This is where Sally becomes the Generativity One parent again — but in a new way:
Well, we go home, and I am fit to be tied and so is her father. I called our daughter-in-law, who had become very close to Carol (all of Carol’s mail was now going to her home). I asked what she thought was going on with Carol, and she said that she and Carol’s brother were also very concerned. I suggested that we do an intervention. We decided to have our daughter-in-law and Carol’s very close friend and I sit down with her to try to find out what was going on.
Lo and behold, Carol and our daughter-in-law and I had lunch the next day, and Carol said she was preparing a list of things that needed to be done to get ready to leave for Africa. It was clear that Carol had a systematic plan for getting her passport and other important things that needed to be accomplished between then and next March. I concluded that this had gotten to her because I had initiated the conversation with her friends, and the love and concern and focus on this situation made a difference. It’s all part of the great mystery called life. I discovered that you never are not a parent of your children, and I learned that how parenting takes place must shift.
In some cases, the issue is not determining when and how we serve as parents to our grown children; rather, it’s about the ongoing responsibilities we have as active parents to a child who is disabled, who faces profound emotional problems, who is struggling with addiction problems, or who has simply never left home and parental attachments (“failure to launch”). Unlike the temporary challenge of Generativity One parenting that faced Sally, we find other parents like these who must engage in an ongoing manner with their adult children. To illustrate this point, we introduce our fourth Featured Player from the Sage Leadership Project. We call her Lisa, and she is faced with a difficult, ongoing Generativity One challenge. Until her retirement in 2000, Lisa was a clinical psychologist in Boston. Here is the description of her ongoing parenting challenge:
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