Season 3, Episode 81 Bonus Rewind When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us

Transcript

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Hey everyone, this is Denise.

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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.

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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.

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When Our Growing Kids Disappoint Us, letting Go of their Problems, loving them Anyway and Getting On With Our Lives.

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Give them a chance to grow up.

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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.

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How can we let go and let them be who they are as they grow up?

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I hope you enjoy this episode.

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Let's get going.

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Well, some of it is a bit of narcissism.

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You know we still think of our children as belonging to us, as an extension of us.

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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.

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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.

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And the dreams begin the moment the doctor puts them in our arms.

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It starts so early.

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I mean, give your kids a chance to grow up before you make a judgment about who they are.

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Welcome to the Bite your Tongue podcast.

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I'm Denise and I'm joined by my good friend, dr Ellen Broughton.

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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.

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Your diapering days are over.

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Now it's time to consider when to bite your tongue.

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So let's get started.

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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.

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Today we're talking about disappointment in our adult children.

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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?

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Today we're welcoming Jane Adams, phd.

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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.

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This is a tough and we're thrilled that Jane has agreed to speak with us.

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She's also a parent coach, so actually she's the coach the parenting coach for all of our listeners, listeners of adult children.

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Her website says being a parent doesn't end.

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It lasts as long as you do.

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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.

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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.

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You know, ellen.

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When we had our babies we thought you know we'd raise them and that would be it.

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But parenting never seems to end.

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What do you think?

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Oh, that is so true.

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And when we had those babies we thought there was nothing they could ever do that would disappoint us.

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Nothing we couldn't even imagine there were things that would happen that would make us anxious, other than maybe ear infections.

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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.

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Maybe more, maybe more.

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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.

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Well, because I was in desperate need of it too.

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My kids are now grown and flown, and on their own, and a delight to me.

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But it took a lot of years after they were grown and flown before we got to that point.

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I'm a life stage psychologist.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And when I came up with the book we're talking about today, when Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us.

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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?

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And they always wanted to talk about their kids who were problems.

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I had one kid who was getting to be a problem at that point and she was 25.

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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.

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So it helped, but not as much as common sense helped.

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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.

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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?

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I think we start, unless they have significant issues addiction, dependence, depression when they're in college.

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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.

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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.

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We're still the first resort rather than the last one when they need money or bailing out of some problem.

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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.

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And we feel guilty about being disappointed because this isn't supposed to be about us.

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It's supposed to be about them, but our feelings range from anger to frustration, to worry, to, ultimately, disappointment.

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I went out to talk to people whose kids had not turned out quite as well as they'd expected.

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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.

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If they really need hospitalization for something we can't do, that we have about the same influence as ex-presidents.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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Do you think that's true?

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Oh, it's absolutely true, because A there's very little we can do for them right now.

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We can immerse ourselves in their problems, but we can't solve their problems.

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I remember when I went to a drug program with my daughter and she said Mom, stay out of my program.

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Well, she was doing well by then and I learned I stayed out of her program.

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I didn't ask her about what she was doing.

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We didn't talk about it.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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You know, ellen, I'm going to sort of differ with you.

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I think that whole step of getting on with your own life can be very difficult.

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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.

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So I think it's very difficult if your child is in drug rehab and your daughter says get out of my program.

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Mom, I applaud you for then not following up with questions.

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You know, three weeks later, how are you doing?

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How are you doing?

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And I think somewhere in your book you said something about we can't separate.

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I mean you need to, but it's a really hard job to separate them from us.

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It's important, but how does a parent do that if they can't make that step?

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Well, I think we find ways to stay in touch with them that don't deal with their problem.

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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.

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I wasn't letting go of her, I was just letting go of her problem.

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But I think part of it also is that so many parents don't have a life outside their own children.

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They don't have an identity.

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Their identity is I am a mother.

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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.

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It's very important, but it isn't.

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You know, it was never our kids' role, once they left home, to provide us with an alternate identity or another role.

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That's our problem.

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That's our role is to find another one.

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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.

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They don't want to spend that much time with us.

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They've got really busy lives of their own, regardless of whether they have problems.

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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.

