Parents find letting go of adult kids is difficult

By Marilyn Elias
USA Today

Linda Seckelson and husband Charlie Simpson, of New York City, are left with an empty nest since their 25-year-old son, Evan, moved to Portland, Ore. Gannett News Service

That rock refrain from their youth echoes with new meaning as middle-aged boomers bid adieu to their beloved babies — babies who grew up in the blink of an eye. The generation that shed lovers and spouses with apparent ease is finding out that it's not so easy to let go of their children.

"Many of them have been wanting a quiet evening — but not that quiet," says marriage educator Claudia Arp, co-author with her husband, David Arp, of the new book "Empty Nesting: Reinventing Your Marriage When the Kids Leave Home" (Jossey-Bass, $17.95).

Becoming an "empty nester" is just as much a dive into ice water as becoming a parent, says marriage and family therapist Anthony Jurich of Kansas State University. "It's a massive change for a couple," says Jurich, who often counsels new empty nesters.

With no more games or performances or kids' activities to rush around to anymore, a couple often loses the buffer that has shielded them from their marital problems, David Arp says. Sometimes they're no longer friends, their interests have diverged or their sex lives have withered in the busy tumult of a two-career family with active kids.

The Arps have spoken with thousands of couples in their "Marriage Alive" seminars across the United States. One middle-aged wife recently told them: "By the time we'd gotten to an empty nest, we'd forgotten how to have a sexual life."

The book offers specific suggestions for how to get back on the same wavelength, develop new interests together and refocus each other.

Snipping the cord in stages

The earliest months and years of empty-nest-hood are hardest for many, the Arps agree. Kids tend to circle in and out of parents' lives, insisting on their independence but showing up often enough to throw a wrench into newfound household routines. The umbilical cord usually is cut in stages, the Arps emphasize.

Even very close couples may disagree on which stage is hardest.

Los Angeles attorney Sandra Slon, 53, hardly minded when her 26-year-old daughter, Deborah, started college at Stanford. "You could run up there in an hour. It felt like she was just around the corner." But Slon's husband, Dave, had a harder time adjusting to the loss of his adored daughter.

After graduation, Deborah Slon worked in Sacramento for a couple of years. Then, two years ago, a big promotion took her to Washington, D.C. "Dave already had made the break, so it wasn't so hard for him. But that's when it really hit me — she might never come back. It would be difficult, almost impossible, to have holidays together," says Sandra Slon.

They remain in frequent contact with their daughter, even taking a week's vacation with Deborah and her boyfriend last year in Northern California. "We had a fabulous time. We were all very compatible, lots of warmth and laughter. I felt that we could be adult friends," Slon says.

The healthiest outcome parents can hope for is a close friendship with their adult children, says Theresa Foy DiGeronimo, author of the new book "How to Talk to Your Adult Children About Really Important Things" (Jossey-Bass, $17.95).

The book covers topics such as moving out, careers, finances, kids' marriages and divorces (your own and theirs). But it also touches on topics sometimes overlooked, such as cohabiting and how to keep an open dialogue with children who marry outside their religion or choose atypical lifestyles.

DiGeronimo, who teaches English at William Paterson University of New Jersey in Wayne, compiled the book with several key consultants. Among them: Jurich, the Kansas marriage therapist; Marion Usher, a clinical psychiatry professor at George Washington University Medical School; and Gail Gross, a child development specialist who plays host to a Houston call-in radio show and weekly education segment on PBS.

No matter how hard parents try to accept changes in their formerly small kids, the adult kids usually adapt more easily, Gross says.

And a lot of parents have trouble shedding their previously powerful role. They try to force their opinions or will on young-adult offspring, Jurich says. There's a big problem with that approach: no club.

Parents don't have the leverage of timeouts, weekend grounding, loss of allowance or car privileges. That doesn't mean parents can't voice their feelings, but they must respect their adult child's right to make her own decisions. Otherwise, Jurich says, kids are apt to tell parents to mind their own business — or worse.

Silence is golden

Parents who want a loving relationship with their adult children won't shower them with unsolicited advice, judgmental criticism and preaching, the book makes clear. It's a prescriptive book, telling how to avoid crossing needed boundaries and suggesting healthy ways to express concern.

For example, parents shouldn't let adult children take advantage of them. Many "kids" do return home. In 1990, 18 million adult children lived with parents; 21.5 million did by 1998. In today's economic climate, those numbers are rising, Gross says.

When kids come back home temporarily, a new relationship based on mutual empathy must be negotiated, she adds. For example, youths may be out clubbing till 3 a.m.; they're too old for curfews. But they must come in quietly, and they must do their own laundry.

Whether he lives at home or thousands of miles away, a youngster's stormy adolescence is by no means a harbinger of the future.

Linda Seckelson, 56, an art librarian at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, despaired at times during son Evan's rebellious teen years. Now the relationship is terrific.

"My parents are as much friends as parents now," says Evan Simpson, 25, who directs major fund-raising for a regional Planned Parenthood affiliate in Portland, Ore.

Seckelson bites her tongue to keep that friendship strong. "Oh, there's a lot I'd like to say to him, like what is your ultimate career goal and why don't you take the GREs (graduate record exams) already? ... But I don't say any of that, because my values shouldn't drive him."

Simpson, who majored in African American studies at college, enjoys his job and is still mulling long-term career plans. He says he appreciates his parents backing off. "I never want them to think I don't need them, because they're like mentors now. But it's an emotional and intellectual need, not with a lot of expectations and rules," he says.

Parents who can keep on decent terms with adult children often get a platinum payoff — grandkids and the joy of mutual adoring, Usher says. Or maybe not. Sometimes grandparents want freedom, when adult kids expect them to put out time and energy.

Even before the new kids are born, "it's important to decide if you want to be an 'FAO Schwarz' kind of grandparent or a hands-on one. All this should be talked about with your child," Usher says. "Don't assume anything. "

Also, she can't resist a bit of unsolicited advice: "If you want to have difficulty, hand out advice." Even if advice is requested, "err on the side of caution. You already raised your children."