Watch your reaction

You remember the scene: your toddler is running and takes a fall.  She looks up at you, unsure whether to cry or to brush it off.    Apparently adult children coping with pain also often turn to parents to gauge a reaction.

Published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, a research study that included parents and adult children who were patients at a pain clinic  found that individual families  may have “a specific cognitive style of coping with pain.”  A medicalxpress.com article explained:

It is already recognized that parents’ pain behavior is associated with the way their children experience and express pain. Many of our responses are learned by observing and imitating the behavior of others, and this is true for how we express pain and find ways of coping with pain. In this context, family members are more likely to serve as models for pain-related responses than strangers.

The study looked at pain “catastrophizing,” meaning extremely negative reactions.  The study concluded:

“We found that parents’ pain catastrophizing scores predicted their adult children’s results, irrespective of the level of actual pain experienced by the adult patients. Since during childhood parents serve as a model that children imitate, it is possible that children use social and communicative tools that they have observed in their parents, to manage their own distress in a similar context.”

A how-to for difficult adult children

The website eHow.com is a great resource for  how to clean a shower curtain or a mop a red wine spill, but for parenting adult children?  Yes indeed.  The eHow staff has written several articles, including one on “How to Get Along With Demanding Adult Children.” These how-to articles include a difficulty rating; this one scored “moderate.”  The step-by-step instructions:

1. Establish clear boundaries. Demanding children may make you feel like they are taking advantage of you, but the ball is in your court. If you don’t want your adult to ask for money to pay their rent, say so.
2. Remain firm, and repeat yourself. Do not back down, no matter how much they try to change your mind, or they will know that with enough persistence they eventually get their way.
3. Encourage independence in your adult children.
4. Model the behavior. If you and your adult daughter have a habit of fighting over certain topics choose not to “take the bait” and instead model a calmer approach.

Lender Beware

If your adult child wants to borrow money and you agree, it’s not as easy as writing a check.  Bankrate.com warns about unforeseen complications.  If you are opening a joint checking account, getting a credit card together or co-signing a loan, remember that if the child runs into financial trouble that impacts your credit rating as well.  There’s also possible tax implications as the IRS considers gifts of more than $13,000 as  a taxable.

One non-financial pothole, according to the msnbc.com article, is also the question of hurt feelings by other adult children in the family who “will feel slighted or shortchanged because their inheritance will be reduced by the money you spend on their sibling.”

Leave Home Young Man, and Find a Job

So ordered a Spanish court, CNN reported, after the 25-year-old took his parents to court for stopping his monthly allowance of $588. The young man, not surprisingly a law student on the “slow” track to a degree, must leave his parents’ house within 30 days, according to the court.

In Spain many young adults live with parents until their mid-30s, a situation  exacerbated by youth unemployment rate of 40.5 percent, the highest in the European Union.

Gen U?

Different generations carry various nametags:  Greatest Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y.  In a Psychology Today blog, Lynn Taylor comes up with another term for Baby Boomers, calling them Gen U for “Unretired.”

 We have reached a critical mass in which Baby Boomers now say they do not plan to retire. Retirees are applying for jobs, either out of economic necessity or the realization that it’s not “greener” on the golf course or tennis court.

 She cites statistics:

• 93% of the growth in the American labor market from now until 2016 will be from workers 55 and older
•  20% of retirees now feel very confident they have enough money to live comfortably throughout their retirement, down from 41% in 2007.
•  36% of those 56 or older are still working, twice as many as in 1984
• 9.5 million Americans are considering at least a partial return to the workforce because of the economic downturn.

InterFaith Marriage and Going GaGa

Two recent articles in JWeekly.com raised issues of interest to many grandparents, not just those in the San Francisco Jewish community that the website covers.

The first article, “Circles,” looks at a program for grandparents who are concerned about  their grandchildren being raised in Jewish in interfaith marriages. 

Many of the grandparents are wary of interfering.   “If adult children make choices that aren’t the same as the grandparents’ choices, there’s some pain in that. So we work on processing those feelings within the group,” says Rabbi Melanie Aron who co-led a Circles group.

  “Here’s one group that’s going GaGa” looks at  the GaGA Sisterhood, a group for women who go “gaga” over their grandchildren yet realize there’s more than just cooing to be a good granny. 

 “The role of the grandparent is way more complex than it used to be. It helps to talk to other grandparents about what we’re going through and to get advice and affirmation that we’re not alone in our feelings,” says the group’s founder Donne Davis

A sampling of articles for M21 readers.

Circle of Care

As we enter our 50s and 60s and contemplate the future, the goal is usually to remain self-sufficient and not become a “burden” to our adult children, either financially or emotionally.

A fascinating Wall Street Journal essay,“Circle of Care,” questions that thinking. The writer, herself a baby boomer, asks:

In our zeal to prepare for a self-sufficient old age—with the goal of keeping our children free of the burden of our care, as our parents tried to do before us—do we give up, without a fight, the family-centric experience that was a consuming part of our lives? Will we miss the hands and faces of our children when we are safely lodged in senior establishments of our choice, outsourced to people we have never met before?

We professional parents threw ourselves into raising our children—and continue to help them in innumerable ways. Yet why are we so adamant that “We don’t need your help”?

The writer, Robbie Shell, explores whether there is a “middle ground” where we remain independent–and connected to our family–as long as possible but be willing to let our children help us too.  A thought-provoking piece.

My Mother’s Internet Date

On a humorous note, The Lives column in The New York Times Sunday magazine considers “My Mother’s Internet Date.”

What happens when a 63-year-old turn to her adult son for advice on writing a profile for an online dating service?  The author, visiting fellow in romance languages and literatures at Harvard, is forced to write—and translate—the exchanges between his mom and a potential date because

Her “computer skills” amounted to squinting at the screen and waiting for her e-mail to “turn on.”

The story ends happily with the son both helping his mom land a date, and offering her some advice on dating and men.  Indeed frightening scenario!

Digital Multitasking

Speaking of baby boomers and technology, a column by Perri Klass, M.D., on “Texting, Surfing and Studying?” looked at whether the under-30 generation can really multitask effectively.

Dr. Klass cites a recent article that found that “decreased productivity” when we baby boomers multitask.  Turns out we really can’t handle two important tasks at once with equal proficiency. But the younger generation is a different story.  Why?

She cites work Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington.   Although many of us feel comfortable with technology and weave it into our daily lives we are still “digital immigrants” in this new land.  However our children, especially the younger ones, been immersed in technology since birth so they are “digital natives.”

They feel right at home and acclimated; we’re still figuring out the local customs.  The result, Dr. Christakis says,

“We’re fairly clueless about the digital world they inhabit.”