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© Penelope Lemov and Parenting Grown Children, 2025. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given.

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Generational Gap: Is politeness outmoded?

    The older we are — make that the more mature we are — the more likely we are to lean in on the politeness tropes of “please” and “thank you.” Before we travel, some of us even make it a point to learn how to say “por favor” or “takk” or “arigato,” depending on where we’re lucky enough to be going.

    I hear occasional complaints that “thank you” (TY in text talk) has morphed into “no problem” (NP if you’re texting). “No problem,” however, is very much a means of being polite. But there are signs of a generational split in how we express politeness or how we use the terms we associate with being a gracious person.

    Discontent along these lines came in a communique to the NYTimes’ Social Q’s column. The ever-polite and reasonable Philip Galanes was asked by a pair of grandparents to comment on the failure of their adult son and his spouse to teach their son —the grandparent’s 5-year-old grandson —to say “please” and “thank you” at appropriate moments. Have times changed?

    It turns out there is research on the use of politeness terms among Gen Zers.

    • Sociologists at UCLA found that younger people use words like “please” much less frequently in casual conversation than older generations and that they tend to use it strategically.
    • The study, published in Social Psychology Quarterly, explained the more strategic use of “please” this way: “Whether passing the butter or driving someone to the airport, non-strangers say “please” to each other to sweeten a request when they know the other is likely unwilling, either because they have resisted already or because they are busy doing something else.”
    • The findings suggest less effort is put into teaching prescriptive, “one-word-fits-all” principles; there is more focus on how to be sensitive to the particulars of a situation.
    • “Any generic rule – like saying “please” and “thank you” – doesn’t take into account the specific situation,” one of the researchers reported. It “may not always indicate respect or politeness.”

    Galanes’s answer to the offended grandparents mirrored these findings:

    “Many young parents are teaching their children manners…by modeling polite behavior for them and with gentle reminders. There are fewer barking commands….It focuses on the spirit of politeness, rather than its performance.”

    As to correcting the grandson —a point raised by the grandparents who made it their business to do so —the gist of Galanes’s advice was to butt out and just enjoy the company of their grandchild, a lack of “TY” notwithstanding.

    painting: Pierre Bonnard, “One Summer Afternoon”

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Good Housekeeping: What to do when their’s is lousy

    We walk into our kid’s apartment and, yuck, there’s cat hair covering the sofa, dustballs in the bathroom and greasy fingerprints all over the refrigerator. Are we within our “rights” –are we exercising “good judgment”–so say something. Or, if not say something, do something like ask if we can treat them to a deep clean?

    To judge by reader responses to this point in a Carolyn Hax column, this is another “Keep your mouth shut” area. It’s as charged as comments on an adult child’s weight, hairstyle or the way they dress.

    The mom in Hax’s column was concerned that her daughter’s messy apartment was not just a matter of poor housekeeping but a health threat. Would it be okay, the mom asks, to offer a one-time clean-up service?

    Here’s what Hax and others had to say about the urge to butt in.

    HAX:

    • Yeah, I see no role for you here. Anything can be a “health issue at some point” — including excessive cleanliness — so it’s not a magic portal into her business.

    READERS:

    • The desire to not be judged for petty housekeeping stuff is the No. 1 reason I dread my neat-freak mother-in-law’s visits. If you want your daughter to want you to visit, then keep your yap shut.
    • My mom’s addendum to the “keep your mouth shut” advice is “and your wallet open.” Obviously this is only if you are financially secure enough, but I think a one-time, “You work so hard. I would love to help. If you want to book a cleaning service once a month, I’d be happy to cover it,” would be okay. Best delivered if/when she herself shows some frustration.
    • My daughter was thrilled when I offered to pay for housekeeping. I waited until she brought it up by apologizing for how dirty her apartment was — but once she opened that door, I told her that I understood how busy she was, how hard keeping up must be and offered to pay for a one-time service. She accepted. Twenty years later, she has a busy job and two kids, so I still offer to pay for a housekeeper once in a while. It’s what she requests for Christmas.

