“You’re not wearing that?” How many times did we hear that and other critical comments from our mothers, not only as teens but also as twenty- and even thirty-somethings. My dear, departed mother sometimes made me crazy with her comments. When I complained to a therapist friend she replied, “Your mother knows which buttons to push because she installed them!” She was so right. Mothers know the insecurities sowed when we were children, and, as we become adults, can trigger negative feelings with off-hand (and often deliberate) remarks.

Now as parents of adult children we struggle not to repeat history, particularly when it comes to daughters. Yet the conflicts continue as the Wall Street Journal recounted last week in “’I'm Not Your Little Baby!’ Calling a Truce in Mother-Daughter Conflict.”  The article tallied a litany of prime topics for criticism: clothes, housekeeping, haircuts, husbands, weight, spending habits, grandchildren’s  behavior, makeup or lack thereof, how the dishwasher is loaded, and on and on!

Why do mothers act this way? Is it ingrained in our maternal DNA? Journalist Elizabeth Bernstein interviewed several therapists and reports that among the reasons for this behavior:

Mothers may place unrealistic and at times conflicting expectations on their daughters. They want their daughters to do things they didn’t get to do, but they also want their daughters to be like them. They want their daughters to respect them, and they want them to be a friend.

Of course, we don’t make friends with heaps of criticism, yet mothers often claim that their comments come from love not hostility. It sure doesn’t seem like love to daughters, who often feel they are being treated like little children or with unnecessary cruelness. The daughter’s feelings are magnified, Ms. Bernstein writes, because:

Underneath, they fear they’ve failed the one person they have been seeking approval from since before they could speak.

The opportunity to change this paradigm comes when we are the mothers and our little girls have become young adults. Does turning off the criticism mean biting your tongue, and never enjoying an honest relationship with a daughter? The long answer to that question has filled self-help books and countless hours of therapy. Thankfully, the Journal article provided several suggestions on how to improve the mother-daughter relationship. Some of them are admittedly difficult for both mother and daughters: “Leave your anger at the door” and figure out “What are we really fighting about?” The most-user friendly suggestion:

Find something fun and mutually satisfying to do together instead of the negative pattern. Art? Hiking? Antiquing? Couples who try new activities together are happier. It can be true of moms and daughters, too.

A great idea! Even those of us who enjoy good relationships with our adult daughters can strengthen the bond by spending time as friends, even if it means footing the bill for the spa facial or movie and dinner. Maybe this Mother’s Day the best gift we can receive is one that we give to our daughters to spend time in a criticism-free zone for a relaxed few hours while having fun together.

Of course, there are many mothers who don’t have an adversarial relationship with their daughters, some even taking that “friends” idea to an extreme. A fascinating look at a mother-daughter duo who really get along was provided in “My Mom is My BFF.”

In the New York magazine piece, journalist Paige Williams dissects  mother-daughter parenting styles over the decades and comes to the conclusion that in the 21st century:

Friendship became a kind of parenting strategy: By treating Child as Adult, parents hoped that the kid would actually become an adult, and a good one. The happy outcome for some: mothers and daughters who didn’t have to wait until middle or old age to actually enjoy each other’s company. To maintain peer-ness, there came a coinciding pressure to stay young, technologically supported by the capacity to stay young. Moms have never had at their disposal so many resources—so much paraphernalia—allowing them to shrink the generation gap. If they want, they can practically turn themselves back into teenagers.

Turning ourselves back into teenagers is a bit more work than most of us want to sign up for! However, perhaps we can consider that trip to the spa for a dual purpose: We cement mother-daughter bonding and look younger at the same time.

Howard McWilliams

For parents of college seniors, spring brings “the best of times, the worst of times,” and depending on your viewpoint, those categories can overlap. On one hand, the close of the college years can fall into the “worst” category if you are sad to see that chapter end, or it can be a “best” if you’re thankful for the last tuition bills (or maybe both!). Adult children moving home can be a “best” if you enjoy their company or a “worst” if they come home clueless about a career.

No matter how you regard these events, college graduation required parents to make a change in mindset. After more than two decades of micromanaging our children’s lives, it’s time to let them take charge, espcially as they start their professional lives. That’s a shifting of gears that many parents find difficult to make, reports NPR in “Parents Hover in the Workplace.”

