Reasons Why an Adult Child's Stay-at-Home Parent Might Be Concerned
My 20-year-old daughter wants to move in with us until she is finished with college. She says she will pay the bills but she is a grown adult. How do I tell her that adults leave the nest?
I am so angry with your question that I am not sure my answer will come out politely. THIS IS YOUR DAUGHTER!!! She is not just some adult and FYI. She really isn't a real adult until she is 21. That's when she can go to a bar and buy a drink. It's not a really relevant fact but it's still a fact. Since when should your kids move out when they are 18 or 21? Where did you get this ridiculous idea?
She obviously is working and probably just needs help right now. I was going to say she needs supportive parents but your question proves, that's not what you are. GROW UP!!! Your parents, BE THERE FOR HER!!!!
Answered By: Caius Nair
Just a quick correction to the question, your bird analogy is not the norm for most human families or even other apes. This concept of leaving the nest is a rather modern and exclusively Western ideal that is losing popularity even here in the West as housing troubles and the rising neglect of the elderly revealed the folly of this approach.
What are you trying to teach your child by simulating a lower-middle-class lifestyle for them (which is the best a college student can achieve)? Give them responsibilities within your own home to help simulate a good living standard as the primary caretaker of their own household. If they can take care of your home on their own, then they can surely take of their own home in the future right? How would lowering their SES help them?
If you're not careful with keeping your kids close, you will reap the benefits of their “independence" from you in a few decades when they put you in a retirement home and refuse to see you because they don't see the point of your participation in their independent lives.
You obviously love your child but realize it is always easier for them to stop loving you.
When I turned 18, that night when I went to bed about 5 minutes when and then my father came into my bedroom. He sat down beside my bed and proceeded to tell me that now that I was 18 and he no longer gets a check every month from the government for me (I live in Canada, and every parent gets money every month from the government for every child they have no matter how much money the family makes) that now, the government no longer considered me as part of the family anymore, and neither did he. I was just a guest in this house and I was not a welcomed guest either, so I had better hurry up and find a place to live. And then he walked out of my room.
So I did just that, I finished high school which only had a little over a week left, graduated, left 2 weeks later to work away from home for the entire summer, came back, found a job and got a place in a rooming house within a week. And from that point forward, that was also how I considered my father. Yes, he was my father, but I wasn’t part of his family anymore and he wasn’t part of mine. I never looked or went back and never asked for not got a single penny from that man again ever in his lifetime. Advance a few years and he is older and just can’t understand why his only son never calls, and only visited a few days a year for Christmas and maybe sometimes a day or two in the summer.
Case in point, I have 3 sisters, to which he NEVER said or did this to. In fact, my oldest sister came back to live at home 4 times between the ages of 19–25 and he took her back each time.
I am now 54 years old, my father died 24 years ago with me being over 600KM away. So if THAT is the type of situation you want to have with your daughter then go ahead. but never NEVER ask her why she doesn’t call you or come to visit .
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