Baby Boomers begot Boomerang Kids who move back home and  then stay, and stay, and stay creating a “mutigenerational boarding house.”  That’s the term coined in a recent survey that found that adult children are moving back, not as a temporary arrangement, but often for a year and beyond. The general manager of that boarding  house is a baby boomer mom who often feels stressed to be back in a role that she was ready to retire to the “been there, done that” category.

Not surprisigingly, many women reported that the boomerang experience “affected their available discretionary income, their marriage, and how much they can eat out or travel,” said Stephen Reily, the CEO of Vibrant Nation, a website for women over age 50. 

In an online survey,  Vibrant Nation asked readers about their boomerang children.  The findings:

–63 percent said adult children had returned home to live

–66 percent expect those children to remain for a year or more

– 40 percent found that the experience has either strained or greatly worsened their relationship with the adult child

–77 percent were helping with their adult children’s expenses

–40 percent had dipped into their own retirement funds for the increased expenses

 While the weak job market, especially among entry level positions, has been blamed for the boomerang kids, there are other reasons including parents’ own financial needs.  The survey found about a third of the boomerang kids are paying up to $500 a month in rent.

 Mr. Reily said that in some cases an adult child may have moved back home to help out financially because a parent lost a job.  Other possible reasons include that the parents can’t sell the family home in a down market and asked the child to move home to help financially until the housing market improves.

Also some adult children find that paying rent to parents usually brings some nice perks: laundry, home cooked meals, big screen TV.  Why not pay $600 a month for those amenities rather double the amount and be crammed into an apartment with three roommates?  The time at home also gives them time to build some savings.

The survey found that the number of moms who are unhappy with the boomernage kids is balanced an eqaul percent who are pleased to have the nest refeathered.    The moms who have best managed this “innkeeper” role have  “established rules governing their adult children’s behavior while they share space, rules relating to cooking, chores, financial contributions, pets, childcare, and general respect,” said Mr. Reilly.

So here’s a tip: Remember that chore chart that used to adorn the fridge? Update it as an Excel spreadsheet with columns for everything that needs to be done for running a household and start slugging in the names of those boomerang kids, and husband  too!  Something good may actually come out of this.

Will our kids complain about us as we age?

Most of us have dealt  with the trials and tribulations of aging parents.  In 20 years  the first of the boomers hit 80.  What happens when  we can no longer live alone (yes it could happen!!) and our children try to move us to assisted living or ask us to move in with them (now there’s a switch from boomerang kids).

The $64,000 question: Will we be any different from our parents in resisting change? 

 In a New York Times blog,  Paula Span reasons that boomers will be indeed be more reasonable because our lifestyles are so different from the Greatest Generation.  She writes,

“We are, for example, much more accustomed to paying people — from house cleaners to personal trainers — to help in all sorts of ways, so I doubt we’ll suffer as much angst about hiring home care aides or geriatric care managers or drivers. (How we’ll pay for it is another matter.)”

Working for your child

Unless your kids are entrepreneurs chances are you won’t be working for them but your next boss could be someone the same age as your kid, especially as baby boomers need and/or want to keep working.

It’s well documented that millennials and gen x have very different work styles than  Baby Boomers.  In “7 Tips for Working for a Younger Boss,”   U.S. News and World Report offered the following advice:

• Acknowledge their expertise.
• Use electronic communication.
• Don’t expect too much face time
• Point out your results.
• Act your age.
• Update your skills.
• Don’t compete.

Pass Along Your Wisdom

 If your kids are not interested in all the accumulated advice you have to offer maybe someone else is. Consider being a mentor, suggests psychologist Susan Krause Whitbourne in her Psychology Today blog.

The benefits of mentoring go two ways, writes Dr. Whitbourne, who found in her study of midlife boomers that  no matter what their jobs, the most fulfilled were the people who were reaching out to the young and helping them through life hurdles.

 “Keeping an open mind to the ideas of the young keeps you mentally refreshed and young. You’ll also increase your chances of maintaining your edge over your age peers who refuse to stay in touch with the young.”

What’s a parent to do when an adult child behaves badly?