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But there's a lot of parents that gave 150% to raising their children.

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The children leave and they have no idea how to pick up.

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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.

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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%.

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And you know, I feel like that's the exact same thing.

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When they become young adults, the best gift we can give them is for us to have rich individual lives.

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That's true.

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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.

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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.

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And they've begun to see us only as a mother, not a lover, a partner, a friend.

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We've talked around them, we've talked over them, but we haven't talked to each other directly.

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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.

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They had really beginning to discover each other again.

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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.

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It's a really critical time.

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It's a very critical time.

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You see a lot of divorces happening around that time.

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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.

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Why do you say that Well?

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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.

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It's a major reason that kids drop out of college in their first semester.

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The living arrangements and the marital arrangements until the end of their first year of college.

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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.

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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.

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Sometimes it brings them together, but it also is a hard time for couples to manage.

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One of the interesting things to me I found when I talked to parents about their kids coming back home.

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It's usually the mother that doesn't want them back home.

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She's done her child.

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This is assuming their kid doesn't have many problems except no job or dropping out of college.

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And the mother says, you know, I've been there, done that.

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It's the father who says, oh, now that they're old enough to be decent company, let them come home.

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You know, why should she pay for an apartment when we've got a perfectly nice room here?

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And it's the fathers, much more than the mothers, who want their kids back when they boomerang back home.

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Well, I'm going to say something very sexist here.

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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.

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That doesn't mean more food, more cooking, more laundry.

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It just means I get to enjoy them where the mother's thinking, oh my gosh.

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No, it's actually.

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It's a very gender-related issue.

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It's not sexist, it's just.

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That's the difference between fathers and mothers.

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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.

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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.

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You know they don't want to do those things anymore.

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They've done them.

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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.

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You, you know?

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Is it narcissism?

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Is it our problem or their problem?

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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.

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Where does disappointment lie and why do some parents feel very disappointed, even when the child might be living a pretty happy life?

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Well, some of it is a bit of narcissism.

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You know we still think of our children as belonging to us, as an extension of us.

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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.

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And the dreams begin the moment the doctor puts them in our arms.

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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.

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You know it starts so early.

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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.

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Well, they are, but it's their dreams and they may have a different dream for themselves.

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One of the hard things to do is to separate your dreams for your child with his or her dreams for themselves.

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Sometimes it's nice to ask you know, where do you see yourself in five years or in 10 years?

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If you could design the perfect life, what would it look like?

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And you need to ask those questions in order to say, okay, I guess I better put that dream away.

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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.

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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.

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You know, parents in the 50s and 60s did?

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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.

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They didn't really think about being a.

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They knew what a bad parent was.

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You know.

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A bad parent was intentionally neglectful or abusive.

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They weren't that.

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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.

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Because they were the children of the depression we wanted our kids to be much able to do much more than support themselves.

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We wanted them to be happy and you know, happy is not.

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It's not that our parent, my own parents, wanted me to be unhappy.

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They just didn't think being happy was the most important takeaway in adulthood.

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Well, it's also delusional.

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Like happy is an emotion.

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Happy is not an aspiration.

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You know and I hear this.

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It's also delusional.

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Like happy is an emotion.

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Happy is not an aspiration.

00:21:34.742 --> 00:21:36.865
You know and I hear this.

00:21:36.865 --> 00:21:38.726
It is the number one thing.

00:21:38.726 --> 00:21:51.298
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.

00:21:51.298 --> 00:22:04.502
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.

00:22:04.702 --> 00:22:05.852
And it comes and it goes.

00:22:06.073 --> 00:22:08.638
I mean my father used to say happy.

00:22:09.058 --> 00:22:17.961
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.

00:22:17.961 --> 00:22:20.249
Everyone is a leader, everyone.

00:22:20.249 --> 00:22:25.520
You know, our child is going to be extraordinary Well, and they got trophies just for showing up.

00:22:25.721 --> 00:22:26.103
Yeah.

00:22:26.262 --> 00:22:27.655
But you know that goes to the point.

00:22:27.655 --> 00:22:28.740
Okay, a couple of things.