    HAX:

    • And no to the cleaning-service offer. There’s only one context in which it’s not judgy, and that’s when there’s a life-event connection. New home (housewarming gift), new child, surgery, huge project, etc. Or, of course, if she complains about having to clean.

    Painting: Frank Auerbach

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Boomerang Kids: Why they’re refilling our empty nests.

    They’re back. Damp towels on the floor, dishes in the kitchen sink, eyes trained on iPhones. Our young adult kids are coming home and moving into their old bedrooms or our basements. It’s a trend that’s accelerating.:

    • Nearly half — 44 percent — of U.S. parents with adult children ages 18 to 35 say a child has moved back home at some point. Thus reports a recent poll by Thrivent, a financial services company.

    Many of our kids are returnees thanks to financial pressures. The top strains:

    • the high cost of housing
    • job loss
    • reduced income,. (Entry-level wages aren’t keeping pace with inflation.)
    • AI’s threat to the stability of white collar jobs, especially at the entry level.

    That’s only half the story. The Thrivent survey also found that 50 percent of the re-nesters are not feeling a tightening of purse strings. They’re planning for the future. They may be saving for a down payment on a home (34 percent of young adults gave that as their reason to come home for a while) or to launch their own business (with or without use of your garage).

    If our kids are re-residencing, we are entering into a relationship with them known as economic interdependence. To find our way through this phase, financial gurus have some tips:

    • There’s a difference between providing a safety net and enabling financial immaturity. That is, there needs to be a balance between short-term support and long-term independence. “The goal should really be to use this period to build towards financial stability and not delay it,” says Gene Elder, a financial consultant at Thrivent
    • Communicate whether and how the move home is impacting the family’s finances. This silent sacrifice can be costly. Nearly 45 percent of parents are willing to slash their own everyday spending to help their adult children. Turns out, two out of three boomerang kids say their parents have never communicated how much supporting them affects their parents’ long-term financial planning.
    • As to setting the day-to-day means by which you live together, a frank two-way discussion tops the list to figure out the ordinary and the personal, such as rules about kitchen clean-up, bathroom protocols and overnight guests, to name just three hot buttons. While a full discussion can help keep things on an even keel, Michele Singletary, the Washington Post financial columnist. is succinct about the bottom line: “Your roof, your rules.”

    painting: Madis Oru, “Dirty Dishes”

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    The Big Worry: Will we become a burden to our kids?

    We Baby Boomers have been financially favored. A good number of us rode a rocketing stock market and rewarding jobs to ultra-healthy investment portfolios. The eventual transfer of those assets to our grown children–spoiler alert: we won’t live forever–is the stuff of media chatter about the $100 trillion in wealth we’re likely to fork over to our heirs over the course of the next two decades. It’s being called The Great Wealth Transfer.

    But is it? What this hoopla doesn’t take into account is that we upper-middle-class boomers who’ve accumulated our tiny piece of these trillions of dollars of wealth are living long lives.

    All of which means that the pleasure of leaving our kids and grandkids a financial bonus is giving way to fear of outliving our assets. That’s because growing old and fragile doesn’t come cheap.

    Here’s what financial advisers have to say:

    • One of the biggest factors that drives wealth depletion during retirement is health care costs, including rising out-of-pocket costs for medical treatment and the probability of needing long-term care later in life.
    • These potentially high expenses increase the likelihood that most of our their savings would be wiped out during their lifetime, leaving little or nothing to transfer to their children or other beneficiaries.

    The projections on the likelihood of being faced with these costs go like this:

    • Women vs. Men: Women have a higher probability of needing care (57 percent by age 85) compared to men.
    • Average Duration: The average person needs care for roughly 2.5 to 3.6 years, but 22 percent of adults will need care for more than five years

    When I previously posted about this issue, I wrote from personal experience of how jarringly expensive it was to care for an infirm spouse. This is especially true when a loved one suffers from one of the big three causes of debilitation among the elderly: stroke, dementia, Parkinsons. The costs of care vary, depending, of course, on the extent of care needs and local costs of that care. But I can tell you, the costs I incurred (I needed around-the-clock non-medical care for my spouse) could wipe out $1 million in savings in a flash of three or four years.