A number of years ago a colleague was called out of a conference.  He returned, his face ashen, and quickly gathered his belongings: his wife had telephoned that their teenage son had been arrested for drug possession.  He was meeting her and a lawyer at the police station. After he left, another colleague, the father of two lovely daughters in their twenties turned and said, “Your kids will disappoint in a major way at least once. But you and they eventually get over it.”

Imagine the disappointment that Kultida Woods, Tiger’s mother, must have felt as she watched her son apologize for his infidelities on national television last month.  Surely she was embarrassed as he talked about how the values she had taught him were thrown in a heap like dirty clothes. 

In all likelihood, none of us will ever have to watch our child apologize for misdeeds before millions of people (A point astutely raised by New York Times columnist David Carr who wrote that while he understood why an apology was part of the recovery process “I just don’t know what the rest of us were doing there.”

We all fervently hope that our children will never implode in such a devastating manner.  But like my colleague warned, most adult children manage to disappoint at least once in a major way (and we will probably do the same to them).  How is a parent supposed to react beyond wringing hands and whining “Where did I go wrong?” 

 Across the world adult children are spending their money (and sometimes yours) telling their therapists exactly how we went wrong as parents.  Are we supposed to offer a mea culpa? Perhaps we didn’t go wrong, our children did and it’s their problem to fix it.  Suggestions on how to encourage adult children to take “ownership” of their problems has spawned a mini-library of books:

“Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children: Six Steps to Hope and Healing for Struggling Parents”

“The Enabler: When Helping Hurts the Ones You Love”

“When Parents Hurt: Compassionate Strategies When You and Your Grown Child Don’t Get Along “

“Walking on Eggshells: Navigating the Delicate Relationship Between Adult Children and Parents”

 The message in yet another book, “When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us” from psychologist Jane Adams, is “To parents who are still trying to “fix” their adult children — Stop!” The book’s subtitle aptly sums up her approach: Letting Go of Their Problems, Loving Them Anyway, and Getting on with Our Lives

Easier said then done as for some of us separating from our adult children’s problems is like trying to remove Krazy Glue.   Of course, there are distinctions that need to be made:  The “bad things” done by adult children range from disappointing to difficult to devastating; from immature actions to addictions.  In many of those cases a self-help book is not enough and parents may need their own therapists and/or support group like Alanon to find their way through what seems like impossibly trying times.

Age is another distinction: bad behavior at 20 is different from bad behavior at 35.  For parents the hard question is where’s the line ? When it is no longer your responsibility, where you are taking too much on yourself and promoting the very immaturity/lack of self-reliance that may be part of the problem? That’s a question many parents ask themselves as they search out, sometimes over and over, help for an adult child caught in a quagmire of difficulties.

 After the press conference ended, Kultida Woods remained to talk to wire service reporters who asked her what she told her son as she hugged him.  She said she whispered, “I’m so proud of you. Never think you stand alone. Mom will always be there for you, and I love you.”

Isn’t that the message we all want to give to our children?  While we certainly don’t condone certain behavior we are always there for them, no matter what the circumstance.  That was the message of my colleague to his son, who solved his problems and is now a successful professional,  thanks to his own efforts and to the support of his parents.

www.amazon.com/Walking-Eggshells-Navigating-Delicate-Relationship/dp/0767920856/ref=pd_sim_b_5

The line is well worn–you can’t go home again.  It’s not only figuratively true but for many baby boomers literally true.  The childhood home was sold when our parents retired or died.

 But that doesn’t stop many of us from revisiting the homestead.  For Finding Our Way Home,  Wall Street Journal writer Kathleen Hughes interviewed more than one hundred people found that all but one went back to the old neighborhood: some drive by, some stop and stare, some go and ring the doorbell. Yet many don’t experience the warm feelings they expected. Hughes writes: 

Most homes don’t measure up to the memory. For one thing, childhood homes are usually owned by strangers who have remodeled. But the memory of the original childhood home, just the way it was, never seems to lose ground in the psyche. Discovering that the house has been altered—or worse, torn down—can trigger much greater feelings of loss.

Her piece resonated with me.  My siblings and I recently sold the house where we grew up and where my parents lived for more than 50 years.  That four-bedroom colonial fulfilled the dreams of both my parents.   My father wanted land and got an acre; my mother wanted lots of living space for five children and she got it (although we were so house poor that it took more than a decade to buy living room furniture).  The crowning touch:  the house was painted aqua blue, my mother’s favorite color. 

