Anne Robinson on whether helping a grown-up child financially should come with strings attached.
Our daughter is married and has three children. Money has always been tight and we have been happy to help out over the years. They were also in receipt of a monthly allowance from us.
One of the children was keen to learn to drive and we said we would like to help. The arrangement (our preference) was to transfer weekly money to our daughter’s account. Weeks and months passed with no news and I began to query it.
My daughter was vague and eventually, in a ‘one liner’ email, she announced that she wanted to pay us back for the lessons that were ‘not accounted for’. Even though we could have read the riot act, we did not make things uncomfortable for her.
In the event, she politely insisted that our help was no longer required, and they wished us to discontinue the monthly allowance. I continued with my softly, softly approach, only for her to turn on me.
She said she was hurt because of the way I had written to her, which she said was more akin to a solicitor’s letter. That was the one time I really did get cross. We are currently speaking but things are cool between us, and it seems as though I am doing all the running.
Any suggestions?
Oh dear, oh dear. Let’s start with what we know from your letter. You gave your daughter a monthly allowance. More recently, you offered to pay for a grandson to have driving lessons. Much time went by when your daughter was puzzlingly vague about the said lessons.
When you more pertinently asked for a progress report, your daughter said she would pay you back for the lessons, no longer wished to have a monthly allowance and complained you had written to her sounding like a lawyer.
Let’s now move on to what we do not know. Did the driving lessons ever happen? Did your grandson decide he didn’t want the lessons? Or did he manage to crash the family car? Suppose an unexpected bill came along. One that had to be paid immediately, say specialist dental work for one of the children.
What else to do but borrow from the pot marked ‘driving lessons’? Was your daughter embarrassed to tell you where the money had gone? Or perhaps an over-busy mother with three growing children simply failed to get round to keeping you up to date?
If the money went elsewhere, is your daughter cross by what she sees as your persistence in knowing about the money and has rashly chosen to throw all her toys out of her pram? Your daughter quotes you back as saying money ‘not accounted for’. Ouch! Might it be your softly, softly approach was not nearly as softly, softly as you might have thought?
Was there more than a touch of the ‘riot act’? Does helping a grown-up child financially come with strings attached? Would it not have been possible for you to pick up a phone and ask your daughter if she was OK?
An old axiom comes to mind: ‘Put your armour on for your parents, take your armour off for your children’. The good news is we don’t need to answer any of the above. There is only one question: do you want to be right, or do you want a happy family?
Presuming you want the latter, you need to eat a good dollop of humble pie. Even if, for now, you firmly believe the humble pie deserves to be served to another table.
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