's always the case. You know, because AARP was a sponsor of this book. They had some advice to give and I tried to be compassionate to both generations in the book and I hope I was able.
Speaker 2:I think you were. I think it's a good book for both generations to read.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the AARP said you should never give your child money if it threatens your health or your retirement or your plans for the future. And so there are parents that can't afford to do everything that their children need them to do, and I, you know, I'm not a financial advisor. It's not my role to say here's how you should handle the money thing, yeah, so I think that a lot of young people feel misunderstood and I think they feel unfairly labeled as lazy or self-absorbed or selfish or whatever, and I don't think that that's true. I think it's really hard to be that age today, because of the economy, because of the labor force, because of everything that's going on in the world.
Speaker 1:When I get asked questions, as I do frequently, about whether social media is responsible for the increase in depression and anxiety among teenagers and young adults, I think a little, but I mean the list of things to be depressed about it's just enormous. I mean we've got climate change and the war in Ukraine and the political divisiveness and the political divisiveness and the threats to women's reproductive autonomy and the notion that you know that pandemics are going to be a way of life, you know going ahead and the high cost of. I mean there are so many things to be depressed about. To honestly think that instagram is causing all this, I think is very, very foolish, because I think there are lots of things that are contributing to it and I think that young people feel misunderstood.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that. I hate to go backwards. But I want to go back to that finance thing again because I think sometimes you're right Take stock of your finances, give only what you can. I want to say two things. I think it's hard to know how much you will need. But when you're in that sort of place where, well, you have enough to give them, but you don't know if you're going to need it when you're 80, you know that's really hard.
Speaker 1:It's hard to know. Hopefully, well, a couple of things. Hopefully, you will have done some financial planning for yourself and be able to anticipate what you're going to need. Second, I suggest that you follow the 40-70 rule, which is, have a talk about your finances with your child before you turn 70 or before they turn 40.
Speaker 2:I've never heard that before. Say that again.
Speaker 1:It's called. It's referred to often as the 40-70 rule to have a talk with your child about your finances before you turn 70 or before they turn 40. And if you go online you'll see it. It's written up.
Speaker 2:I never heard it. I think that's very interesting.
Speaker 1:You know, I think a lot of parents are reluctant to discuss their financial situation with their child, but it serves a couple of purposes. First of all, it answers some questions that your child may have about what kind of help you're going to need as you get elderly. It also answers some questions that your child may have about whether they're going to inherit anything from you after you pass. But I think, most of all, it gives your child some sense of what your own financial situation is, in a way that might make their approach to you a little different. And so if they understand that you have trouble making ends meet each month because between Social Security and your savings, you know, and your pension you don't have enough or you only have a little bit more than what you actually need, your child will understand that.
Speaker 1:Remember, you're not talking about a five-year-old who's in the toy store saying buy this for me. You're talking about somebody who's 30 years old, who understands what it's like to feel a financial crunch. And so I think it's important to have an honest discussion about your own financial situation, and your child doesn't want to raise it because they don't like to think about you getting old and getting infirm and dying, and so they're not going to come to you and say, well, what's going to happen after you die, I mean, but you're going to have to let them know what the plan is Right.
Speaker 2:So we've been talking a long time and I want to get to marriage and grandchildren and you said you wrote about how your relationship with your child changes when they marry. Can you talk about this and what parents of adult children need to know sort of about when their child takes on a life partner and how their role changes and what things they can do to make it a positive transition? Yeah, there's a lot to say about this.
Speaker 1:You know you didn't pick this person. Who's their partner? They picked their partner and you may not have cared for this person, but you've got to figure out a way to get along with this person, because in healthy families, your child is going to take that person's side if something comes up and your child is not going to bail on that person in order to please you. As you know, as their parents period I mean, if that's happening something is the matter with their marriage or their relationship. So you've got to find a way to meet this person in some in some way that's going to be acceptable to both of you. There's nothing that says you have to love this person. There's nothing that says you have to be you know, close friends with this person, but there is something that says that you and this person share a common interest, which is your kid and your kid's well-being. And your kid's well-being is going to be threatened if you are constantly on the outs with their partner. If that's happening, I think the first step would be to talk to your kid about it and say did I do something wrong that's making him distance himself from me, because if I did, I'd like to correct it, or it's not going as well as I had hoped it would go. Do you know what's going on and maybe you can get to the bottom of it? So that's the first point.
Speaker 1:The second point is that, as a couple, your kid and their partner are going to have to make their own compromises and they may make decisions that you don't like that they're making because it was the partner's influence over that, because it was the partner's influence over that. And, as I say in the book, one of the wonderful things that comes out of a good romantic relationship is the fact that you are influenced by, and you do learn from your partner, and so your child may make decisions that you think. I don't know where they got that idea. They didn't get it from me. Well, maybe they got it from their partner and maybe that's not such a bad thing, and you don't know how many of the things they're doing as a couple that their partner is not crazy about. But it was. It was a situation in which your kid had the you know, had the final decision. So I think you need to do to keep the peace.
Speaker 1:Now. I'm very fortunate. My wife and I get along very well with our daughter in law. We can spend time with her without our son being there and things are great and we love her and she loves us and we're very, very lucky in that respect. Not all parents have that. You know you want to be able to sit next to them at Thanksgiving and not, you know, give each one the cold shoulder. You know it's only a meal and maybe you don't have to see them all that often, but you've got to make the peace.
Speaker 2:Do you think we become a little bit secondary? I sort of feel like we have to realize we're no longer there when they call it. I'm getting old and losing my mind too. We're not there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're touched on. Yeah, and that's, you know, that's as it should be. I mean I would frankly worry if my child were married and just kept coming to me all the time with things that I think could be discussed with, you know, with their partner. I mean I would worry that something wasn't quite right and you know you've already had a taste of this when you're when your high school age kid had a serious boyfriend or girlfriend and all of sudden you felt like you were the third wheel there.