My mother lived in the house alone for almost nine years after my father’s death.  No assisted living for her; she was staying in her pride and joy, finally furnished and accessorized the way she had wanted.  After my mom died my siblings and I had the daunting task of cleaning out five decades of accumulated belongings. It was hard not to be paralyzed with memories but the sheer physical exertion of packing endless boxes and bags helped me shift into an emotionally neutral gear. 

 When we put the house up for sale the realtor told us to remove the family photos we had left mounted on three walls in the den.  Apparently the idea is for potential buyers to see themselves in the house, not be distracted by images of the family who once lived there.  So down came the photos: images ranging from a handsome WW2 Army captain and his stylish bride, through babies, celebrations, vacations, graduations, weddings and more babies.  At that point I knew it would be hard to go back into the house without breaking down.  Suddenly it was no longer the house where I grew up; it had been stripped of all meaning and memories.

 When the realtor called after the house was sold and offered a last walk though, I declined. I wanted to remember the house in my mind’s eye, filtering the best of all those years. The bittersweet fact is that my growing up years have come and gone.  Those memories are best preserved as family lore and in photo albums.

 A friend recently took a trip with three generations of her family; it was expensive but worth it, she said, because it was a “real memory maker.” Yes, you can’t go home again and recapture the past.  But we can be “memory makers” in our own homes now, creating times to remember for us, our children and grandchildren.

Who are Yuckies?

“Yuckies” (Young Unwitting Costly Kids),  also know as children 18-30, are expected to cost parents GBP30,000 ($45,600)  in terms of support, according to a report by a British bank.  The survey found  that 93 percent of parents were supporting Yuckies, with more than a quarter borrowing against their house to get additional funds for support.  Many parents predicted that the financial support will extend beyond the kids’ 30^th birthday.

 Deciding who gets grandma’s “stuff”

We always knew that Mid-Westerners had more common sense that the average American.  This proves it: The Iowa State University Extension Service offers a class called, “Who gets grandma’s yellow pie plate?” to help relatives divy up belongings in a fair way.

Phyllis Zalenski, a family resource management program specialist for the Extension, noted that often belongings have more sentimental than monetary value:

“It’s based on memories and how you interacted with your family and that item in the past, so it’s difficult to divide up things that maybe had shared meanings.”

Grandparents 2B

That’s the Twitter “handle” of a babyboomer duo anticipating the birth of their first grandchild.  Of course, they now face the perplexing question of what to call themselves.  They took this as a welcome challenge, writing,

You now get to decide how you want to be perceived; how you want to be remembered.

So what did they come up with?  A very connected term: the iNana and iPop! 

Adult Children: The TV Show

 We must certainly be onto a trend here now that ABC has announced a pilot for a new comedy show called “Who Gets the Parents?”  The plot line revolves around a couple who, after 30 years of marriage, are getting a divorce and take on more active roles in the lives of their three adult children.

We probably don’t know the answer, but maybe we can teach our kids to ask themselves the important questions

What’s almost as delicious–and unnerving–as falling in love?

Watching, as your child ventures giddily onto that shaky wire.

Because you know. You know that once they’re in the arms of Eros, they’re toast. If you witness dangerous missteps–like a partner who, your gut tells you, isn’t the best fit–you’ll probably be tuned out, just like you tuned out your parents’ clatter and drone. It takes many years to comprehend that parents, those clueless ancients, just might be women and men with epic love stories/hangovers/joneses all their own. Stories that might’ve saved an inexperienced youth a world of hurt.

“Why didn’t they tell me??” you may have wondered, those many moons ago, scraping your bloody entrails off the floor after evisceration by Mr. or Ms. Wrong. Well, probably they did, but the drumbeat in your heart and loins was much too loud. Or maybe they hailed from the “Hands-Off” School of Parenting Adult Offspring, where one is constrained from offering unsolicited advice. And then there was my parents’ school: harangue so loudly, make predictions so dire, that a stubborn, immature daughter will do just about anything–including hang onto Mr. Wrong–to prove them wrong.

Given that my own parents–bless their ferociously loving hearts–lacked boundaries, I fretted, as a young mother, about how I could possibly deal with… anything. Turns out that a perk of being an “elderly primigravida” (a super-sexy term employed during my amnios) is that you can learn a lot by observing how your peers, several jumps ahead of you in everything from toilet-training to dating rules, are muddling through.

