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.

There’s likely to be many tears at the high school graduations this month.  Yes, some tears of sadness to mark the move onto college but tears of joy too. That testy teenager will finally be moving out of the house!  As my sister says, “Tuition is money you pay a college to take your child off your hands!”

Seriously, while there is joy, there’s also great anxiety and angst.  Anxiety that your child will make all the right choices–ethically, morally, socially and academically–over the next four years away from the nest. In an article “For Parents: Your Life after Graduation,” noted child psychiatrist Dr. Harold Koplewicz writes,

We hope, despite all the things we didn’t do over the years, and because of the things we did do, that our children somehow have what it takes to decide for themselves what matters, to choose amid all the temptations and pressures that bombard them from the moment they step outside without parental strings.

That’s the anxiety that many mothering21.com moms have experienced and are now going through as second or third time as they launch younger children,  still feeling the angst that Dr. Koplewicz refers to:

…being a parent involves a particularly complicated kind of “letting go.” The effort, awareness and selflessness this requires is something we rarely talk about when celebrating graduations and preparing for what comes next in our children’s lives.

Good point,  although many of us are still trying to let go five or ten years after high school graduation!

A comedy writer and a therapist go on vacation (this is not a set-up for a joke) and spend hours talking about their grown kids.  So many issues! When they return home they decide to collaborate on a book about bringing up “baby”  to be independent.  Their definition of independence: “being creative, taking initiative, being open and flexible, having choices, showing respect and solving problems.”

Working with the theory that while “little kids have little problems, big kids have even bigger problems,” Gail Parent, an Emmy-award winning writer, and Susan Ende, a psychotherapist, have co-authored a witty, practical guide, “How to Raise Your Adult Children.”

For the book, they solicited questions from a network of personal and professional contacts. Questions are categorized: money, college, living home, work, dating, family rituals, marriage, in-laws, grandchildren, divorce, and aging and illness. The result is a cookbook of issues that can be browsed for the problem du jour.   Having trouble getting your kid to look for a job? Check out “work.”  Don’t like the way the grandkids are being raised? Thumb through the “grandchildren” section and find recipes for solutions.

Answers are doled out with a dose  of tongue-in-cheek humor by Ms. Parent and tough-love analysis by Ms. Ende, sometimes agreeing, sometimes at odds.  For example, “Mac” writes that his wife is pestering him to call in some favors and find a job for their  20-something slacker son. Ms. Parent recommends giving the kid a short deadline to find a job—any job—and moving out.  Then, she suggests, Mac should use his connections to help his son find a better job.  Ms. Ende counters that Dad should not help the kid get a better job, asking should he “be guaranteed a better job just for being responsible?”  Ms. Parents’ response: Yes! She believes in bribery as a way to get results with children.  Both have their points!

We chatted on the phone earlier this month with Ms. Ende in sunny southern California where they do not have mounds of snow as we do in New York.

Q. Many experts blame the economy for “boomerang” kids.  Adult children move home after college because they can’t get jobs and/or they don’t make enough money to live alone.  But you think there are other reasons for this trend.

A. Yes, this trend has been going on for quite awhile and the economy only made it worse. But the recession covered up another issue: Parents are having a hard time letting kids go.  Many are helicopter parents so involved that they never let children problem-solve their own lives. Now when the kids have a problem they call their parents to solve it. They were brought up this way so it’s natural that they never learned to solve own problems.

Q. You also believe that baby boomer parents “use” their adult children to avoid dealing with aging.

A. We have a generation of parents who don’t know how to face getting older. One of the ways they cope is to keep the kids needing them so they avoid dealing with aging. Our whole culture doesn’t deal with aging and death very well.  By focusing on adult kids it’s a way to avoid dealing with aging issues like health and retirement.

Q. Often parents think they are helping their adult children by offering support and money but you don’t agree.

A. Many parents believe that the more they do for their adult children the more they are showing love.  That’s not so. The more dependent an adult child is then the more anxious and unconsciously resentful they become. The message to give to kids is that “you can master your world and be successful.”