    Congress continues to hold hearings on the “financial risk to every individual’s retirement income security posed by long-term care needs.” Thus spaketh Senator Charles Grassley when he chaired a hearing to identify steps to help Americans better prepare. The consensus, certainly among those in power at the present moment, is that we holders of a piece of that trillion-dollar portfolio should save more. But the question is: How much is enough?

    Painting: Pierre Bonnard, “Dining Room in the Country”

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Clean Closets, Fiscal Style: Tips from a financial guru

    I’ve over-shared my concerns about leaving clean closets for our kids. When we’re no longer around to tell them what’s a sentimental treasure and what’s just junk, we want the curating job to have been done. By us.

    Now there’s a new twist on clean closets: financial cupboards. While this form of storage doesn’t have the heavy lift of pulling out boxes from under our beds, it still has things that need to be cleared and cleaned up.

    In one of her columns, Michele Singletary offered clean-up advice. What you need to take care of depends on what generation you are. For us Boomers (those of us 62 years old and upwards), she doesn’t have clean-out suggestions so much as a to-do list: Create a Letter of Instruction. It should include:

    • Usernames and passwords to your mobile phone or computer.
    • The location of your original will or trust documents.
    • An inventory of your important papers, including financial accounts, insurance policies (life and home), retirement and pension information, or veterans’ records.

    And by the way:

    • If you’re going to keep the letter on your computer, be sure to print a copy or save it to a flash drive in case your computer can’t be accessed.
    • Update your beneficiary designations. There should be “Payable on Death” (POD) and “Transfer on Death” (TOD) names on every account that match your current family structure. That’s one way to avoid probate.

    This clean-up isn’t too formidable, is it? You’ll feel all tidied up when all the pieces are in place, and then you can forget all about it. Except to tell your spouse or kids where the Letter is.

    art: Hilary Precis

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    iPhone Addiction: Is it our Kids or is it us?

    There’s only one person in this photo gripping her phone.

    Last week I spent a two-day mini vacation with my son and granddaughter. We stayed in the Old Town section of Alexandria, Virginia. Our one big tourist outing was Mount Vernon.

    Guess who decided not to bring a phone along to wander around George Washington’s estate? It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my son. My Grand, a high school senior, said she didn’t want to be distracted. She wanted to focus on the history of animal life on the estate and how slaves lived and were treated. She left her phone in her hotel room.

    Her dad and I were very impressed, though she brought up one caveat. “If we get separated, you won’t be able to text me.” We managed to stay in touch the old-fashioned way. When she wanted to wander off to see something we were uninterested in, she knew which bench we’d be sitting on.

    I tell you this for a reason. My granddaughter seems to be part of a growing trend among younger people. It’s called “digital detox“:

    • Despite being digitally active, some research suggests younger generations are purposefully taking breaks from social media and managing their screen time.

    Older adults are part of a different trend. Ours could be called “High Screen Tme.”

    • We’re becoming more reliant on technology, often exceeding younger generations in our use of digital devices. That usage includes mobile devices but also–and notably–television, and desktop computers. The latter do not have a large presence in the Gen Z world.

    I find this thought-provoking. Yay for Gen Z. News about their Digital Detox versus our High Screen Time is creeping into mainstream media. To wit:

    • “Are boomers the real iPad babies? Why Grandma and Grandpa can’t seem to stop scrolling.” A recent Washington Post. headline.
    • “Once seen as a Gen Z problem is now quietly gripping an entirely different generation. Screen addiction, it turns out, has crept into the lives of older adults and it’s tightening its hold.” A report in Asianet News

    Cheers to my Grand and the growing number of Gen Z’s who are finding joy in human interactions, not just digital ones.

    photo credit: family iPhone

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Togetherness: When our grown kids are there for us

    Some anniversaries are joyful. Others are simply meaningful. And others are meaningful with a touch of sad.
    The weekend of No Kings marked the second anniversary of Mike’s (my husband’s) passing. If Mike hadn’t been born a political protester, he was one by the time I met him as a young man. He kept that drive alive for the next six decades. So it seemed fitting to commemorate the anniversary of his death by taking him (well, just his likeness and a spoonful of his ashes) to the March 28 rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

    His daughter (and mine) flew home to make the Fight On poster (see above) with a photo (below) of Mike at a protest rally some eight years ago. Then we headed downtown.