Our first babysitter was a delightful young woman whose parents were unhappy about her choice of boyfriend. With the fascination of an anthropologist studying a newly discovered tribe, I watched how they handled it. Sans haranguing, they explained their concerns, assured her they loved her, that their door was always open and they would be gracious to all who entered. Then they took a step back and quietly let time (and the good sense they’d inculcated in their offspring) do its work.  I was amazed when the romance fizzled in a mere six months, sans the parent-child psychodramas and power struggles I still wince to remember.

It wasn’t that these parents were such skilled acrobats on the tightrope of love. In fact, several years later, their own marriage ended. It was, I think, that they spoke their emotional truth—respectfully–in the context of a parent-child relationship where this was valued and exercised from day one. This resonated for me, as it provided some sort of bridge between the lands of “no comment” and “no boundaries,” neither of which felt right for the family I envisioned.

Something else I observed, early on: parents’ stories (doled out over the years, in age-appropriate soundbytes) are usually more impactful than lectures shouted across the chasm when it’s already too late.

Stories like:

Jogging around Washington Square Park (the one time I, like, actually ever do this), I meet the cute grad student who’s moved into my building. Bill (not his real name) asks me to dinner, we click, and are open about our “intentions.” I say I’m in my late 20s, ready to get serious, eager to have kids. He quickly points out that he’s his early 20s and in no hurry for marriage.

Three years later, when we break up, we’ll confess to having had the identical thought as we locked eyes, that first night: “I really, really like you, and I know you like me – and I’m totally going to change your mind about EVERYTHING.”

Wrong.

Bad timing isn’t the only strike against us. My parents see Bill’s skittishness as a sign of insincerity (which it isn’t), and bitterly castigate me for wasting my time with him.  Bill’s family – top-heavy with high-profile shrinks, and multiple divorces – isn’t keen on me, either. Though they are Jewish, they’ve pegged me (because I’m a daughter of Holocaust survivors) as irreparably scarred and “a mindless slave to archaic tradition.”  Which I’m not.

And so Bill and I persevere for years, determined to fit square peg into round hole, to show everybody.

Until, one day, everything changes.

In his apartment (he’s in the library, studying), I spot a letter addressed to Bill from his grandfather, an imperious analyst with whom he’s had little contact the whole time we’ve been together.

I hesitate only an instant before reading it.

Apparently Bill has reached out to Grandpapa because he doesn’t want to lose me but feels pressured by my ultimatums. Much-married Grandpapa cautions Bill about the family’s track record.  What on earth could you two be thinking, he writes: “As the shoe-seller tries to convince his customers – ‘Go on, buy the hurting shoes, and they will stop hurting!?’”

The metaphor hits its mark like a laser. I literally cannot breathe. Years of murky, wishful thinking become meaningless vapor; I can see for miles. I can’t see my destiny, but I know it’s not Bill. This no longer terrifies me. Because I know now that the stupidest, sorriest fate of all would be “buying” what didn’t fit from the get-go, or believing that marriage magically enables two people  – even caring, well-intentioned people – to generate sufficient light and heat to override their differences. I know now that I will never let this happen.

Brandishing the letter, I run through Washington Square. In the library, Bill and I say our teary, relieved goodbyes.

Four days later I meet the man who will become my husband. There is no forcing of square pegs into round holes.  I see the light, and good Lord, I feel the heat; and the years ahead, while by no means perfect, are pretty darn good. I hear that Bill, too, has done well for himself and his family.

From the time my kids were little, I’ve relayed this story of the hurting shoes, and others, in the hopes that when they’re in a place where they cannot hear my voice, they will still hear the undeniable rush of emotional truth, deep inside their own hearts.

Did a few words of perfectly timed advice ever change your life – or teach you something profound, to pass along?

Vivien Orbach-Smith teaches journalism to undergraduates in NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, and co- authored Soaring Underground: A Young Fugitive’s Life in Nazi Berlin, her father’s memoir of survival.

 Grandparents Make Kids Fat

Fast food, junk food, too much of the tube.  Granny daycare may solve one problem but apparently often contributes to another: childhood obesity

A British study looked at 12,000 children and found that when granny was the nanny the child was 34 percent more likely to be overweight than children in daycare or watched by a non-relative babysitter.  

