We often hear couples speak about their partner as their “best friend.” There may be a lesson here for the multigenerational household. What if everyone was able to treat everyone else as a friend instead of, or better yet in addition to, them being a relative. Is you grandfather-in-law your friend? Is your niece your friend?

Somehow in our social DNA we have learned to treat friends with more skill and deference than we treat our own family members. Ask yourself, do you give your friends the benefit of the doubt more often than you do a family member? Who are you more likely to criticize – family or friend? Maybe more on point, do you leap to offer critique rather than advice or counsel with a family member?

It really is a societal thing that somehow after childhood, we do not easily form intra-family friendships. Fortunately, this is really an easy change to make. What it takes is a bit of self reflection on who your real friends are and how you treat them because they are your self-selected friends. What you are looking for is your own personal conduct when you are in the friend-to-friend relationship. What makes that different from your conduct with a colleague at work? How is friend behavior different from other social interactions? with people to encountered everyday out in the wide world?

Here are a couple of hints:

-we tend to show interest in our friends interests whether we share them or not; we ask about what is going on in their life and we truly are interested, concerned and supportive.

-we offer this support to friends because we know they will do the same for us, friendships are defined but this mutuality, which deepens the connection of friendship.

-we do certain things (sports, dance, dinners, poker etc.) with our friends because we share an interest, it is not necessary to share all of our hobbies or recreation but some or even just one.

Now the rather simple task is to see the aspects of friendship in our multigenerational family members. Practice the same friendship patience and acceptance with family as we do with friends. And most importantly, give yourself a break – this will take time and you will backslide but the benefits of “family as friends” can go a long way to creating a much more peaceful and harmonious multigenerational home.

According to staff reports on this Monday morning there are two new multigenerational pieces of entertainment that have passed the collective Monday morning water cooler test.

On the motion picture front You Again got very good reviews from our staff. The film is carried by veteran actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver. The cast involves three generations of female members of a family.

…read more about Multigenerational Entertainment

One of our staff came back to the office from vacation that included a small family reunion. It was the first time in nearly a decade that all four brothers and sisters were in the same place at the same time. She reported one interesting evening when they were trying to tell the story of how her parents had met. It seems no one had exactly the same story.

She suggested that they never really took the time to ask about all of the stories their parents had lived through and now that they were gone and with them the stories.

…read more about Family Stories

Co-housing is a way to move beyond the limits of the single dwelling model of multigenerational living. Periodically we like to hi-lite some of the successful co-housing ventures we have encountered. Today we take a look at the Sunward Co-Housing project outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

…read more about SuperSized Multigenerational Living

“There aren’t enough television shows about real families.”

We agree, but we also acknowledge that shows about “real” anything can be really boring. Reality shows are edited and the participants are manipulated by directors, editors and yes, even writers. But we wondered just how many multigenerational families are portrayed realistically or otherwise on television. Here is our short fast survey of the multi-gen offerings today.

…read more about Multigenerational Television Shows

We were stumped when we saw the ad for a “multigenerational sale.” What could that possibly mean? Sure yard sales and estate sales often have a lot of old stuff being offered, did the multi-gen tag just mean that? Fortunately we had a staffer living within driving distance of the advertised address so we asked her to make a phone call and if there was any real multigenerational action a visit to the sale would be in order. Here is her surprising report:

The estate sale was of all the contents of a family farm that had been built, owned and operated by five generations of the same family over 114 years. Several of the categories of collectables had been divided by which generation had done the collecting. For example, there was a beer can/bottle collection of over 500 individual items, each labeled by the year of its manufacture and with the date it was added to the collection and by which family member had found the piece. Thirteen names shared those 500 pieces with one member from each of four generations being the main curator at one time or another.

…read more about Multigenerational Sale?

We have mentioned several times in the past that before you make a decision about a multigenerational house, everyone involved in the new living arrangement should have a say in what are the priorities of the new house. But does everyone involved in such a life-changing decision know what are the important questions to ask?

Here are a few things to consider.

Bedrooms: Not just how many but where are they? Will you be looking for a separate mother-in-law quarters or perhaps even a garage apartment? A converted basement for the teenagers? Would the two master suite alternative fit better for your multi-gen family?

…read more about Variety in Multigenerational Housing

Privacy tends to be an issue in the multigenerational household, everyone needs some quiet time. In years past, many homebuilders experimented with the two master suite house floorplan but found few interested buyers. Now, however, there is a resurgence of interest in just this type of home construction.

Generally speaking the two master suites are at opposite ends of the building with private master baths and a sitting area of some kind. “Shared living space” including the kitchen separate the two private spaces. In the 80s and 90s these were often two bedroom homes with perhaps a third guest bedroom.

…read more about Dual Master Suites

Do you remember Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Clearly one of the great intergenerational novels. Now we have Bill Warrington’s Last Chance. The setting and story are not remarkable but author James Kings as managed to play the cast of generational characters in ways that are both familiar and yet both plausible and unique.

Bill Warrington is experiencing the early stages of Alzheimer’s. He lives with his daughter a single mother of his rebellious 14 yr. old granddaughter. Bill hopes for a family reunion of sorts, even though he two sons are completely out of the picture and his daughter is barely holding on to her sanity with the trials of her job and her increasingly problematic daughter.

…read more about Bill Warrington’s Last Chance