WALL STREET JOURNAL
MAY 16, 2009

Essay by Andrée Aelion Brooks,

Still the Parent, but…
The moment when an adult child approaches you as an equal can be unnerving— and immensely rewarding.

Quote from the essay:

Ruth Nemzoff, a resident scholar at Brandeis University, understands the feeling perfectly. She has studied this period of parental life for a book, published last year, titled “Don’t Bite Your Tongue: How to Foster Rewarding Relationships With Your Adult Children.” “I hear parents say things like, ‘What do they think—that I’m an idiot?’?” she told me. “Parents don’t want to be infantilized any more than their children.”

Or demeaned. She tells the story of a young investment banker. Every time he went back to his parents’ home, he grumbled about the old bathroom in their house. He was eager and able to pay for a new one—and wanted to do so as a way to thank them for all that they had done for him. The parents, though, rebuffed his repeated efforts.

“They thought the bathroom was good enough as it was,” Dr. Nemzoff says. And that was a loss for both sides: The bathroom was never modernized, and the son never enjoyed the pleasure of giving the gift.

The secret, she says, is accepting these offers as a bonus rather than a put-down. Dr. Nemzoff has four children ranging in age from their 20s to their 40s, and “they do jobs for me they know I hate, or that they can do better,” she says. The children shop for the groceries and cook when they come to stay, help with online research for specialized information and send her articles on topics she is currently studying. “I’m thrilled.”