 The lead researcher on the study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, blamed “indulgence of children and lack of physical exercise” as  two possible explanations for the findings,  according to the BBC.  

News stories and blog postings abounded including in the  Mommy Files blog  which asked young parents whether they “let it slide or do you put your foot down and ask your parents to put away the candy dish and turn off the TV?” 

The question generated dozens of responses including an admission of guilt from a long-distance grandparent:

I allowed my grandson, on a trip to the zoo last May, to subsist for one entire day on three ice cream bars, a bag of potato chips and a coke.

But. This kid lives 7,000 miles away, and I see him twice a year. This was a one-time event. (Even a kid deserves a vacation! Who here, among all you responsible adult healthy eaters, never takes a day off, not even once a year, and just eats chocolate cake?)

Good luck parents! 

Children Lower Your Blood Pressure

We all can recall  times when parenting caused our blood pressure to spike.  But the reality, according to a recent scientific study,  is that parents have lower blood pressure levels than childless people. 

As writer Susan Brenner notes in  Kids:  Just What You Need for Your Health:

The job of being a parent changes over time, but doesn’t really end.  Our worries go from, “Will my child ever eat vegetables,” to “Will my child learn to read,” to “Will my child get into college,” to “Will my child have the right job,” and so it goes.

Give Advice or Not?

What happens when grandma is an early childhood educator?  As noted last week in “Say Everything or Say Nothing,” even experts must carefully choose their words.

 In “Grandparents must learn to let it be and follow parents’ lead,” childhood expert Martha McClellan writes:

My most difficult challenge has been knowing when to intervene and make suggestions to the parents, or hold my tongue and respect their rights to make their own mistakes and learn from them. There are many tough decisions for me in the areas of food choices, bedtimes, discipline, TV and DVDs, routines, etc.

She  goes on to enumerate other “problem” areas:  gifts, long-distance grandparenting, play, competition with the other grandparents, and on. 

Her takeaway?

Grandparenting is a wonderful chance for us to open our hearts, share that unconditional love, create more strong and lasting relationships and grow a little ourselves

Adult Kids Need Prayers Too

Author Stormie Omartian sold 1.7 million copies of her book, “The Power of a Praying Parent,” which focused on teens and younger children.  But, as she notes, parenting does not stop at the end of the teeange years so she has written a new book,  “The Power of Praying for Your Adult Children.”

A Publisher’s Weekly review notes,

She offers 14 things to pray for adult children, including that they find freedom, restoration and wholeness; have a sound mind and right attitude; and be protected and survive in tough times…Fans of Omartian will find more of her chatty, personal style mixed with lists and myriad subtopics throughout; new readers may be put off by repetition and that same chattiness. But all readers will know that Omartian’s heart is dedicated to prayer, God’s redemptive love and a healthy future for all adult children.

A 30-year-old son brings a 40-something woman to Sunday dinner at the family home. The next day he calls his mom, “So what do you think?” Mom answers, “She’s seems nice but not really your type.”   The son hangs up mad and the mom is puzzled: He asked her opinion; wasn’t she supposed to be honest?  

Say everything or say nothing to our adult children?  The topic doesn’t matter: love, money, careers, grandchildren. For some parents it’s their personality: they’re going to give their opinion whether asked or not. Other parents could have explosion go off in their midst and they wouldn’t say anything. 

 Most of us fall somewhere in the middle, often unsure whether to speak out or be quiet.  A friend complained, “I know I am supposed to bite my tongue. But I just can’t.  I just didn’t realize it would be so bloody.”

Columnist Tracey Barnes Priestley considered this dilemma in “Learning to Let Go, writing about her daughter’s decision to pursue a career with an international relief agency.  Ms. Priestley admits that part of her prefers to see her daughter in a safe office job. However, she considers that kind of  thinking both “selfish” and wrong for two reasons:

First, assuming that we parents know what is best for our adult children, and second, deluding ourselves into believing that we actually have some control over how they will live their lives.

Eventually, all parents and children need to cut that little old cord because adult children are responsible for their own life decisions, no matter what we parents may want — or need.

