Essential ideas for your adult child living at home

Universities often advertise their ‘real life’ credentials and the fact that they truly make students prepared for life beyond the degree. But if your child is living with you, are you doing the same?

I ask this because the university year has recently begun. These students are starting to study the degree that will likely get them the career of their dreams and truly start their adult life.

But if your child lives at home, I think it’s equally important that parents are also doing some preparations to ensure that their child is being prepared appropriately. If not, you might be inadvertently stunting your child.?

How would a parent be impeding this? Well, primarily, it would be still treating them as a child. Examples I often see are parents still doing most of the chores and the child living like an honoured guest.?

Or the house still turning upside down every time the adult child has an assignment or exams. This might be their unreasonable demands for perfect quiet or expecting treats to get them through.

Or parents still going out of their way to drop them off or pick them up at university each day. Honestly, walk past a university in the afternoon sometimes and it looks like the ‘drop and go’ areas of schools. I’m surprised that the cars don’t have the child’s name and degree on the top left windscreen of the car.

Why is this a problem? Well firstly, your child is having the sort of experience that they will never receive again in their life. They should be learning to juggle their responsibilities of work, university, and home. If you are cushioning their life too much, it’s going to make it difficult for them when they move out and face normal living.

Also, this cushy life will make them less likely to want to leave. On the surface, that might seem like a good idea - to keep the nest populated. But research shows us that some of the most depressed adults in Australia are the ones who still live at home. This is likely because their potential as an adult is somewhat thwarted. Still living like a child and not properly growing up is likely to impact their sense of accomplishment and self-esteem.?

Parents need to give them the nudge to eventually step up. For that to happen, the home needs to be less like a resort - and parents not becoming the hired help.

What are the things you should be doing?

·??????Adult children should do as many chores as parents. i.e., If it is a two-person home – parent and adult child – then the chores need to be equally distributed between the two people.

·??????Parents have busy times at work, and children have busy times at university. But children’s times are no more special than the parents’. And the whole house doesn’t march to the beat of the child’s timetable.

·??????Adult children should be getting themselves around. If it’s convenient for parents to drop them places, children should be appreciative and reciprocating in equally considerate acts for the parents.

·??????Adult children should be thoughtful ‘flatmates’. Asking if they can have people over. Cleaning up after themselves. Letting parents know if they aren’t going to be home for dinner. Cooking dinner as often as their parents do.

So, make your home the ‘home of the real world’. You’ll be doing everyone a huge favour.

Takeaway for parents.

Got a university or working child who is still a little child-like? Have a conversation with them.

·??????Explain you’re happy for them to live at home, but you are concerned that it’s a little one-sided at this time.

·??????Tell them that the arrangement needs to work for all of you.

·??????Let them know the things you need them to do if they want to continue to live there, such as doing more chores or having a more even temper.

·??????Calmly let them know that they have a choice to follow those rules or make other arrangements.?

·??????This is not a threat. It is what needs to happen for them to be able to live there.

·??????Give them a deadline for this to happen and the expectation of them moving out if it doesn’t.

? Judith Locke

This column appeared in the?Sunday Mail?on 20.2.22. Subscribe to the Courier Mail to get access to my column every week. Find more sensible parenting advice in my book,?The Bonsai Child: Why modern parenting limits children and practical strategies to turn it around??or, my latest book,??The Bonsai Student: Why Modern parenting limits children’s potential and practical strategies to turn it around??or have me come to your school to talk to parents and teachers about enhancing child resilience and wellbeing. Contact me?here.