00:22:28.740 --> 00:22:34.239
You say we created the word parenting and our generation put more into parenting than probably any other generation.

00:22:34.239 --> 00:22:34.941
Very true.

00:22:34.941 --> 00:22:43.750
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.

00:22:43.750 --> 00:22:44.432
That's right.

00:22:44.432 --> 00:22:48.922
We need to sort of give some thoughts to our listeners, or advice.

00:22:48.922 --> 00:22:57.413
How do we let go of those dreams number one and number two when it's really bad, how do we not blame ourselves?

00:22:57.413 --> 00:23:01.272
I mean, there isn't a parent that doesn't say, oh, I should have done this, I should have done that.

00:23:01.594 --> 00:23:03.779
Yeah, the shoulda woulda couldas the shoulda, woulda, couldas.

00:23:04.210 --> 00:23:16.266
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?

00:23:24.170 --> 00:23:25.113
Well, first of all, let's go to blame and guilt.

00:23:25.113 --> 00:23:26.337
We are not to blame, we have nothing to be guilty about.

00:23:26.337 --> 00:23:35.722
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.

00:23:35.722 --> 00:23:39.076
That's not to say we don't have some influence on them.

00:23:39.076 --> 00:23:53.211
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.

00:23:53.211 --> 00:24:02.919
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.

00:24:02.919 --> 00:24:15.363
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.

00:24:15.363 --> 00:24:23.692
Then there's some fault and then there's a reason to feel guilt.

00:24:23.711 --> 00:24:26.577
But in most cases, as a parent, guilt is a neurotic response to having your kids not be perfect.

00:24:26.577 --> 00:24:29.663
And if there are things that you can point to.

00:24:29.663 --> 00:24:33.919
All you can say is that you regret having done them.

00:24:33.919 --> 00:24:40.440
There are things I regret that I wish I'd done differently with my kids, but regret is guilt without the neuroses.

00:24:40.440 --> 00:24:51.152
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.

00:24:51.152 --> 00:24:52.294
They blew it off.

00:24:52.294 --> 00:24:54.797
You know I want to sleep in on Sundays, so I won't take them.

00:24:54.797 --> 00:25:05.671
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.

00:25:05.671 --> 00:25:08.999
But I don't feel guilty that I didn't, I just regret it.

00:25:08.999 --> 00:25:18.355
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.

00:25:18.355 --> 00:25:29.662
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.

00:25:29.662 --> 00:25:30.743
They are adults.

00:25:30.743 --> 00:25:38.737
Their depression, their addiction, their dependence was caused by themselves and how you respond to it.

00:25:38.737 --> 00:25:44.358
Responding out of guilt is never a good idea, because responding out of guilt just makes it worse.

00:25:44.961 --> 00:25:51.571
Responding out of regret and a sincere desire to support what you can is a much more useful approach, but we talk about separating.

00:25:51.571 --> 00:25:54.114
What you can is a much more useful approach, but we talk about separating.

00:25:54.114 --> 00:26:00.597
I'm not saying, you know, tell your kids to leave and lock the door or leave no boarding address, right right.

00:26:00.597 --> 00:26:03.279
I'm saying that you get to draw some boundaries.

00:26:03.840 --> 00:26:21.673
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.

00:26:21.673 --> 00:26:24.340
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.

00:26:24.340 --> 00:26:28.113
You can draw boundaries, and you can draw boundaries around money.

00:26:28.113 --> 00:26:42.835
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.

00:26:42.835 --> 00:26:47.632
You can offer help on a limited basis so that the end of it is in sight.

00:26:48.153 --> 00:26:48.714
Interesting.

00:26:48.714 --> 00:26:50.679
I want to say something to that.

00:26:50.679 --> 00:26:54.290
But I also want to say something to what you said earlier about guilt and regret.

00:26:54.290 --> 00:27:08.701
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.

00:27:09.101 --> 00:27:15.144
We are, and when we're with people whose kids apparently have turned out wonderfully, it's even more difficult.

00:27:15.144 --> 00:27:26.195
I tell a story in my book about my friend Lila, whose kid, peter, has never been anything other than a perfect child.