As adult children plunge into the job market, parents are not far behind, often working as their unpaid agents. A Michigan State University survey of more than 700 employers found that nearly a third of parents submitted résumés on their children’s behalf and one-quarter of parents called the potential employers to urge them to hire their offspring.

Margaret Fiester of the Society for Human Resource Management told NPR :

When it comes to parents acting as lobbyists, she’s heard it all — from parents calling to negotiate better salaries or vacation time for their kids to complaining when their child isn’t hired. “Surely you’ve overlooked these wonderful qualities that my child has,” Fiester says parents often tell her.

Not all companies look aghast at this interference. The car rental company Enterprise considers parents “influencers” and includes them in the process by sending recruiting materials and other information.

Where does a parent draw a line, especially in a tough economy? Of course there are myriad ways parents can help without being overbearing from proofreading a resume to buying an interview outfit. Certainly parents are “influencers,” helping an adult child make a decision on whether to take a certain job, especially if it’s not a career builder but simply a source of income. Parents also can provide names of contacts for adult children to follow up on with a phone call or email. But calling HR after an offer is made to ask for more vacation time? Most adult children would rather give up their cell phones for a week than have a parent meddle that way.

The NPR piece made us feel compassion for the HR professionals who must deal with these potential employees and their parents. The new hires alone are demanding enough as evidenced by a guest post on a blog for women HR professionals. The guest blogger wrote that there are two ways to regard the new candidate pool:

Either a) you have a bunch of delusional, texting, Facebooking employees who have unrealistic expectations that they will be CEO in 2 years and feel they are entitled to getting everything they want, or b) you have an emerging number of employees full or energy and enthusiasm who want to find new ways to break into the corporate world and make a difference.

Obviously the writer believes that most “millenials” fall into category “B” and went on to suggest several ways to make “onboarding,” aka the hiring process, a fun experience. One suggestion:

Things are being “game-ified” left and right in market today. People are even given “badges” for normal human sustaining activity like eating (ala FourSquare). If there is any way to spice up the on-boarding process with games, activities or some sort of tracking rewards, the level of engagement from millennials increases exponentially.

Our commiserations to the HR staff of companies everywhere; apparently the spring hiring season brings them too the best and worst of times.

Last week in “Playing Fair” we introduced family therapist Dr. B. Janet Hibbs whose academic and clinical work focuses on the role  fairness plays in our relationships. This week we continue our discussion of how her findings relate to parents and their adult children.

Q. Some young adults have what you call a “relationship of obligation” with their parents. What exactly does that mean?

A. That refers to when the adult child really doesn’t want to have a relationship with the parents but feel they must; otherwise it would break family rule of how a good son or daughter is supposed to behave. It’s not an authentic relationship that is made of people understanding other people’s needs. It’s more just, “Hey, I know what I am supposed to do, and I’ll do it!”

Q. Parents must be aware of this emotional gulf. Why don’t they address it?

A. The parents indeed may complain, “Why don’t you call more often” or “I don’t see you very much.” But they may not realize there’s an underlying injury because the adult child won’t talk about it; they don’t want to hurt a parent’s feelings. It’s a little crazy because obviously the adult child is ruining the relationship, but that’s the logic

Q. Often those strained relationships are a result of what you call “childhood injuries.” What does that mean?

A. Sometimes the adult child feels a sibling was favored more; sometimes parents live under they myth that they treated all children equally when in reality they didn’t. Perhaps one child was the family scapegoat and screamed at more; sometimes a child doesn’t turn as the parents expected in terms of accomplishments, and the adult child knows that.

Q. There might be an explanation of why a parent was hard on one child and easier on another, yet the child often refuses to bring the parent to therapy to discuss the issue. Why?

A. The adult child is terrified of losing the parent’s love, even if there’s a benign explanation for parent’s behavior. The adult child keeps trying harder to please but eventually keeps a distance, terrified that injured once they will be injured again. Our brains are wired not to keep us happy but to keep us out of danger.

