Grown ups growing up together
Living with one’s adult children is tough territory. Period. The two comments that were posted to our blog arguing that kids can stay home (Kids CAN live at home: it’s not a mocking matter!) take interesting, yet opposite views. We want to first talk about the view of James, who speaks as a parent and developmental psychologist and the cultural preferences of American and British families to banish their children from their homes in order to “grow up” rather than do the emotional and difficult work of both modeling and offering support through the inevitable mistakes and set backs of young adulthood while living with their adult children.
From my own experience, leaving home feeling the heels of my parents feet on my backside, I dared not ask for support in any way. I was now a “grown up”, an “adult”, who had internalized the expected self-reliance. Yet, feeling insecure and at times in need of parental support, I dared not ask for or rely upon it.
As a mother, I knew early on that I wanted a different type of relationship with my child than I had experienced with my own parents. Over time, I had to build a relationship based on honesty, compassion, and trust, which evolved into being an open and fluid relationship where support could be offered and accepted. Some adult children are raised to leave home, I wanted my child to experience me as a source of support to draw upon if and when necessary from his perspective.
What I’ve learned over the past two decades as a parent who has a close and communicative relationship is to accept that there are limits to the help that I can offer and what I am able to do. It’s hard to go through the slow process of learning to disengage, while still loving our adult children as they make their own choices and suffer the consequences of those choices without our intervention. If my child had simply left the home at age 18, I would have missed a number of difficult years of learning to recognize the need to limit my input and expectations of myself, child and our relationship. I may have also missed a stage of parenting that taught me the limits of love, the complexities of supporting while letting go, and shifting into a relationship that honours the adult in both parent and child.
The position that children need to leave home to grow up simplifies what strikes Jacque and I as a lifelong learning and developmental process that at it’s initial stages benefits from parental support. The kids can learn with the support of having a safe space/ place to come back to.
Parents are forced to learn, to help and yet to pull back from the intensive commitment and work of raising young children. Both parent and child are negotiating their own autonomy as individuals within a family and the larger world as they live together. Each party is also learning the sophisticated lessons of love in difficult relationships.
The consequences of offering a safe home have yet to be revealed. We think we’ve made good choices and that we’ve secured a built in network connecting ourselves to our children and our children to us as we all grow forward. We’re imagining this family and living arrangement is healthy and helpful. Being a family is complicated and asking kids to leave when they’re 18 is an oversimplification.
From my own experience, leaving home feeling the heels of my parents feet on my backside, I dared not ask for support in any way. I was now a “grown up”, an “adult”, who had internalized the expected self-reliance. Yet, feeling insecure and at times in need of parental support, I dared not ask for or rely upon it.
As a mother, I knew early on that I wanted a different type of relationship with my child than I had experienced with my own parents. Over time, I had to build a relationship based on honesty, compassion, and trust, which evolved into being an open and fluid relationship where support could be offered and accepted. Some adult children are raised to leave home, I wanted my child to experience me as a source of support to draw upon if and when necessary from his perspective.
What I’ve learned over the past two decades as a parent who has a close and communicative relationship is to accept that there are limits to the help that I can offer and what I am able to do. It’s hard to go through the slow process of learning to disengage, while still loving our adult children as they make their own choices and suffer the consequences of those choices without our intervention. If my child had simply left the home at age 18, I would have missed a number of difficult years of learning to recognize the need to limit my input and expectations of myself, child and our relationship. I may have also missed a stage of parenting that taught me the limits of love, the complexities of supporting while letting go, and shifting into a relationship that honours the adult in both parent and child.
The position that children need to leave home to grow up simplifies what strikes Jacque and I as a lifelong learning and developmental process that at it’s initial stages benefits from parental support. The kids can learn with the support of having a safe space/ place to come back to.
Parents are forced to learn, to help and yet to pull back from the intensive commitment and work of raising young children. Both parent and child are negotiating their own autonomy as individuals within a family and the larger world as they live together. Each party is also learning the sophisticated lessons of love in difficult relationships.
The consequences of offering a safe home have yet to be revealed. We think we’ve made good choices and that we’ve secured a built in network connecting ourselves to our children and our children to us as we all grow forward. We’re imagining this family and living arrangement is healthy and helpful. Being a family is complicated and asking kids to leave when they’re 18 is an oversimplification.
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