00:27:26.195 --> 00:27:28.989
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.

00:27:28.989 --> 00:27:35.303
He's never done one thing to make his parents anything but proud and happy, but he's her only child.

00:27:35.303 --> 00:27:45.599
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.

00:27:45.599 --> 00:27:50.556
We're all embarrassed as if we had much more to do with it than we had.

00:27:51.317 --> 00:28:02.290
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.

00:28:02.290 --> 00:28:04.496
I turned out a bad product.

00:28:04.496 --> 00:28:06.641
Is there something this I'm blaming?

00:28:06.641 --> 00:28:09.935
Everybody else is blaming the factory, I'm the factory.

00:28:09.935 --> 00:28:19.343
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.

00:28:19.343 --> 00:28:30.539
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.

00:28:30.539 --> 00:28:41.372
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.

00:28:41.372 --> 00:28:47.423
So not allowing your child to blame you is as important for them as it is for us.

00:28:48.070 --> 00:28:50.479
Say that one more time, because I think that's a really good line.

00:28:51.069 --> 00:29:02.855
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.

00:29:02.855 --> 00:29:18.941
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.

00:29:18.941 --> 00:29:23.990
As long as you let them blame you, they will never take responsibility for themselves.

00:29:23.990 --> 00:29:39.839
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.

00:29:39.839 --> 00:29:43.932
Well, I've been putting solid food in my own mouth for a number of years.

00:29:43.932 --> 00:29:44.271
Now.

00:29:44.271 --> 00:29:54.740
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.

00:29:55.230 --> 00:30:05.269
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.

00:30:05.269 --> 00:30:11.934
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.

00:30:12.435 --> 00:30:13.817
And they're just fueling the fire.

00:30:13.817 --> 00:30:26.907
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.

00:30:26.907 --> 00:30:42.412
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.

00:30:42.412 --> 00:30:43.676
We were so nice to each other.

00:30:43.676 --> 00:30:52.413
And he said no, as soon as you started talking politics, I knew he was right.

00:30:52.614 --> 00:31:03.000
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.

00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:06.201
Provide our children with a two-parent happy family.

00:31:06.201 --> 00:31:23.532
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.

00:31:23.532 --> 00:31:26.078
We can just say you know I regret it.

00:31:26.078 --> 00:31:31.840
I wish I had been able to give you a two-parent family and a white picket fence, but it didn't happen.

00:31:32.481 --> 00:31:36.633
So how do you help parents find more joy in their life?

00:31:36.633 --> 00:31:41.553
I mean, we talked about how important it is to have your own life and to separate.

00:31:41.874 --> 00:31:48.957
Well, one of the things I do is I give them some tools and techniques for changing the relationship with their child.

00:31:48.957 --> 00:32:20.863
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.

00:32:20.863 --> 00:32:23.575
A mortar and a pestle is my favorite tool.

00:32:23.575 --> 00:32:33.570
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.

00:32:33.570 --> 00:32:36.377
That's not the same as repressing your feelings.

00:32:36.377 --> 00:32:46.476
It's literally destroying them, feeling them, allowing yourself to feel that anger, to feel that frustration, to feel that disappointment, and destroying it.

00:32:46.476 --> 00:33:00.057
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.

00:33:00.057 --> 00:33:03.451
There needs to be, I always think, to make those tools work.

00:33:03.451 --> 00:33:09.022
There needs to be a kinesthetic action that goes with the metaphorical action.

00:33:09.022 --> 00:33:12.676
You need to grind those nuts in the mortar and pestle.

00:33:12.676 --> 00:33:15.832
You need to squeeze that bread and throw it in the water.

00:33:15.832 --> 00:33:28.713
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.

00:33:28.713 --> 00:33:30.742
So that's a very useful tool.

00:33:30.782 --> 00:33:34.156
I'm sure I'm responsible for selling lots of mortar and pestles.

00:33:34.156 --> 00:33:38.079
You know, bed, bath and nowhere, or whatever it is.

00:33:38.079 --> 00:33:42.039
There are other techniques like that that work.

00:33:42.039 --> 00:33:43.413
Sometimes.