Q. Suppose a parent senses that there is an emotional strain with an adult child. How do you try to mend it?

A. We often don’t know unless we ask, so ask but start slow. In a discussion tell the child how proud you are of him and ask questions about his life. Gently mention that perhaps you don’t see him as much as you’d like and ask him there’s anything you could do to make it better. Is there something that happened in past that he’d like to discuss? Sometimes adult children are often waiting for an invitation to open up.

Another approach is to talk about your relationship with your own parents, noting perhaps that “It wasn’t until I was in my late 20s that I got such and such straightened out with mom” or “I wish I had talked to my father about such and such.”

Q. For us to understand the other’s person perspective you say that we need a better grasp relational ethics? What is that?

A. Relational ethics is at the heart of my clinical training in family therapy. It’s really about trying to decide what’s fair between two people in a relationship. It could be parent and child or a husband and wife. It’s about what you owe that other person and what you deserve back from that person.

Q. Could you give an example of relational ethics from a parent’s perspective?

A. Let’s say you think your adult child in college is drinking too much. So when child is not acting in his own best interest, you have a right as a parent to request that the child change his behavior. You are making a claim for a child to take care of your concern by taking care of themselves.

Another example is when a daughter is in an emotionally abusive relationship and she constantly calls to complain about her boyfriend. The mom is put in double bind; she’s her daughter’s confidant but seemingly has no rights to offer advice, only to listen. I say that a mom does have the right to say, “I worried about you. Could you please go talk to someone like a therapist about this?” You also have the right to suggest she find another confidant, saying,  “This is very, very hard for me that you are turning to me and I am helpless. Who else can you talk too that you trust?”

Q. What else should we keep in mind in dealing with adult children?

A. Parent-child relationships are based not only on love but also on give-and-take. When the give-and-take is chronically out of whack either way that’s when people feel exploited and treated unfairly. They may address in very sideways manner but they won’t come out and say it.

Recall the times when children grumbled, “That’s not fair!” Often our flip response was, “Life’s not fair.” We hope our adult children have forgiven us for life’s inequities,  large and small. Still, they sometimes harbor resentment over our shortcomings as parents. The resentments can deepen into an emotional gulf that both parents and children don’t acknowledge yet alone discuss.

She empathizes with her patients because she experienced a strained relationship with her mother. Only while in training did Dr. Hibbs come to understand that she was not alone. Her mentor told her, “It’s in the nature of parent-child relationships for parents to hurt their children.” Dr. Hibbs recalls her reaction, writing on her blog:

I thought her statement was breathtaking, distressing and yet liberating.

So I was normal. I was a normal former child who’d been injured, and was soon to be a normal parent who despite my very best efforts, sometimes truly failed to imagine my children’s reality. I couldn’t take comfort in how much better a job I would do.

Instead, I had to make peace with my parents, their limitations and my own limitations as well…We talked about how we each had both loved yet hurt or disappointed each other. From all this, I became wiser, lighter and more loved simultaneously.

Her blog post lead me to her book, “Try to See it My Way: Being Fair in Love and Marriage.” In a chapter, “The Baggage You Bring to Relationships,” Dr. Hibbs explains how our parent-child history deeply influences the next generation with our own children.  Dr. Hibbs believes that fairness—at least our concept of what’s fair—plays a critical role in shaping that relationship. She writes:

Most of us have unevaluated, yet governing assumptions about fairness that we learn in our families growing up. Then we automatically import these “truths” into all of our relationships, often without recognizing it.

Not only are we struggling with this concept of fairness but we doing so as the ground under us keeps shifting. Children grow up, go off to college, boomerang home for awhile, leave the nest, move thousands of miles away or nearby, get married, become parents. We change from fast-track careerists, to slowing the pace, becoming grandparents,  to retirement and growing old and needing their help (yes, it happens!).  As a result of the shifting landscape, the parent-child relationship is constantly renegotiated, although often without either side acknowledging it.

We chatted with Dr. Hibbs on the phone earlier this month and she made so many relevant points that we’ve split the interview into two parts, this week and next. We’ll end here with her comment on the enduring influence of the three generations—you, your parents, and your children. Her words lead us to consider how our present-day interactions are based on what was expected of us as children and whether, in the scheme of things, those expectations were fair.