Q. Sometimes even when the children want to become more independent the parents still hold the reins tight.  Why is that?

A. Many parents want to keep the power structure.  A young man recently told me about a heated discussion he and his friends had with some parents about whether the parents should always pay when they go out to a restaurant. The grown children said they felt infantilized if they weren’t “allowed” to pay when they offered.  The parents said, “We don’t care. We want to pay.” Parents need to let the children be men and women and pay.

Q. You write that parents struggle with  feelings of loss as their children grow older.

A. Some parents feel the whole growing-up process is dealing with one loss after another: It’s a loss when a child goes from baby to toddler; when they turn 16 and start driving; when they  leave your house  to go to college;  when they marry it’s a loss of that old relationship. We need to recognize those feelings of  loss and deal with them otherwise we end up the interfering mother-in-law and the frustrated mother.

Q. So how do you suggest parents deal with that feeling of loss?

A. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote about the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and  acceptance.  A parent may have to go through those series of feelings and consciously accept the loss and plan a life that isn’t about children unless you want to cripple them and never let them leave.

Q. While Gail Parent writes humorous answers to questions, you are very straightforward and pull no punches.

A. Yes, not everyone likes to hear the tough answers.  I try to be sensible and give reasons for my advice.   Our role as parents from the beginning is to prepare children to get along in the big world without us:  how to manage money, how to make good choices in terms of friends, how to find a doctor, plumber, an accountant.  We need to treat children with respect and realize that they are not extensions of us.

Good parents give their children roots and wings. Roots to know where home is, wings to fly away and exercise what’s been taught them. — Jonas Salk

 When my first child was born a friend gave me a framed print with an inscription based on the Salk quote: Give your children roots and wings. 

 Now three decades later, I realize that giving them roots was the easy part.  Letting go—giving them wings to fly away—seems considerably more difficult.  Many of us baby boomer parents find it hard to completely let go.  Indeed that was the inspiration for mothering 21.com: Parenting never ends but obviously you have to stop holding their hands at some point. Separation issues are nothing new; remember nursery school? Yet some of us still struggle with letting our adult children lead fully independent lives, without our constant advice, opinions and suggestions!

 Some insights were offered in a recent blog post with an academic title, “Parenting after the adolescent becomes adult.”  Dr. Carl Pickhardt, who wrote the post, has impressive credentials.  He is the author of 13  books on parenting and the father of four adult children.  Dr. Pickhardt’s advice on how parents can fully separate from their adult children is not sugar-coated: 

No matter how grown up, how much older they become, these adult offspring forever remain your children just as you forever remain their parent. And the relationship is always challenging because, like the rest of life, parenting demands constant change and accommodation.

 What makes this accommodation hard for parents are several adjustments they must make: to tolerance, to reversal, and to demotion.

Tolerance? Reversal? Demotion?  That felt like a slap in the face with the admonition: Snap out of it parent! What was Dr. Pickhardt thinking?  We phoned him in Austin, Texas where he has a private practice that includes adult children and their parents, and chatted for an hour.  He was empathetic and reassuring.  His message: Parents need to let their adult children assert their independence and to love and accept them as individuals, not as mini-me!

Letting go doesn’t mean that our adult children no longer need us. Parents need to remember their “primal role,” Dr. Pickhardt said.   Just as a little child wants to share every accomplishment, most adult children crave parental attention and approval.  As he wrote in his blog post:

So when parents continue their roles as emotional supporter, as rapt audience, and as tireless cheerleader, what they have to offer their adult children never goes out of style, never loses lasting value.

That makes the separation sound  less depressing.  Still, the words—tolerance, reversal, demotion—needed some explanation and Dr. Pickhardt kindly obliged with so many excellent insights that the post will be in two parts: this week and next.

Why tolerance, reversal and demotion?  Sounds like I just got downsized from my parenting job.

The hardest art of parenting is letting, especially when you worked so hard and invested so much.  Those adjustments of tolerance, reversal and demotion are the different ways parents have to let go to be able to embrace their adult child and accept their independence. 

