Most American teenagers dream about growing up and moving out of their
childhood home after high school, eager to experience the fun and
excitement of adult independence.
The reality, though, can be quite different. Twenty-first century
challenges, including high student debt and housing costs, brought one in
four young adults home to live again with their parents. Today’s COVID-19
pandemic, accompanied by social quarantine, university closures and high
unemployment means that even more young adults are living again with their
parents.
Having the kids under your roof again can be a great thing for family
closeness and mutual support. It can also be very challenging. Both parents
and newly adult children struggle to find a comfortable balance between
interdependence and independence. The old, familiar roles of parent and
child feel wrong – like “an old, cozy sweater that is now too small and
itchy,” one 20-year-old told me. What is needed, then, are new roles and
expectations. But what are those, and how will they work?
Young adults returning – often reluctantly – to live at home again can
create numerous friction points between parents and kids unless steps are
taken to rearrange old routines and roles. Even the high school graduates
who went away just last year are not the same people they were when they
left. Recognizing and making adjustments for these changes will help
everyone find new ways to live harmoniously and helpfully together during
these stressful times.
Here are some suggestions to help you and your young adult kids figure out
how to live companionably together under the same roof:
- This may seem obvious, but it’s very important to remember that
your adult children are not actually children anymore. Treating
them like children will unconsciously prompt them to act
immaturely. Making the effort to deal with your kids as fellow
adults will help you – and them – build more equitable partnerships
as members of the same household. You will benefit because you’ll
avoid the resentment that naturally flows from taking care of
people who can take care of themselves. Your kids will also benefit
from feeling respected as people who can be counted on to do their
share – which will encourage them to step up and do just that. - Working all of this out together means that you’ll probably want to
invite everyone to a family meeting. Both young and old are more
cooperative and generous when they have a voice in the
decision-making process. Inviting all family members to join in
discussing a plan for household jobs is a good place to start. - Other important matters to work out between parents and kids are
boundaries and expectations. Boundaries cover such basics as
respecting each other’s privacy with, for example, agreements about
“not going into someone’s room when they aren’t there.”
Expectations are about the big and little logistics of day-to-day
life. What are the household “quiet hours” when some are asleep and
others are awake? What are the standards for tidiness in household
common areas? What time are the family meals, who is willing to
cook, who is expected to join and who will clean up? You may be
pleasantly surprised to discover that your adult children have a
much better sense about the importance of making and respecting
agreements like these, after living with roommates outside the
family! - Respect for our young adult children also extends to how we offer
them our opinions, suggestions, criticism and judgment. What you
may think of as “just being helpful” and “friendly advice” will
probably sound like unasked for – and unwanted – criticism and
judgment to your adult child.
Parents of teenagers learn that it’s always wise to wait until your child
asks for advice before offering it. The same wisdom holds true for our
adult children as well. While young people often look to their parents for
good ideas and helpful advice, they always prefer to ask for it first.
Sometimes, of course, a parent will see a child heading in the wrong
direction and want to offer a warning. Even then, it makes all the
difference in the way your child hears you if you first say, “I have a
suggestion to make, would you like to hear it?” before continuing.
Your adult kids may seem supremely confident and sure of themselves or they
may seem very worried and unsure of themselves. Whether confident, cautious
or somewhere-in-between, all young adults care about their parent’s
opinions and feelings toward them. Now is the time to be especially
generous in letting your grown-up children know that you believe in them
and that you have confidence that they have what it takes to deal with
life’s good times and hard times.
Of course, your big kids don’t have much experience yet. And sure, there is
still a lot for them to learn. Yet they have already made it this far. As
the one who knows their personal histories even better than they do, you
can encourage them by remembering the hard times they have already
weathered and the challenges they have overcome so far.
Young adults must work very hard to meet the challenges of adulthood and
today’s problems only make this more difficult. While we cannot shoulder
these challenges for them, we can help our kids by giving them something
even more precious: letting them know that we have faith in them. The idea
of parents giving children their “blessing” is an ancient tradition, one
that is rooted in parents’ desires to wish their children well and
children’s desires to know that their parents think well of them. When we
want to encourage our adult children to have faith in themselves, we give
them the gift of our “blessing” by expressing our faith in them. The
knowledge that their parents believe in them helps young adults take heart
and make their own leaps of faith.