00:33:43.413 --> 00:33:54.801
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.

00:33:54.801 --> 00:34:10.235
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.

00:34:10.235 --> 00:34:16.278
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.

00:34:16.278 --> 00:34:18.297
Like you know how, about having sex?

00:34:18.297 --> 00:34:19.936
How long has it been since you've done that?

00:34:19.936 --> 00:34:26.096
It's amazing how many parents don't even think about that Because they're so wrapped up in their child.

00:34:26.096 --> 00:34:32.362
Their relationship has withered, so they need to do things to get their child out of their relationship.

00:34:32.750 --> 00:34:34.195
That's a very interesting point.

00:34:34.195 --> 00:34:39.340
Yeah, one of the things I also wanted to mention when we talked about sort of our generation of parenting.

00:34:39.340 --> 00:34:49.018
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.

00:34:49.018 --> 00:34:52.190
And I had a situation someone told me about.

00:34:52.190 --> 00:34:54.679
Their son got a DWI.

00:34:54.679 --> 00:35:00.936
It was $10,000 to pay the attorney to clear this kid's record.

00:35:00.936 --> 00:35:02.099
When do you stop?

00:35:02.099 --> 00:35:03.280
Or how do you stop?

00:35:03.280 --> 00:35:05.932
What support do you give them when troubles come?

00:35:06.474 --> 00:35:08.858
Well, again, I think you have to consider two things.

00:35:08.858 --> 00:35:12.510
One is the pattern of how many times you've bailed them out before.

00:35:12.510 --> 00:35:14.072
Is this the first time?

00:35:14.072 --> 00:35:15.833
Another is your resources.

00:35:15.833 --> 00:35:21.438
And you know, one of the things we forget when we talk about our resources is that they are marital resources.

00:35:21.438 --> 00:35:26.603
They're not just ours, and that includes when a child comes back home to live.

00:35:26.603 --> 00:35:31.907
We don't usually ask our husbands if it's okay and that's a marital resource.

00:35:31.907 --> 00:35:39.018
We need to talk to them before we make any offers about help, because it's not just our money we're spending.

00:35:39.018 --> 00:35:40.161
So that's an important thing.

00:35:40.161 --> 00:35:48.932
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.

00:35:48.932 --> 00:35:52.059
A public defender or a regular lawyer would you know?

00:35:52.059 --> 00:35:53.541
I think that's way out of line.

00:35:53.541 --> 00:36:03.956
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.

00:36:03.956 --> 00:36:07.873
If you want this lawyer, you're going to have to figure out a way to pay the rest of it yourself.

00:36:08.173 --> 00:36:10.280
And there's the embarrassment versus the guilt.

00:36:10.280 --> 00:36:20.574
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.

00:36:20.815 --> 00:36:29.724
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.

00:36:29.724 --> 00:36:34.777
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.

00:36:34.777 --> 00:36:53.699
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.

00:36:53.699 --> 00:36:56.572
And you know, in the same way for my spouse.

00:36:56.572 --> 00:37:06.882
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.

00:37:06.882 --> 00:37:20.599
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.

00:37:21.349 --> 00:37:39.518
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.

00:37:39.518 --> 00:37:46.751
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.

00:37:46.751 --> 00:37:52.655
I would probably, if I had the resources, help them with a down payment on their first house.

00:37:52.655 --> 00:38:02.170
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.

00:38:02.170 --> 00:38:05.838
Again, it depends on what kind of child you have.

00:38:06.159 --> 00:38:11.018
Yeah, a lot depends on that and how responsible they've been about repaying you.

00:38:11.057 --> 00:38:14.856
When it's a loan, I'd also look at the difference between a loan and a gift.

00:38:14.856 --> 00:38:24.822
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.

00:38:25.429 --> 00:38:52.458
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.

00:38:52.597 --> 00:38:53.539
Well, I know a number.

00:38:53.539 --> 00:39:10.438
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.

00:39:10.438 --> 00:39:14.217
And, first of all, I think there's a problem if you're paying a 27 year old's rent.

00:39:14.556 --> 00:39:16.179
You don't know how often that happens.