Let’s start with tolerance.  You make a frightening analogy:  Just as we baby boomers must learn to be tolerant of our own aging parents, our adult children must become tolerant of us.  Are we really that difficult?

 Of course we never think that we can be difficult.  If something is the matter, we believe that we’re okay and the other person is not.  The adult child needs to accept the idea that “I am not going to change my parent and my parent is not going to change me.”  The parent needs to accept that too. For example, a parent may need to accept  that “My adult child has always argued with me, will continue to argue and will probably never not argue.”

 Accepting your child’s argumentative personality is one thing, but what about other choices: work, lifestyle, partner, religious differences, goals in life?

Parents need to let adult children makes their own decisions and accept those decisions. Tolerance means acceptance and the opposite of acceptance is rejection, and that does relationship between parent and adult child no favors. The goal is to learn to love the differences and to see you adult child as a whole person.  As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke put it:  “to see the other whole against the sky.”

To be continued next week…

The news that Al and Tipper Gore are divorcing set off  media madness with headlines from “The Rise of the Silver Divorce”  to “Could It Happen to Us?”  Speculation was rampant as to the cause of the split: An affair? Boredom? The internet?

Articles abounded about the possible triggers for the dissolution of a decades-long marriage, and a number of fingers pointed at adult children as a source of friction. 

In a New York Times op-ed, “The 40-Year Itch,” author Deirdre Bair noted in her book, “Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over” that:

Women had grown tired of taking care of house, husband and grown children; men were tired of working to support wives who they felt did not appreciate them and children who did not respect them. Women and men alike wanted time to find out who they were.

 And, in “ ’Til 40 years do us part,”   the Wall Street Journal  interviewed Los Angeles psychiatrist Mark Goulston who noted that he:

 “…sees another issue behind later-in-life breakups: tensions related to adult children, who are often closer to their parents today, and needier.

 ”There’s a saying, ‘You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child,’” Dr. Goulston says. “One spouse may still be overly involved with the adult children, worrying about their happiness, and the other may be saying, ‘I’ve done my parenting. I want to have a chance to have my own life.

 Mothering21 sought some insights into recognizing and preventing tensions caused by adult children. We interviewed stress management expert Debbie Mandel who knows the territory well. Ms. Mandel is the author of several books including “Addicted to Stress: A Woman’s 7 Step Program to Reclaim Joy and Spontaneity in Life.” Her other impressive credentials: Married 39 years and the mother of three children, ages 35, 30, and 21, and grandmother of three tots.  

She leads stress-reduction workshops around the country where people share the cause of agita in their lives. The ways adult children can stress a long-term marriage include, says Ms. Mandel,

• Moving back home
• Needing money supplements
• Having emotional issues and needing guidance

We asked her about causes and remedies:

Adult children are “boomeranging” home in record numbers after college or even later due to a job loss or other issues.  How does that cause friction in a marriage?

Most parents initially fear dealing with the empty nest but they get used to it, enjoy it, and establish new routines. Problems start then when the children come home: messiness, coming in late at night, more cooking and laundry, even your sex life.  You lose the spontaneity.  You begin to worry again.  I don’t care if they are 30; they’re in your home and you feel a sense of accountability.

You call it the “return of the to-do list”?

The additional duties and worries become an endless to-do list.  When you had young children you juggled, then you got a break of a few years when they went off to college. Now they’re back again. After all these years you’re still juggling children and their issues.

We all know that women feel responsible for everyone’s happiness—children, husband–and that comes at a personal cost. You’re not living in the present, you’re living in the future and worrying about what you have to do next on your list.

That pressure sets off stress and then the stress impacts your marriage?

Women go into a worry loop; we’re hardwired that way.  From carrying this endless list you become stressed and eventually become depleted.  When you are depleted you become irritable and when you’re irritable anything can set you off, it doesn’t take much.

Then your husband and anyone else in range hears about it!  What happens when a couple disagrees on how to handle the issues that arise with an adult child?

