sixtyandme logo

Adult Children

2 years ago

Navigating the Emotional Terrain of Estrangement: A Mother’s Journey

As women over 60, we stand on the precipice of a remarkable phase in life, where the relationships we’ve cultivated with our adult children deepen with each passing year. Motherhood, a journey that began with cradling newborns and comforting…

Read More
2 years ago

The Parenting Puzzle – How to Balance Guidance and Acceptance of Adult (Or Near Adult) Children

Raising a child is an incredible journey filled with joy, challenges, and decisions. But it’s also complicated. We all want the best for our children, and as parents that means ensuring they stay on the right path by course correcting when necessary…

Read More
2 years ago

Parenting Adult Children Can Be Agony

Remember when you first held your newborn? The love that flooded your heart in that incredibly intense moment is wordless to describe. It washes over you and fills your whole being. That love sustains me as a parent. Love is the guide…

Read More
2 years ago

Navigating Family Dynamics in Later Life – Boundaries Are Key!

Navigating family dynamics can be rewarding and challenging as individuals enter their 60s and beyond. Relationships with adult children and grandchildren inevitably evolve, presenting new opportunities and complexities…

Read More
2 years ago

From Full House to Empty Nest – Now What?

The empty nesting phase can be as jarring a change for couples as the newborn stage was once upon a time. But just as the arrival of your children brought joy, pain, fun, and frustration, so will their exit. It’s like watching your heart live outside…

Read More
3 years ago

How Much Protection of Adult Children Is Too Much?

It is universally agreed that parents possess an elemental instinct to protect their children. Even before the moment of birth, and thereafter throughout their lives, children animate this instinct, which over time settles so profoundly in parents that it…

Read More
3 years ago

Private Life: Should Your Kids Read Your Journals When You’re Gone?

My friend’s mother died after a sudden stroke, and among her belongings he and his siblings discovered volumes of journals, going back 40 years. They started reading through these family artifacts and learned a lot…

Read More
3 years ago

Letting Go as a Mom of Grown Children: Is There Ever a Time When Detachment Is a Healthy Idea?

When I think of detachment, I think of a husband unlovingly detached from his wife, or a depressed mother who is detached and uninvolved with her child. In these contexts, detachment occurs in unhealthy relationships. Indeed, the ‘problem’…

Read More
3 years ago

I Am the Sum of My Choices – So Are My Adult Children and My Ex-Husband

With nearly a year under my belt of being a divorced 65-year-old, mother of four grown children, I have had time for reflection. The divorce was my choice. I sought and embraced it after years of apathy, contempt and hostility. I couldn’t change…

Read More
3 years ago

Morning Coffee and Other Empty Nester Opportunities

“Don’t let the door hit you in the #@!& (rear end)!” This was the comment one father made to me when sharing that his son was graduating from high school and moving out. My first reaction hearing that was “How sad!” Of course…

Read More