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Informationen zum Autor Jane Adams, Ph.D. Klappentext "Beyond offering sympathy! reassurance! and wisdom! the book doesn't lay out a plan for solving anyone's problems! but reading it may help disappointed parents shuck some of their guilt and shame . . . and let their grown children fend for themselves."--Amazon.com. Chapter 1 The Kids Are All Right and Other Lies Parents Tell About Their Grown Children We´re at dinner, nine of us, early and late boomers who´ve cried and laughed together, held and hugged each other through marriages, births, divorces, remarriages, and deaths, the rites and rituals of celebration and mourning that punctuated the beginnings and endings and new beginnings of our lives. We have a history together -- housewarmings, promotions, cross-country moves, new careers, the first gray hair, the last great love affair. Mothers and fathers all, veterans of car pools and PTAs and soccer teams, sharing the details of our children´s lives the way we always have since those gap-toothed and cowlicked darlings took their tentative steps on the perilous road to adulthood, from her first period to his first learner´s permit, through their tumultuous but relatively crisis-free adolescence all the way to the college acceptance letters. We´re over 50 now, and those darlings are in their twenties and even their thirties, and when, as we always do, we ask our peers -- the A-list, the nearest and dearest as well as our more casual friends -- "How are the kids?" they tell us, as they always do, "The kids are all right." Except some of us are lying. Because lots of those kids -- our kids, always and forever, even though they´ve reached their majority by now, are physically fully matured, legally and constitutionally adult and emancipated, and beyond our control if not our concern -- are a long way from all right. And we´re living with it by ourselves, and we´re not telling it to anyone. Sometimes we´re not even admitting it to ourselves. A few of us are just plain telling untruths, some are "editing" or only talking about their other kids who really are okay, others are exaggerating or putting the best spin on the situation, and the rest are simply keeping our mouths shut. Except Lila, because she doesn´t have to. Since his infancy, her only child, Peter, has been like the weather report from Honolulu -- always fair and sunny. This is a kid who´s led a totally charmed life, been a thing of joy and beauty every day of his 24 years, never caused his parents one moment of displeasure or disappointment. And although nothing is certain, so far it doesn´t look like he ever will. Of course there are plenty of Peters out there, great kids who´ve done their parents proud in any or many ways, who´ve never caused them any real pain -- particularly not the pain of disappointment. But there are enough others among the population of educated, middle-class 21- to 34-year-olds who started out with all of Peter´s constitutional and environmental advantages, including healthy minds and bodies, loving parents, and the potential to become what we all wanted and expected our kids to grow into: independent, generous, kind, happy, successful, law-abiding, contributing members of society who made the most of all the advantages we worked so hard to give them. Except they didn´t. Between the nine of us there are twenty adult children, and while half are doing just fine (the half we talk about), the other half haven´t fared as well. No one picking at the moo shu pork tonight is the parent of a serial killer, but a couple of our kids are in jail, one for fraud and the other for dealing drugs. Some of us know the names of the "best" rehab centers on both coasts and the experts in treating eating disorders or gambling addictions. Others have no idea where in the world our estranged or disappeared adult children are, and every time the pho...