There are lots of problems because adult children seem less mature these days, and that can cause conflict between husband and wife. Sometimes one parent wants to pay for the adult child to go to therapist and the other parent is of the approach “let him sink or swim.” Sometimes the child mirrors weaknesses of the parents. It’s also hard because as a parent you are dealing with an adult child who is dependent but no longer obedient!

Money can be another source of friction when one parent wants to use it to help adult children and the other doesn’t?

Money carries an emotional value: How you want to spend it?  How does your husband want to spend it?  How do your children want you to spend it? Children can be very manipulative when it comes to money. A couple has to negotiate what they feel is appropriate to spend on adult children.  

That’s often a challenge.

Yes, you have to seek each other’s core values.  Ask the question when dealing with an issue: “Why do you feel that way?” The answer can help you reach an equitable compromise.  Given that often there is no unanimity on many issues, your goal is to attain equanimity.

To reduce stress you suggest that we helicopter moms stop hovering over our children and start circling ourselves instead.

Yes, you need to change your perception that you are responsible for the   happiness of your entire family and shift some of that focus to yourself. It’s hard to do. One way is to shed just one thing everyday from the to-do list.

Another is to literally change your perspective. Change where you sit at the kitchen table.  I threw my husband out of his recliner. I had a wonderful new vista. Another suggestion is what I call creative compensation: Figure out what you love to do and where it intersects with what you are good at, and do it.  I garden.

So there’s a good tip: try gardening, painting, cooking, spin class  whatever  keeps you happy, and perhaps your marriage too.

Yes,  those things help you treat yourself kindly instead of being a stern inner critic.

Remember your college days when on Sunday nights you called home? Except for health or money emergencies that was the extent of your contact with the parents: once a week.

Not anymore. First it was cell phones and now texting and BlackBerry messaging have replaced that weekly call…and replaced it and replaced it.

Texting has become an  “electronic tether,” according to Middlebury College Psychology Prof. Barbara Hofer.  In a study she conducted at Middlebury College and the University of Michigan Prof. Hofer found that college students text, phone and email their parents an average of 13 times a week.

While parents may be delighted to hear so often from their adult children, Prof. Hoffer finds that all that electronic handholding  often counterproductive, especially for college freshmen.  The first year is the time when they should be learning to make their own decisions about such pressing matters as roommates and laundry and what classes to take, not constantly texting mom to find out what she thinks. .

Apparently texting parents does not end after the student makes it successfully through freshman year.  A recent class discussion among NYU juniors and seniors got lively when the topic of texting came up.  Many students admitted that they text and talk to parents—mostly moms—several times a day. What do they text about?

“My mother texts all the time asking questions like ‘Did you go to the gym today?’”

“My mom texts just to see what I am doing.”

“If I don’t answer the cell phone my mom texts to see if I am okay.”

So is all this texting a good thing or bad? The students were unsure, and were resigned that there was no way to stop parents texting short of turning off the phone–and they certainly weren’t going to do that! Several students preferred texting to talking on their phones as it was less intrusive and took less time.

Of course texting doesn’t end at college graduation.  Many of us have found that our adult children don’t check the voice mail on their cell phones. (Forget land lines, they don’t have them.) So we are forced to text them just to stay in contact.

And surprise, they actually do answer, usually right away.  I suspect one reasons adult children, in particular sons, readily reply is that no one knows they are texting you.  He could be texting a friend or girl for all anyone knows.  Girls are more likely to admit “It’s my mother again,” accompanied, not too often we hope, with a roll of the eyes.

Last year as I prepared to send my youngest child off to college I wrote this op-ed—with a box of tissues nearby.  The piece ran in Newsday and I got several e-mails from parents sharing the pain of letting go.  Somehow I survived and my daughter flourished.  While it was difficult to send her off again this September, I did so with a lighter heart.

In a few weeks, thousands of parents will descend upon college dorms loaded with a year’s supply of Bed, Bath and Beyond paraphernalia, enough electronics to power a small city, and containers of clothes to cram into closets, under beds and over doors.  That’s the easy part.  The wrenching part comes when it’s time to get back into that now empty car, head home to an eerily quiet house, and suffer through withdrawal from professional parenting.

