Parenting married adult children presents challenges

Second of three parts

Last week we started talking about what it's like to be parents of young adults, noting how easy it is to fall into the trap of being overprotective.

We concluded that, sooner or later, our job as parents is to let our children - and ourselves - go out and experience life, both the pluses and the minuses.

This week we want to consider a different stage of relating to our adult children.

Parenting married adult children As parents, we often have doubts about our children's readiness for independence. These doubts can be further aroused when our adult children announce their intention to marry. Let's face it: marriage is an awfully big step. A healthy marriage requires a good bit of maturity and hard work, and our evaluation of whether or not our children have what it takes to make a go at marriage is influenced by our own experience. If we've ever felt trapped or stagnant in our own relationship, we are likely to be a bit skeptical about our children's potential for marital bliss. Also complicating matters is how we feel about our future son- or daughter-in law. Most of us certainly start out wanting to like these people, though sometimes that's not the case.We may even try to "adopt" them into our family, attempting to relate to them the way we do to our own children. But they aren't. Not only may we not be able to love our children's future spouse, we may not even like them. Somehow, though, we have to figure out a way to at least tolerate them and their families. Assuming we can work through all that, we are faced with the reality that our children now have a new commitment - a commitment to the new families they are creating. That can be a difficult shift for all involved. For our adult children's marriages to work, they must be able to see their commitment to their new families as more important than the commitment to the families in which they grew up. Parents must encourage this. Parents also must resist the temptation to rescue adult children, even when we see them being hurt in a troubled marriage. We will have to watch our children learn to be husbands, wives, parents. And we will see them make mistakes - sometimes disastrous ones - in the process. Their hurt often will be our hurt as well. Our adult children's own children hopefully will be special to us. And, just as with our children, we may be tempted at times to rescue or overindulge our grandchildren. Sometimes we may try to make up for our past shortcomings as parents by becoming the "perfect" grandparent. We also may use our grandchildren to fill the emptiness in our lives created by our own children growing up. Here too, we must remember our role. Grandparents are not the same as parents. Unless we are aware of abuse or neglect by our adult children, our job is to leave the parenting to them. That can mean we'll hurt sometimes with our grandchildren, but that's part of life. As you read last week, ultimately our adult children - and eventually our grandchildren - must stand or stumble on their own. We can, and I hope we will, offer support, encouragement and advice when appropriate. But that still means letting go. We can't use our grandchildren to replay our role as parents and make up for our mistakes. What's done is done. Only we can find meaning and focus for our own lives. We must live in the here and now and discover what's right for us. That's our job, not that of our children or grandchildren. There is a payoff. If we risk letting ourselves, our children and our grandchildren grow up, there's a pretty good chance we will all find a lot to feel good about. We can share in their happiness, accomplishments and satisfaction, as well as that which we create for ourselves. Next week, we'll conclude our discussion by addressing the relationship between elderly parents and their adult children. We'll also look at things we parents can do to make these stages I've talked about a bit easier.