“It’s really important for people to understand that we all operate within a three- generational context of give and take. Some of our expectations on what we expect from our children are based on what was expected of us. We always have to be very careful to evaluate whether what we gave to our parents–and what we got from them–as reasonable or not. Otherwise, you pass that along to your own children.”

We all treasure the opportunity to spend extended time with our adult children, and that often means cramming an outing into their busy schedules or providing a feathered nest into which they can occasionally escape.

And sometimes, although it will cost you, the bonding makes it worth the expense.

Last month I wanted to plan something special with my college-age daughter for her final winter break before she graduates in May. I suggested a relaxing weekend at a Florida beach; she one-upped me with a four-day trip to Universal’s Harry Potter World, as she is a big fan of the books.

To be honest, a crowded Orlando theme park is not my vision of fun in the sun which usually involves a chaise lounge, a magazine and a Mai Tai. Most of my friends shook their heads. “You haven’t read a single ‘Harry Potter,’” one of them said. “And you hate roller coasters!”

But my daughter kept forwarding me links to the website. “Hopefully I’ll have a job next January and not be able to take off,” she said earnestly. “The next time I may have a chance to go is when I’ll be taking my own kids.”

What the heck. I signed on, (luckily snaring off-season rates) because, to me, isn’t that part of what parenting adult children is all about: meeting them on their terms; giving up control, letting them make decisions? Not easy for many of us after all those years firmly at the helm of Mission Control. Why not seize an opportunity to become a fellow traveler–even one who ends up footing the entire bill?

First it was time for some role reversal, as my daughter became the teacher and I her (clueless) student in a crash course in “Harry Potter 101.” There was no way I was going plow through all those hefty books before our pilgrimage, so four nights in a row, she insisted we watched the DVDs. As we sat together on the family-room couch, she provided a running commentary on the key plot-twists, occasionally yelling at me to stay awake.

After we got to the park, her expert tutorials made it possible to delight in every amazing detail–from the screaming plants in the Hogsmeade’s shop window to Hagrid’s Hut. Together we bonded over the fantasy of Ollivanders’ Wand Shop and recovered from the scary, motion-sickness-inducing “Forbidden Journey” ride in the Hogwarts castle. After that, she graciously agreed to pass on the adult roller-coaster and asked only that we go on the kiddie one. (“You can open your eyes and stop screaming,” she reassured me when the ride ended.)

Because we stayed at an on-site hotel that gave us early entrance and skip-the-line passes, we were always done Potter-ing by 1 p.m., just as the crowds began to swell. That’s when we headed poolside to relax, read and sip tropical rum cocktails, decompressing before we both launched into another busy spring semester.

In the wave of a wizard’s wand it was over, and we went from Potter World to real world: the bone-chilling cold of Boston, where we moved her back into a dorm one last time. Surprisingly I didn’t tear up as I’d feared (and had, while writing the last tuition check).  Maybe it was the afterglow of bonding over Butterbeer (not beer at all, more like cream soda). Maybe it was realizing, once again, that when children grow up, they don’t necessarily have to grow away. We can keep improvising new ways to experience the crazy, unscripted roller coaster of life together, every magical chance we get.

Earlier this month in “A Teachable Moment,” we referenced “Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood,” a new book that examines the “chaotic terrain” traveled by young people during their school and early career years.

We decided to take a closer look the book and found a blunt, bleak assessment of the difficulties faced by adult children. Christian Smith, a University of Notre Dame sociologist, enumerates five major problems: confused moral reasoning, routine intoxication, materialistic life goals, regrettable sexual experiences, and disengagement from civic and political life.

The book devotes a chapter to each of these problems; the most troubling is “Morality Adrift.” Many of the young people interviewed seem to have no moral compass for making decisions. About 60 percent of the interviewees said that, “Moral rights and wrongs are essentially matters of individual opinion.” These young adults will not pass judgment either on other people’s moral decisions as “They are entitled to their own personal opinions.”

Other chapters were succinctly summarized by a review in The Economist:

And so to consumerism. Shopping is personally fulfilling; buying things supports the economy (true enough); if you can afford it, you deserve it. Might it be just a tiny bit gross to own ten cars while others in your city are working double shifts to buy shoes for their children? Apparently not. The good life consists of having a decent job, a decent standard of living and a nice family, not of fighting for justice or saving whales.