While Empty Nest Syndrome (ENS) probably hits hardest among those of us packing off the last child to college, other parents also experience the  typical symptoms of depression, sadness, or grief,  after dropping children off at college.

ENS was once thought to be suffered primarily by pre-feminist housewives. But baby boomers who combined careers and parenting also suffer from the syndrome.  Perhaps it’s because we became so immersed in our children that we turned it into profession lasting from Lamaze through high school graduation. The books, the enrichment classes, the volunteer days at nursery school, the educational toys and trips, to say nothing of the soccer, football, lacrosse, basketball, and baseball practices, games and tournaments. My last child is a singing and dancing drama queen so there were the plays, recitals and concerts, and we attended every show, even dress rehearsals.

Professional parenting took on an especially manic pitch during my daughter’s high school years when news headlines shouted about the tough college admissions competition facing these teenaged Echo Baby Boomers.  A decade ago I had tracked down Beanie Babies; for the last two years I spent countless hours plotting college admissions strategy.

I have survived sending off two older children: one son halfway across the country to play Division One lacrosse, and the other son to college followed by two tours as a Marine officer in Iraq. So I why should I be so upset? I know the drill: they leave, they e-mail occasionally when they need something, they call on Sunday nights, they even come back for a while.

Maybe my malaise weighs so heavy this time because it’s my last child, my only daughter, and almost three decades of hands-on parenting are coming to what seems like an abrupt end. I have been anticipating her college goodbye since the first day of high school. Initially I soothed myself with the thought that “we still have four years left,” then three and so on.  The anxiety was dulled by the college admissions marathon that started with the sophomore PSATs, followed by prep courses, resume-building extra curriculars, college visits and applications.  However when that big envelope from the admissions office finally arrived we both started crying: her with joy and me at the realization that I put all that effort into sending my youngest child away!  Now I’m down to counting weeks and soon days.

I realized that my feelings were shared when I attended the elaborate orientation at her college and saw other parents with tissues and tears. I began to suspect these sessions were more to help parents let go rather than assist the students schedule classes. At one session, the head of the college counseling service suggested that the transition–for the parents, not the students–could take until Thanksgiving!  On the way home it occurred to me that the next time we went to the college my daughter would not be traveling back with us. We were actually going to leave her at the campus.  Thankfully I had a box of tissues in the car.

Like any good professional parent, I searched for books on ENS, and sure enough there were about a dozen titles.  The bible, now in its fourth edition, is “Letting Go: A Parents’ Guide to Understanding the College Years,” which claims hundreds of thousands of readers over the last decade.

I skimmed the books for advice:  I was supposed take joy in the fact I had given my daughter roots and now wings. I was advised to take up a new hobby like tango dancing with my husband and enjoy our uninterrupted time together, planning long-delayed romantic getaways (with a $50,000 college bill looming?).  I was supposed to delight in the peace and quiet of home, the lower grocery bills, the ability to choose my own television shows (no MTV), and to sleep through the night without worry (I’ll still worry; I just won’t hear her come home anymore). Not to fear, one author noted, the pain of the loss will subside over time. Oh my, this was going to be worse than I expected.

I’ll be honest, I am happy to give up car pooling and making school lunches and straightening her bedroom in an attempt to uncover the floor.  I have plenty of delayed projects to take up. A colleague asked what I planned to do with my newfound free time come September; I quickly answered, “Work more.” And that’s the truth. Still my eyes fill with tears at every back-to-school advertisement knowing that the school is hundreds of miles away.

My daughter seems somewhat bittersweet about leaving. However she recently brightened with an idea: I should get a new cell phone, one with a letter key pad.  After all, spurred by her message one day that “school is on lockdown” I had quickly learned how to text.

“We’ll go to the phone store and pick out a new cell together,” she suggested, adding, “Then you can text whenever you want.”  Leave it to a teenager to come up with a techy solution for Empty Nest Syndrome. I’ll try and hope the tears don’t rust the keyboard.