I admit to being a tad over-involved. I realized this the other day when I made a dental appointment for my 26 year old D, an ENT appointment for my 24 year old son and an orthopedist appointment for my 28 year old son. However, I no longer go with them to their appointments. I also told the older 2 that they need to start making their own appointments because otherwise what will they do when I die. The 24 year old is emotionally fragile and has just started counseling. H found the therapist and went with him to his first visit. He drove him to the second (son doesn’t like to drive, takes after me that way) but waited in the car. With this son, I am just happy that he told me he feels he has a need to see the ENT.
When my D interviewed for her first teaching job, in Harlem, I met her at Grand Central Station and took her uptown on the subway because I knew that she really didn’t have experience with it. I also wanted to check out the neighborhood. I waited outside the school while she interviewed. She got the job and I never went back there again.
Ironically, my 2 youngest sons are the most independent, although I do still make their doctor appointments as well. I will say that my D has her own medical insurance now so she makes her own appointments for everything but the DDS.
@techmom99,
My D is a sophomore at a college in upstate NY. We live in MA. When I called to schedule her next physical, the doctor’s office asked how old she is. As soon as they heard over 18, they told me to have her call. They won’t let ne do it. They need her consent.
I am fine with their request. I let D know to contact them to schedule it at her convenience.
Medical professionals sometimes encourage younger patients to reach developmental milestones, like making their own medical appointments, by this method. In your case, they likely assume you have either already acquired this ability or perhaps have become disabled and lost it, but in either event their assistance on this point is no longer useful.
Same here with my daughter’s doctor and dentist. The second she hit 18, they wanted all contact to be directly with her. When she had her wisdom teeth out this summer, they had her schedule and do all the follow up. She had a question about her meds and I told her she had to call since they wouldn’t talk to me because of HIPPA. I’m sure I really could have called but it was a good exercise for her to do it herself.
My youngest son is also a sophomore at a college in upstate NY. We use a family practice and I make the appointments for all 7 of us. Just making an appointment isn’t a HIPAA violation. At this point, the secretary and I joke about it. It’s the same with the dentist office. I make the appointments.
My son away at school is due for his annual physical in December. I plan to have him call when he’s home over the Thanksgiving break to schedule the appointment himself. I also had him get his own flu shot set up at the school health center. I figure if I can get the youngest one doing his own appointments, his older brothers will follow suit.
My kids have all also given me access to their online medical records but I only look if they ask me to.
I went off my parents’ health insurance at 19 and after I entered college, at 17, I never sought their advice or opinions on anything. It makes me feel good that my kids do seek me out for that sort of thing and i think that’s part of why I still do it.
less than 12 hours ago i wrote here about my scattered S20. he did it again. lost his wallet 20 minutes before he’s supposed to pick up his date for homecoming. No ID, no license, No money. Come ON kid! we need to start over at base one i guess with him! It’ll be an interesting night for him!
@bgbg4s, that’s too bad. My S was like that his whole life but especially in high school when I was trying to “make” him independent, he was forever losing things. I’m not sure that he’s outgrown it, but he has a fiance who helps him now. In the interim he had the military. It couldn’t have been easy for him but structure was a good thing, it really helped. Does your S have an attention deficit? My S’s PCP wanted to medicate him early on but I was against it and in the end he found enough “tools” to get through without medication. Today, at 28, he is a software engineer, homeowner, and about to get married. It does get better.
@techmom99 Their is definitely nothing wrong with helping our kids, no matter the age. They will always be our kids:) I have always leaned towards pushing independence early, but it was always because of a fear of not always being there. For me personally, there is a difference between helping our adult child who knows how to (or can figure out how to) do something versus leaving my kids unprepared, dependent and unskilled at doing something that may be important. I love that after providing the essentials for our children, we all get to chose the path we wish raise our children. There have have been some over the years (I love you Grandma) who have disagreed with some of the choices made in my house with child rearing, but my wife and I just do the best we can (and our way). Any ideas and learnings that we believe will work for our household are stolen (I steal quite a bit from CC).
I always did the laundry. One washing machine with tons of smelly clothes would have caused fighting, a scheduling issue and teens do not do laundry until everything is dirty. More smelly piles and a smelly house. With a phone call and a few texts they figured it all out on college. Some parents site doing laundry as being independent.
Cooking however was something I insisted on doing together so that they learned for health and economic reasons. Parents love our kids as weekend guests and are surprised that they can grocery shop and take over the kitchen too cook meals.
We all choose what we define as necessary for independent living. Parents are not perfect because we don’t have a crystal ball. If mine live in the city, yard work, Home construction and auto maintenance skills will not be useful. But, we hope that the have learned how to figure something out, they call it ‘adulting’.
