Parenting Tip For Twenties-Something Children

Here’s a parenting tip we use as a strategy for getting more time with our Twenties-Something child who has left home. 

 The ideal seems to be to have your son or daughter communicate with you once a week.  The ideal visiting frequency seems to be once every three months.  Unfortunately, neither of those goals have worked out for me and my wife.

So here’s what we do.  We pick out a vacation spot that we think our son will really want to visit, and then we invite him to join us.  Two years ago we picked Lisbon, and we had a wonderful week with him there.  Last year our planned trip to Bangalore got cancelled due to the recession. But last month we spent a week in Puerto Rico and he loved it.   Sounds expensive, but it’s cheaper than out of state tuition!  Photo: Willie on the beach in Puerto Rico.

Tips:  1.Don’t let her or him bring a friend. They won’t spend anytime with you.  2.Never, never, never ask (bug) them about school, work, money or dating.  3. Never use the time to try to educate, discipline, or “help” them.  4.Give them their own room.  5.Let them stay out late and make their own rules.  6.Ask them to decide what you should do for some or much of the time.

(This concludes "Our Week with Willie" posts)

 

Comments

[Terry Newman]

Always enjoy the "Willie Posts"

[lasagna recipe]

This is a nice article. thank you.

Yes, its really hard to be a parent to a 20+ age kids. Yes, i still call them kids.. I jjust can't stop treating them as adults.

For me, they are still my very tiny kids.