00:39:16.179 --> 00:39:19.612
Let me just tell you oh, it happens a lot it happens a lot.

00:39:19.954 --> 00:39:44.797
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.

00:39:44.797 --> 00:39:56.001
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.

00:39:56.001 --> 00:40:06.358
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.

00:40:06.358 --> 00:40:16.817
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.

00:40:16.817 --> 00:40:18.221
What if I need it someday?

00:40:18.690 --> 00:40:23.670
But I think when it's a health issue like that, a mental health issue, you understand a little bit more.

00:40:23.670 --> 00:40:31.123
What I tend to see is it's almost like you're rewarding the child who is?

00:40:31.123 --> 00:40:31.764
Messing up.

00:40:31.764 --> 00:40:32.652
That's exactly right.

00:40:32.652 --> 00:40:35.101
So the son or daughter, that's succeeding.

00:40:35.101 --> 00:40:38.532
I don't want to say forgotten you're proud of them Is penalized for succeeding.

00:40:38.572 --> 00:40:39.615
yeah, and again.

00:40:39.615 --> 00:40:44.960
I think that goes back to the issue of why are you continuing to support a 25-year-old?

00:40:45.289 --> 00:40:54.400
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.

00:40:54.400 --> 00:40:57.099
They were more concerned about the grandchildren being homeless.

00:40:57.099 --> 00:41:01.974
We have to continue to support him because he has these three children now.

00:41:02.554 --> 00:41:24.364
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.

00:41:24.364 --> 00:41:40.297
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.

00:41:40.297 --> 00:41:44.112
But again, it needs to be a limited time and a limited amount.

00:41:44.271 --> 00:41:49.003
I really agree with that, and that's certainly true of babysitting also.

00:41:49.670 --> 00:42:00.385
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.

00:42:00.385 --> 00:42:04.221
The parents need to have a real talk when the daughter says, oh, I've got this wonderful job.

00:42:04.221 --> 00:42:06.538
And you say, what are you going to do for child care?

00:42:06.538 --> 00:42:09.418
And she says, well, I figured you'd take care of them.

00:42:09.418 --> 00:42:12.659
And that's when you get to say that's not my plan.

00:42:12.659 --> 00:42:25.559
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?

00:42:25.780 --> 00:42:26.021
Right.

00:42:26.235 --> 00:42:28.322
But I would still draw some boundaries around it.

00:42:28.322 --> 00:42:32.407
I would still say I will do it three days a week or whatever.

00:42:33.096 --> 00:42:36.826
This leads into somewhere in your book you say the parent who gives too much.

00:42:36.826 --> 00:42:38.983
What does this mean and how does it help or harm?

00:42:38.983 --> 00:42:42.666
Is that in what we were just talking about or is it something different?

00:42:43.054 --> 00:42:45.221
I think it's in what we were just talking about.

00:42:45.221 --> 00:43:02.666
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.

00:43:02.666 --> 00:43:11.262
I think interdependence is where, ultimately, we want to be with our kids, which is the best chance for a mutual relationship.

00:43:11.503 --> 00:43:12.485
What do you mean by that?

00:43:12.485 --> 00:43:14.036
Explain what you mean by interdependence.

00:43:14.056 --> 00:43:17.105
I mean being able to call on your kids for help when you need it.

00:43:17.105 --> 00:43:20.981
Okay, for instance, I'm about to have my hip replaced.

00:43:20.981 --> 00:43:26.621
I'm going to need my daughter, who lives in a different town, to be here for a week.

00:43:26.621 --> 00:43:32.922
And she said to me when we talked about it well, of course I'll be there, mom, but what about Cam, her brother?

00:43:32.922 --> 00:43:36.914
And she said you know, just because he's a guy, he's just as capable.

00:43:36.914 --> 00:43:38.422
And I thought you know you're right.

00:43:38.422 --> 00:43:46.081
So I called my son and he said I can be available from, you know, five o'clock after work to nine o'clock.

00:43:46.081 --> 00:43:48.987
Fine, good, okay, I have to ask.

00:43:48.987 --> 00:44:00.150

Season 3, Episode 81 Bonus Rewind When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us

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