As for the prevalence of drink and sex, peer pressure, advertising and the media play their part, but so too does sheer boredom. Many of the young women, in particular, look back with some regret on very early sexual experiences, and on later ones with virtual strangers. And as for politics, what emerges is a strong feeling of disempowerment and distrust. Relatively few young people think they know or can do much about what is going on, and most of those who do follow current events and vote seem to take things no further.

Smith’s conclusions are based on a 10-year-long study that surveyed a broad national cross-section of 3,000 teens, followed by 230 in-depth interviews. Starting in 2002, Smith, assisted by graduate students, interviewed teens, aged 13 to 17, for a first book, “Souls in Transition.” The findings in this new book are based on follow-up interviews with the same group, now aged 18 to 23.

The problems detailed, Smith says, are not of the young adults’ own making. Rather they reflect the American culture they grew up in, shaped by consumerism, educational failures, hyper-individualism, moral relativism, and drug and alcohol abuse. A common misconception, especially by aging parents, Smith writes, is that their children are enjoying “the best years of their lives.” He writes:

“The actual reality for many, however, is instead one of personal struggle, confusion, anxiety, hurt, frustration and grief. Some emerging adults sail through these years unscathed. But many suffer wounds in body and soul, in their relationships, and in their chances for leading good lives.”

Young adults have many challenges ahead of them that require informed, morally-based decisions. Yet they live in a world digitally connected 24/7 to other emerging adults, a situation Smith likens to “putting a bunch of novice tennis players together on the court and expecting them to emerge later with advanced skills and experience.”

To help them along their path, emerging adults need “older and wiser” role models such as relatives, neighbors, family friends, mentors at work and school. Parents, too, need to be aware of the ongoing roles they play in their adult children’s lives. Smith writes:

“Individual families and parents can make a huge difference in intentionally choosing to live certain ways, teaching their children that there isn’t a quick and easy fix…One thing we’ve learned from our study is that parents are a hugely important factor. So there’s a real opportunity for parents and families to engage these issues, to think about them seriously and to be intentional about how they want to live them rather than just going along with the larger flow.”

As our children were growing up, we all stumbled upon spontaneous “teachable moments,” and those opportunities don’t stop because our children are now adults.  In their personal and professional lives, they encounter situations that calibrate on the doing-the-right-thing scale from legally correct to being a good person.  Often they make those decisions on their own; sometimes they ask our opinion.

The Penn State scandal brings a teachable moment for both our children and us as parents. According to press reports, in 2002 graduate assistant Mike McQueary witnessed a former coach raping a young boy in the Penn State locker room. His father was the first person he talked to before reporting the assault to head coach Joe Paterno.

What did father advise son? We have no way of knowing, and the facts as reported in the media remain to be proven in a court of law. What we are reminded of, however, is the ongoing advisory role parents play with adult children, especially in times of trouble.

We can only imagine the conversation between McQueary father and son. But surely both realized that by reporting the assault it could impact the younger man’s life, and who knows what would have happened if he had gone directly to the police.  Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, who lead the investigation as the state Attorney General,   said yesterday that Mike McQueary  ”did not in my opinion meet a moral obligation” in reporting the abuse.

How do young adults make tough decisions? Apparently, moral relativism is a common approach, according to a recent book, “Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood.” The author, a University of Notre Dame sociologist, surveyed young adults about right-and-wrong decision making. He found that many believe that moral choices are up to the individual.

A New York Times article about the young adults interviewed for the book noted:

When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. “I don’t really deal with right and wrong that often,” is how one interviewee put it.

The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. “It’s personal,” the respondents typically said. “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?”

The teachable moment for us parents that Penn State drives home is the ongoing role we play to help our children make moral decisions.  Most likely, our children will never be confronted with such a horrific situation. Instead they face a thousand cuts of ethical quandaries. We can use this moment to send the message that we’ll always try to help them make the right decision, even if it’s the one they don’t want to hear.

When adult children can’t find work or when the jobs they do land leave them unfulfilled, who is to blame? The parents, of course, or at least according to two Gen Y authors and commenters in two recent articles.