No parent expects their adult children to march lockstep to their advice. Indeed one of the hallmarks of adulthood is learning to accept responsibility for your own decisions.  But does that preclude parents from making suggestions, and even, horrors, giving an opinion, especially based on “been there, done that”?

Think about it.  You spent 21 years getting your kid launched (okay somewhat launched); you’ll probably spend another two decades or more with your adult child.  Are you suddenly supposed to hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil?

Maybe it’s not so much what you say but how you say it.  So what should you say when  you son wants to join the Marines or your daughter decides to make pottery for a living or your son buys a car that he really can’t afford, or your daughter decides to go back to work and put the twins in daycare? Maybe it’s okay to give your opinion, suggestions, advice but to think before you speak, and to consider your child’s best interest, not as Ms. Priestly admits, our own sometimes-selfish motives.

Maybe it’s also learning how to accept–and even support–your child’s decision, whatever it is, after you spoken your piece. Perhaps we should apply the advice theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in the Serenity Prayer not only to own lives but to those of our adult children:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Traveling Their Way

When it comes to travel, we’re at the point in our lives when many of us prefer a four-star hotel.   But what happens when a mother decides to join her three twentysomething children and traipse around Ireland doing it their way? She was rewarded with adventure and pushing her limits.  Peg Smith writes in “Looking for Adventure in Ireland”:

Staying in hostels and keeping our plans flexible afforded us an intimate experience of Irish life. And, by stepping outside of my own comfort zone, I was able to experience something of the world through the eyes of my children.

Money trouble

What to do when you sense your adult children are facing money woes but are reluctant to share their problems. In “All in the Family—Making Money Talk Easier” psychologist Nancy Molitor suggests beginning with a general conversation and then moving on from there:

 “Very few things in life are solved with one big talk. The first conversation should be a basic probe. It might be when you’re on vacation with them, or out for an evening, and you happen to say, ‘Boy, have you been paying attention to stock market? Just wondering, how are you guys doing with that?’”

 Boomerang Kids Move in with Grandma

 In some situations this could be a win-win:  Grandma shouldn’t be living alone, and the boomerang kid  needs to get out of your house.  Of course all the stars need to be perfectly aligned for this to work. If grandma is in Kansas City and you’re in New York City it doesn’t make sense.  But apparently the situation is working for some. In “What A Big House You Have Grandma,” blogger Paula Span looked at the trend and writes:  

 I imagine that for most grandparents and grandchildren, this is a more temporary arrangement: for the young, a way station on the road to independence; for the old, an opportunity to be both supportive and supported before real frailty sets in.

But maybe not. I asked Laura Marsh, who is about a year away from her degree, how long she planned to live with her grandmother. “Forever,” she said, only half kidding. “I’m never moving out.”

Trauma or no trauma – can a parent ever let go of the fear of letting go?

 “Viv?”

 The voice on my answering machine was plaintive, panicky.

For as long as my mother lived, I could read the full gamut of her emotions in the way she said my name.

“Daddy and I are watching the news on Channel 5…

Of course: “It’s 10 p.m.; do you know where your children are?” Well, my mother knew where I was, and it frightened her to her core. Done with yeshiva high school (and with New Jersey) by age 16, graduated from NYU by age 20, I was taking my walk on the wild side – through the unrestrained, pre-AIDS Greenwich Village of the mid-1970s.

“They said a girl’s body was found under a bridge, and that she looks… Hispanic! So please, call home!”

“Viv?” she bleated mournfully. “WHERE COULD YOU BE????”

Twenty-five years later, comedian Amy Borkowsky compiled a bestselling book and a CD, “Amy’s Answering Machine,”  from  her mom’s outrageous messages, featuring advice no adult offspring can do without: reminders to use the bathroom before getting on the line in the DMV, tutorials on how not to get gum disease from kissing and on the best shoes to wear on a plane in case of an emergency landing.

My own cassette contained similarly over-the-top gems, but I wasn’t laughing. This wasn’t stereotypical Jewish mother shtick. My parents were refugees from Nazi Germany who were convinced that mortal danger lurked everywhere. As a young child, I was safeguarded from menacing dogs and rabid squirrels, epidemics and undertows, kidnappers and anti-Semites. Later, after I fled the nest, I was warned about Mickey Finns and Peeping Toms, even about – yes – snipers who might put me in their sights if I didn’t shut my window-blinds over University Place. And then there was the cavalcade of dread diseases. Unwashed fruit harbored countless parasites. Ice cream was referred to as “frozen germs.” You could get God-knows-what from a water fountain, or from the toilet-seats in Port Authority Bus Terminal (my gateway to freedom after tense visits home). And Toxic Shock Syndrome, from the lethal, left-in-too-long tampon.