Speaker 2:Not quite as much when they get married, they have their own house they're. Financially, they're really their own unit now.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's true, that's true. Yeah, yeah, but you've had some practice at being, you know, the second most important person in their life. I guess you know.
Speaker 2:I feel like when they really have their own home and their own spouse and especially let's get to grandparent they have their own child. They become the primary unit we are no longer the primary unit that we were before. So let's get to grandparent before we wrap up. I don't have grandchildren. Many of my friends and listeners do.
Speaker 2:And they tell me it's pretty hard. They're biting their tongues all the time, all the time. So even more than they do. So tell us about that. I guess you know how do you become a good parent and you know helpful, non-intrusive grandparent.
Speaker 1:Well, the first is to understand that parenting advice changes generationally, right, and so you may see your child do something that you think, oh my God, I would never have done. And then you may find that this is exactly what their pediatrician told them to do, or that this is exactly what the guru, whose parenting book is the most popular parenting book, says you should do, or it's exactly what your friends, what their friends tell them to do, and they would think that how you raised them was crazy in retrospect. And so a big difference that I joke about in the book is that I, as a parent I refer to Dr Spock a lot, penelope Leach a lot, and they were my gurus and they were very relaxed. In fact, spock begins his book with the famous sentence trust yourself. Now, if you were to open up the equivalent book today, the first sentence might be trust the data, because parenting has become very data driven, and so kids today keep very detailed log of how much their child eats at every feeding and how many minutes their child sleeps at every nap, at what time they were put down, at what time they got up. You know, I mean it's all recorded. There are so many apps that you can download onto your phone to do this.
Speaker 1:It looks crazy to parents like us who trusted ourselves, right I mean to me. You put your baby down when your baby seemed tired and you pick your baby up when they woke up from sleep and you didn't write down. You know you fed them when they were hungry and you stopped feeding them when they didn't want any more food, and it wasn't more complicated than that. And what I say in the book is, first of all, recognize that and secondly, you know what Doesn't really matter. There are lots of different ways to be a good parent and you know. I mean, if your kids are being abusive or neglectful, you've got to speak up, but if they're doing things like this, they don't like the way that they're. You think that they're too permissive, or you think that they're too strict, or whatever. You know, just leave it alone. It's not going to affect the way your grandchild turns out and all it's going to do is distance you from this part of their life.
Speaker 1:My closing advice on this for parents is for the parents of adult children who are grandparents is the most important thing you can do is to make your kids and their partner feel confident and competent as parents Because, especially if this is their first child, it's an anxiety-provoking situation for everybody. It is a difficult situation. You are sleep-deprived. You don't know how to interpret different things your baby does. You're worried all the time. If you're a woman, there's a very good chance you're going to, if not, have postpartum depression. You're going to have the baby blues. You're not going to be yourself as a grandparent. Do what you can to make their life easier. Don't make their life more difficult.
Speaker 2:So when you say make them feel good as parents, are you saying you should say what a great mom you are, what a great dad you are. Yes, Always give them accolades for and you know how hard it is and what a great job they're doing.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and if you see them do something good, say I really handled that, that was great.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, sort of the old fashioned point out what they're doing, right, all right, as I've said, I say in my intro, this book covers so many topics, everything We've not been able to cover everything. I wish we could. I hope everyone gets the book. But before we close, and even if you've said it before, I like my guests to leave our listeners with one or two key points that they really hope they'll take away from this interview. What would those one or two I'm going to say two or three key points be from you?
Speaker 1:Okay, Well, the first one is to stop thinking something along the lines of when I was your age. In other words, don't judge your child's progress using the timetable that you followed when you were growing through young adulthood. And a lot of parents worry that their kids are floundering when in fact they're on a completely normal timetable for today's standards. I meet lots of parents who are just word sick that their child isn't married and they're already 30 years old. Well, guess what? The average age of marriage among college educated people is around 32 or so. So, if your child isn't married, at development of autonomy and their development of independence, and figure out ways to support that rather than to challenge it. Make your child feel more confident in their decisions, not more worried about what they're doing. And then, finally, if they're about to do something that is going to be harmful and irreparable and dangerous, speak up. Other than that, unless your kid asks for advice, keep it to yourself.
Speaker 2:I love that. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you giving me this time today. I loved your book. I hope everyone will read it. It's a lot of work on both sides, I think, but I think once parents realize what their role is, the transition and the development of a good relationship will come. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you, I enjoyed the conversation. Well, that's a wrap.
Speaker 2:I really enjoyed chatting with Dr Steinberg. He's given us a different perspective for sure. We all need to have more compassion for the world our young adults are living in right now. When he said that real estate prices have risen five times faster than salaries, it lets you know how hard it really is to get a solid financial footing today. Also, the whole idea of families living together. As long as everyone's productive, it might be a win-win for all. The hard part is setting up the boundaries and the rules. That's difficult. Finally, I love the 70-40 rule. Talk to our kids about finances by the time they are 40 and before we are 70. It makes good sense. He sure got a handle on this world of adult children and their parents. I hope this resonated with you as it did for me.
Speaker 2:Don't forget the name of his book is you and your Adult Child how to Grow Together During Challenging Times. It's available at Amazon, at your local bookstore or even on audio. Lots of great information. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you also to Connie Gorant-Fisher, our audio engineer, and I have to once again remind everyone to support our work by going to our website at BiteYourTonguePodcastcom. Hit. Support us For as little as $5, you can really keep us going. Just buy us a virtual cup of coffee. It's $5. It would mean so much. Have a great day everyone, and remember, sometimes you just have to bite your tongue.