“Are Twentysomethings Expecting Too Much?” in The Washingtonian:

If  twentysomethings are expecting anything, it’s only because those expectations were set up for us since birth. We were told from the moment we started pre-school that if we study hard, if we persevere, and if we gain knowledge, we will be rewarded with a choice of profession, a fulfilling life, and an appropriate financial means to raise a family. This promise is proving to be false, and it’s not our fault.

“The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright” in New York:

Our generation is the product of two long-term social experiments conducted by our parents. The first sought to create little hyperachievers encouraged to explore our interests and talents, so long as that could be spun for maximum effect on a college application…In the second experiment, which was a reaction to their own distant moms and dads, our parents tried to see how much self-confidence they could pack into us… and accordingly we were awarded clip-art Certificates of Participation just for showing up.

The Washingtonian magazine

The common denominator in these pieces is that parents supposedly promised their children the impossible dream: Follow your passion and work you love will follow. Even without a recession and record unemployment, how many people can realistically expect to achieve that goal? But we were so wrong to encourage our children to aim high and hope that they will eventually find a variation on a theme: work that satisfies them intellectually, socially, emotionally or economically, or some combination thereof? Perhaps what got lost in the translation is that fulfillment from work or even the satisfaction from a job well done does not often happen right out the gate in a first job, and sometimes it takes some hefty dues paying.

The Beltway millennials dissected by 29-year-old Hannah Seligson in The Washingtonian are dismayed by their unfulfilling  jobs. Part of the reason for their disappointment is that they have delayed marriage and family for climbing the career ladder only to find they’re stuck at the bottom. Frustrated, these young adults plot their next moves out of stuck-in-the-stone-age government jobs and 60-hour-week corporate law positions. Yet, they are surprisingly confident that they will snare dream jobs, reflecting an attitude shared by their generation, according to a recent Pew survey.

Up I-95, New York writer Noreen Malone, 27, found a somewhat different sampling of young adults, jobless or underemployed. Those who landed good positions consider themselves “lucky,” and are holding on for dear life. Unlike the Washingtonian sampling, these NYC millennials are not strategizing the next big promotion. One friend tells Ms. Malone. “Well, maybe I don’t have to be in charge. Maybe I’ll be okay with just keeping afloat rather than making a splash.” Lowered expectations appears to be the way these millenials take charge of their destiny. They can’t be disappointed not to be a master—or mistress–of the universe if that wasn’t the goal in the first place. Ms. Malone calls it “managed decline”:

That’s what we’re doing when we decide that we can be okay with having more unpredictable careers and more modest lifestyles, if that’s what’s in store: Even as we hold out hope that something will reverse the trajectory, we are managing our decline, we are making do.

Baby boomer parents can only watch from near and far as adult children claw their way up the career ladder or accept a step beneath their potential. What do we tell them if they ask for our advice, or whine with frustration or cry with disappointment? A thoughtful reply was offered by one of the Washingtonian article commenters:

Fulfillment doesn’t appear full-fledged on your doorstep; it develops as you go…. Fantasies aren’t real. Pick what matters and give your best to it…. As John Lennon said, life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans. It’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you respond to it.

And regardless of your path, not everything is fulfilling. Learn to whistle while you work and the work you do will matter less than the fact that you’re doing it well. Life is far more about attitude than it is about whether or not you get off on it.

Words to pass along to our children.

While we all know that parenting never ends, many of us anticipated the amount of energy we expended to level off.  Yet the reality is a see-saw: as physical demands lessen—laundry, cooking, supervising schoolwork—there’s a corresponding increase in the emotional toll— careers, romances, general happiness.

And money? Financial advisors tell us that the two “biggest raises” we will ever receive are when we finish paying for college and the mortgage.  That might have been true before the recession boomeranged kids home and resulted in even independent children needing financial help, but no longer.

This seemingly endless parenting was lamented by journalist Wendy Dennis in “Parenting Challenges Lie Beyond Adolescence.” With refreshing bluntness, Ms. Dennis admits that she is not happy about the ongoing neediness from adult children; she has other plans:

Mothers are supposed to long to be needed, and indeed, many do. While it’s impolitic to say so in the current climate, what with the Ministry of Motherhood issuing Taliban-esque decrees on attachment parenting, many mothers have other priorities–especially in the third act of their lives.