I have always viewed my job as a parent as preparing my kids for fulfilling adult lives. Elementary school and HS and even college were just steps along the way. It worked very well as far as we can see. But, it was not easy for either kid and required a lot of parental negotiating. My son is ridiculously bright and even more driven, but is severely dyslexic (reading and writing were not just hard – they were physically painful) and had medical problems that sapped his energy and required two major surgeries. My daughter is very bright but was anxious/ADHD and at age 9 was diagnosed (incorrectly it turned out) with a degenerative retinal disease that would have rendered her legally blind – so we had to deal with very serious medical issues.
Note to @Longhorn, I don’t fully subscribe to your quote (“Parents should prepare their child for the path, not the path for the child.”). Instead, I tried to prepare the child to create his/her own path. I think following @Longhorn’s aphorism would have been problematic to disastrous for both kids, especially for my son.
I coached both on a few things. One was to negotiate with the system to shape things to match their needs. I did this well into HS for both. But, I explicitly discussed why we were doing what I was going to do and then had them them take over with my coaching. The second was to advise them that, especially in college and grad school and professional choice, they should play to their strengths and work around their weaknesses – but even before, they needed to establish the conditions in which they could succeed if the normal school process wasn’t doing that (especially important for ShawSon). Perhaps the difference between a snowplow/lawnmower parent and me was that I was explicitly trying to teach them to figure out how to play to their strengths and create paths that work for them.
ShawSon was a strong advocate for creating his own path before HS ended. The neuropsychologist who tested him every three years told me (when he tested him before his senior year in HS) that he had never seen a kid who had as strong a belief that he could work to make the path suit him. ShawD took longer but in college started to advocate effectively for herself (and got requests for help from her classmates as they saw her success). If they requested help, I continued to coach them (especially her) in college and beyond on how to handle their issues.
Both have finished graduate school and are pursuing careers they love. In both cases, they have picked career paths that match them (both chose independently of me) and have negotiated both along the way and in their work to enable their success and satisfaction.
Each kid is different, but I’m happy being a snowplow/lawnmower early on to enable my kids to succeed but teach them the skills to do it on their own. Relying on the schools/existing path would not have worked well.
How can this actually work? You have their calendars? You know their preferences? My 17-year-old schedules his own music lessons every week and his haircut appointments. I don’t know his schedule (tests, after-school meetings, homework). If I were to call for his haircut, I’d have to do it while he was sitting beside me so I can put the scheduler on hold and ask my son, “Can you do it Saturday at 2?” He might as well do it himself.
“ When she had her wisdom teeth out this summer, they had her schedule and do all the follow up. She had a question about her meds and I told her she had to call since they wouldn’t talk to me because of HIPPA”.
When my daughter had hers out at the very first pre-surgery appointment she said “ I need your HIPPA release form. I don’t want to have to call you when I’m on medication and may not feel up to I t or understand all your instructions. My mother will be calling”
She knew this doc was “ infamous” for telling parents he couldn’t talk to them.
She’s a nursing student. And she knows that no patient should be talking to a doc alone when medicated
‘Cooking however was something I insisted on doing together so that they learned for health and economic reasons. Parents love our kids as weekend guests and are surprised that they can grocery shop and take over the kitchen too cook meals.’
People who know my daughter and know that she’s constantly cooking and baking complicated things always say “Wow, you just have really taught her well”. I’m always tempted to say " uh huh" just like I did when her kindergarten teacher said “She’s an amazingly great reader, you just have really spent a lot of time reading to her!”
But I’m more secure now as a parent and fess up “Nope I hate having anyone in my kitchen and that included my kids. She learned it all on the internet”
Still glad I didn’t tell the kindergarten teacher the truth: " the only thing we’ve read her in the last 2 years is a catalogue. Of food items. I hate reading out loud and she seemed to like it"
I should have made appointments for my husband who’s terrible at this. Never had this routine blood test the doctor recommended last year. Walking around with a broken tooth for months. He is a fairly successful and responsible adult in other areas.
I don’t have their exact schedules but when they want an appointment, they tell me when they are free. I do have the regular doctor and dentist schedules in that I know what days they are in. I am trying to get them to make their own appointments, but it’s a slow process. For instance, my oldest son is ADHD but has been off meds since HS. He has now decided that he wants to think about going back on the meds. A distracted driving accident was the impetus. I first had to get H on board with it but now that he is, I am going to make the appointment because my son will go if I tell him to but he won’t make the call. Hopefully, once he gets back on the proper meds, he will be able to make those appointments himself.
OTOH, this particular son is the one I rely on to deal with the phone company, the cable company and all of those annoying customer service things I don’t want to handle. He is REALLY good at getting charges reversed, adding discounts to our accounts and the like. Of course, I have to make the call and hand him the phone…
I don’t mind making the appointments. At least I know they are getting medical and dental care. I do realize that I need to start encouraging them to make their own appointments and this thread is helping me to get into doing that.
I do a lot of things for my kids that I like to do and they don’t really like to do. It’s not a big deal and they could do them but just don’t enjoy the chore that much. This summer the reminder card came from the dentist and they both made appointments and off they went. Didn’t need me.