    As the crowd gathered on the Mall and the speeches began, as the worst moments of the Trump presidency were called out to a roaring crowd, my daughter and I took turns holding our poster high to make sure Mike’s presence was counted. We also found a discreet place near a large tree overlooking the Capitol to dig a teeny tiny hole and leave a teaspoon of his ashes.

    Bringing Mike to No Kings made the Second Anniversary of his passing more meaningful and less sad. There was a joy in it. We did right by him.

    So here’s to our grown children. Not mine in particular. All of our grown-up children and the issues that have surfaced in this blog. However much we may fret about them, disagree about their life choices or wonder what they’re thinking when they opt for a tattoo or purple hair, it doesn’t matter. When they are here for us if we need them, count us fortunate ones.

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    In Other’s Words: How do we get through tough times?

    “The world is too much with us.” Wordworth was referring to the materialism of his time (“getting and spending we lay waste his powers.”). Yet I can’t help but think of that poetic fragment as a reference to the news and politics of our time.

    When the world comes crashing in–news of war, misinformation about events, uncivil commentary, attacks on science and higher education, cancellation of clean water and air rules (I don’t know where to stop the list)–we may feel grief and loss. So may our adult children, especially when it comes to environmental degradation. Many of us (I am a guilty party) cope by no longer listening to the news and making sure podcasts or substacks are about culture, sports and feel-good topics. We may keep our conversations with our adult children on the same plane.

    But our children and their children are going to have to live with this re-made world. There’s no escaping what’s happening. So, where to find comfort and calm and still be of this time and place?

    There are words of solace in Jennifer Breheny Wallace’s Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose:

    • “No matter what kind of upheaval we’re facing, be it job loss, retirement, empty nesting, a shifting world, or some other destabilizing event, the surest way to sustain our own sense of mattering is to focus on making others feel like they matter.”

    A recent book on grief — many of us are grieving the loss of our traditional moral and ethical codes— also addresses this issue. The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller is organized around five grief gates, with Gate Three being the Sorrows of the World. Weller argues that ignoring this grief leads to a deadened life, while facing it allows us to feel intimate with life, fostering “soul activism” and deeper love for the world.

    Some of Weller’s words of support:

    • The Shared Burden of the Environment: “Whether or not we consciously recognize it, the daily diminishment of species, habitats, and cultures is noted in our psyches. Much of the grief we carry is not personal, but shared, communal”.
    • Living with Loss: “It is at the third gate that we acknowledge losses on a planetary scale. … Staying close to sorrow can keep the heart open”.
    • Confronting the Crisis: “Every sorrow we carry extends from the absence of what we require to stay engaged in this ‘one wild and precious life’”.
    • Resistance to Numbing: “We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder, not resignation and endurance”. 

    painting: Edgar Degas, L’Absinthe

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    What Matters: The importance of feeling valued

    Angry parents grumble about a lack of a thank you for gifts given to an adult child or grandchild. We may grouse that our progeny call only when they’re stuck in traffic or carp about requests for the loan of a car but not for our companionship. It’s not necessarily a sign that our children and grandchildren are rude, uncaring individuals. If there’s a common thread amidst these frustrations, it might be this: A worry that we don’t matter, that we aren’t valued.

    • As we age and as our adult children become more entangled in their complicated work and family lives, we may feel out of the loop. In fact, we probably are. I know I am. But that doesn’t mean our children and grandchildren don’t care about us. An unwritten thank you note, a phone call only when they have dead time in their car doesn’t mean we’re an afterthought.

    We aren’t the only ones struggling with this. So are people thirty and forty years younger than we are. A website dedicated to mattering, The Mattering Movement, has this to say on the matter:

    • Research shows that at the root of many mental health struggles in young people—pressure, anxiety, depression, and loneliness—is an unmet need to feel that we matter: that we are valued for who we are at our core, and that we can add meaningful value to the lives of others.