Ironically, my father, a survivor of Auschwitz and of a death march to Buchenwald, was much less angst-ridden than my mother, who escaped Berlin as a teenager with her family in 1939 – after Kristallnacht but before full darkness descended. He fit the profile of the Holocaust survivor who was tough-minded and adaptable, embracing the future despite occasional bouts of rage and despair. She was an intelligent, pious, fragile beauty, with luminous blue-grey eyes that were veiled with sorrow. Of the 400 girls in her Jewish high school, fewer than one out of ten survived.

I hated upsetting my mother, but in those years, there was something about her anxious gaze and frantic tone that infuriated me. Coming of age, as it happened, with legions of young women whose mothers struggled with shifting roles in the early days of feminism, I was openly relieved that I favored my male parent and had inherited his irreverence, and lusty, tenacious spirit.

I recognized that Holocaust trauma was woven into the fabric of our family – “secondhand smoke,” author Thane Rosenbaum would later term it – but was convinced I had dodged its toxic effects.  Unlike some other survivors’ kids I knew, I wasn’t phobic or depressive, anxious or anhedonic. To my parents’ credit, they’d given my younger brother and me plenty of the right stuff too. Their “smoke” was deflected by abundant humor, candor  and love.

And so I partook exuberantly of unwashed (and occasionally forbidden) fruits, sat on every toilet, and flung open the blinds. I dove into churning waters and walked the dark streets of many cities, choosing to trust most of the folks I encountered along the way – good people of every stripe – and rarely finding cause for regret.

More than three decades have passed since the Era of the Over-The-Top Messages – years that began with me embracing my wonderful parents and ended with me burying them; years in which I held my own babies close, and then, opened my hands to let them fly. But during the course of those years, an uncomfortable truth has wafted and billowed, clouding my joy and irritating the hell out of everyone around me.

As a daughter, I was fearless. But as a mother – much as I try to conceal it – I am always, always afraid.

It used to be choking hazards, allergic reactions, and participation in any activity requiring helmets. Now that all three kids are grown, I fixate on car accidents (a fear that surges to epic proportions during inclement weather), rare illnesses and street crime.

The legend of “WHERE COULD YOU BE????” has morphed into an affectionate homage to my mother/their grandmother, a familial catch-phrase left teasingly on each other’s Facebook walls. I’d never seriously send my children such a desperate message; in fact, the older two (ages 22 and 25) complain I don’t call enough! But left to my own devices, I obsess nonstop. About Offspring #1 living in Manhattan in a non-doorman building near a housing project, and traveling to impoverished lands as part of her job with an international relief agency. About Offspring #2 on the campus of a hard-partying state university that’s seen assaults, hit-and-runs, and even a fatal stabbing over the past year. (In the summer, she’ll be heading back to live and work in Alaska, where she packs a spray can of “Bear Defender” to fend off the aggressive grizzlies that have proliferated in the region.) And about strapping Offspring #3, forever my baby boy, currently battling a hard-to-treat infection in a country in political turmoil that also has one of the highest rates of traffic fatalities in the world.

Go on: tell me the odds are miniscule that my winsome, adventuresome daughter will get eaten by a bear. That’s where the secondhand smoke darkens my vision.  We children of trauma give statistics their due, but we know too much to trust them. Tell me that my loved one has only a 2% chance of overcoming a devastating diagnosis, and watch my “rescue personality” shift into high gear to help give him or her the best possible shot. Assure me there’s a 98% chance that everything will turn out fine, and witness my deep, primal fear that this time the  roulette wheel might land on my precious family.

The future lies before us, filled with more milestones, more minefields. Which shoes, I wonder, will help us stay safe?

Could secondhand smoke become thirdhand smoke?

And how do I make it go away?

Vivien Orbach-Smith teaches journalism to undergraduates in NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, and co- authored Soaring Underground: A Young Fugitive’s Life in Nazi Berlin, her father’s memoir of survival.