As a long-time proponent of detachment parenting, I’d flunk out as a young mother today…Not only do kids need to separate. At a certain point, you want them to bugger off.

While not all parents react as strongly as Ms. Dennis, many do get used to the quiet of the empty nest and feel their lives are rudely disrupted when children come back.  So what to do?  Ms Dennis suggests taking a lesson from the kids:

Our only defense is to retreat to our rooms, crank up the music, and hang a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. At least we know the strategy works.

That might for awhile.  But we know the children are out there and as much as we blast the music, we can still “hear” them, especially if one is in pain. It turns out that “You’re only as happy as your least happy child” is unfortunately all too true, according to a new study.  Even if other children are successful and settled that one unhappy child can cause depression and increased worry for parents. Why do our children continue to extract an emotional toll?  Karen Fingerman, a University of Texas at Austin professor who lead the study, suggested:

“It could be the case that parents empathize with their children’s distress, they are embarrassed that their relationships with these grown children suffer, or that grown children who have problems may place excessive demands on the parents.”

So we can hang up the “Do Not Disturb” sign but most likely we will still feel  the pain of our adult child.   Of course there are ways to lessen the emotional burden. For suggestions watch Kris Jenner, mother of the difficult Kardashian siblings: spend money, get a facelift.

As usual, there are no one-size-fits-all answers to emotionally needy adult children.   However some of those suggestions for little kids with little problems might also prove useful for parenting big kids with big problems: Don’t give into tantrums, limit the length of a discussion,  take a timeout, count to three and see if they stop whining, vent to a friend, and  most important, make time for yourself, you’ve earned it. Also remember hugs still soothe, no matter the age of the child!

Many young adults today  need a double dose of “true grit”  to deal with the lack of opportunities wrought by the recession.  That fallout is painfully evidenced by their laments in an Atlantic piece, “Profiles in Unemployment: What It’s Like to be Jobless in Your 20s.”

The 20-somethings who write letters to The Atlantic are likely among the nation’s best and brightest.  Many of them are bitter and angry, feeling betrayed that they did “everything right” only to find there was no pot of gold waiting after college graduation.  One young woman, an outstanding athlete and graduate of a top tier school, writes that her morning jog is the best part of the day.

When I finish, I will face a day without structure; a day marked by unanswered emails and phone calls and desperate Internet scouring.  I have never known this desperation.  I foolishly did not think I ever would.  I believed that I was uniquely gifted, and uniquely focused.

The Atlantic received so many letters from Gen Y that it published a second round.  These letter writers reflect the same feelings of betrayal. They were told by their parents to work hard, get good grades; they did that only to hit a dead end in terms of employment.  Even those who do find jobs are deflated by the mindless, bottom-rung work.  “Miss 4.0 Honors,”   as one writer describes herself, found a job after two years of searching but is deeply disappointed:

I feel as if I am wasting my life, sitting here at this desk, doing trivial work and browsing news articles all day. When people tell me that I’m lucky for having a job I want to cry. How can this mundane existence actually be envied…my optimism about the work world has been severely damaged.  I did not work this hard in order to obtain this outcome.

Does this young woman need grit or a reality check or both?  Where did she get the notion that her first job would be intellectually challenging and fun?  Those beginner slots often entail mindless drudgery.

What can we as parents do to encourage our children who are in the same position or still  looking for work?  Our role now is not to solve the problems but to provide the support—emotional, maybe some economic—to help them tough it out, perhaps learning some true grit in the process.

That seems to be the case with a  20-something, quoted in The Atlantic piece, who writes that the difficult journey though unemployment resulted in some positive lessons:

…something unexpected happened:  I began to appreciate anew the people and fortune and honesty around and within me.

The experience of unemployment made me a better person. But if it had been an informed choice, if I could have seen in high definition the desolate canyons and wastelands before me, I’m not sure that I would do it over again…. For better or worse, with a little prognostication, the sky fell on my head, and I had to crawl my way out….I started a new job this month, and we are feeling each other out.  I am grateful for it and the chance to resume a measure of order.