    Could this concern about feeling irrelevant be at the heart of our anger at our grown kids or grandkids about not calling, not writing, not keeping us up to date on what’s going on in their lives? Take the lack of a thank you for a gift. It isn’t that we need to know they liked the sweater we sent or the check that we tucked into a gift card. It’s often the feeling of being ignored. We’ve reached out to them–and this is especially true for those of us who live a good distance away from our children–and they have not reached back. Not even with a virtual hug.

    In a previous post, psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb took the thank you conundrum even further:

    • No matter how much we tell ourselves that gifts aren’t about reciprocity, the reality is that they often hold emotional significance in which both parties are essentially asking to be recognized. The giver wants acknowledgment of their thoughtfulness and investment, while the receiver wants confirmation that they’ve been truly seen. Both are essentially asking, “Do I matter?”

    Her advice on the thank you issue–and it applies to other frustrations as well–is not to attack, as in, “What is wrong with your parenting that your kids didn’t send me a thank you note for the books I chose for them?” Rather, it’s to reach out in a friendly, sympathetic way. Here’s an opening gambit Gottlieb suggests as a possible road forward:

    • You might say, “I know I mentioned the gifts and thank-you notes before, but I realized that what I really want is to have a stronger relationship with you and your family. What can I do to make that happen?”

    If you’re interested in further reading on the matter of mattering, here are two recent books on the subject:

    painting: possibly S. Boza

  • PARENTING GROWN CHILDREN: The children may be grown but we still have our issues.

    Sharing Family History: What one generation owes another.

    Author Jeff Katz (right) and moderator Marc Fisher at Wonderland Books in Bethesda, Md.

    Talk about intergenerational communication, of one generation catching up with the stories of another. Many of us, as we reach our more senior years, are sorry we didn’t ask our parents in-depth questions about their past. And some of us wish our kids and grandkids would ask us.

    I bring this up because a friend, Jeff Katz, has written a terrifically readable book about a terribly difficult subject: How Germans today are reckoning with the Germany of the Holocaust. (Unsettled Ground: Reflections on Germany’s Attempts to Make Amends)

    • He’s done it by showing how his parents and their neighbors, who lived side by side for a century in a small town in Germany, dealt with the events of the time, and more importantly, on what a growing number of Germans today are doing to recall the past and reckon with it.
    • The older history is, of course, a tale of neighbor turning against neighbor, and such stories are not unique in world history. But what Jeff is addressing is how the follow-on generations are affected.
    • Many of those families don’t talk about what happened–and neither did Jeff’s parents until he finally prodded them into telling him about his grandparents’ and their experiences in escaping from Nazi Germany. It was his parents’ personal history that got Jeff interested in finding out whether and how today’s Germans are making amends.

    The book stands on its own as a report about Germany today but the stories his parents finally told him about themselves and the grandparents (Jeff’s father’s family lived in a tiny rural town in Germany for centuries) are a reminder of how important it is for us to share our past with our children–even if it’s not as life-and-death traumatic as Jeff’s parents.

    I have been to one of Jeff’s bookstore talks (see photo above), and from both his remarks and the questions the audience raised, I’ve come to realize that what the young generation of Germans today is doing to understand the past is fairly unique. Other countries and people with equally horrendous histories have not looked back to learn about what went wrong and why.

    That leads me to a personal note about current events: We are living through a neighbor-against-neighbor time here (Let us not forget Minneapolis). I want to make sure my family’s future generations know that we, their parents and grandparents, did all we could do–and are doing all we can do–to stop it. What will those who are bearing arms (with military-style bazookas and grenade throwers) against their neighbors or applauding those who do tell their children? Will their children and grandchildren have to make amends in another generation or two?

    Unsettled Ground: Reflections on Germany’s attempts to make amends: You can find the hardcover at independent bookstores such as Wonderland Books and Politics & Prose, as well as at Bookshop.org, and all three editions at Amazon. You can also read an excerpt and early reviews at Jeff’s website.s

    photo: courtesy Jeff Katz and Wonderland Books