Pushing DC to leave home

[Mariearistocat]

Have name changed for this as looking at previous threads I am very much in the minority for my opinion.

I don’t understand this obsession with getting DC out of your house as quickly as possible. There seems to be some MN obsession that as soon as DC turn 18 they need to be looking for somewhere else to stay. I only ever see it on here, never in real life. The amount of responses i see on threads here about giving deadlines to make your DC move out.

Leave laundry on the floor. Chuck them out. Don’t wash their plate after dinner. Chuck the out. Spent money on what is deemed a frivolous item. Chuck them out. What happened to just having conversations with them and setting rules and boundaries and making sure that they are respected.

I don’t know if it’s a competition on how well someone child’s doing that they have moved out. I could never imagine asking my children to move out. They are late teens, paying rent and each have their own jobs to do and I have no issue with this continuing for however long they wished to stay here. This is their home too.

Am I the only one?

I'm probably in the minority here but I never want my DC to leave 😂 they can stay here for as long as they like it's their home. I will charge rent when they finish full time education just to teach them about budgeting etc but I will be secretly stashing it all away into savings accounts so they have a little nest egg when they do eventually fly the nest and if something goes wrong like it often does in life then they can come back, my door is always open. It's mine and their fathers job to take care of them, always.

I’d want mine to stay with me forever if it was possible. Couldn’t bear the thought of nor having them in the house

@FloraButterCookie

I’d want mine to stay with me forever if it was possible. Couldn’t bear the thought of nor having them in the house

Don't you want them to experience independence? If they could afford why wouldn't you want your own children to stand on their feet and live their lives?

I wouldn't kick my children out but I hope when mine are in their 20s they can afford to live independently and be able to fully enjoy that time of their lives.

It almost feels that youngsters nowadays are missing a whole stage of life if they're going straight from their parents into a mortgage.

It almost feels that youngsters nowadays are missing a whole stage of life if they're going straight from their parents into a mortgage.

Correct. They're missing the shitty stage of life. My memories of this stage involve living in damp and mice infested flats, and paying a fortune for the privilege because that's all I could afford. And I won't even go into the nightmare flatmate I had. Would of happily skipped this stage if given the opportunity.

I think people sometimes get fed up with young adult children taking the p**s and of course, boundaries should be set and conversations had. It's not easy from a financial point of view to live so independently as it was even twenty years ago and many are stuck at home with parents longer whether they want to be or not. There has to be give and take, mutual respect. People moan on here when respect goes out the window.

I love the idea of my kids affirmatively wanting to stay here as they get older, but I agree that there will be limits. My parents' NDN still have their youngest child living with them, and she has become so dependent on them that they drive her to/from work and cook all of her meals (including her breakfast.) The "child" is 48 years old.

Correct. They're missing the shitty stage of life. My memories of this stage involve living in damp and mice infested flats, and paying a fortune for the privilege because that's all I could afford. And I won't even go into the nightmare flatmate I had. Would of happily skipped this stage if given the opportunity.

But what about the part in life where you're forming long-term relationships and sharing your first flat together? Admittedly based on purely anecdotal evidence, I do feel that young adults who have lived at home throughout their 20s and early 30s are much less equipped for independent "adult" life and in some cases don't make as good life partners. Because they haven't had that experience of living independently, being responsible for the bills and cleaning and looking after "their" place. And struggling through the "shitty stage of life" is quite good preparation for having children later on !

I'm currently in that shitty stage of life, @MessAllOver. I absolutely wish I had a safe and comfortable home that I could have stayed in, rather than moving out at 16 into a shit-hole flat where my drug dealer neighbour upstairs had his door battered in and people snuck into my garden to peer through my windows. I could have learned how to cook spaghetti or open a bank account in the comfort of a family home, if I had had supportive and non-abusive parents.

I don't have children yet as I'm trying not to bring them into the world while I'm in this shitty stage of life, but I'd let them stay in my house for as long as they wanted or needed to and teach them independence through other methods. To a certain extent it's easy to glamorise certain stages of your life when you're looking back on them, but I don't think suffering for your independence helps you grow, I've found it personally regressive. So, if my kids wanted to live with me until we're all old and grey I'd be quite happy with that.

(Anyway, apologies - not a rant at you of course! I've just found quite a few people who sort of absently miss "the shitty stage" and it gets under my skin somewhat though I acknowledge this probably isn't you!)

@berrygirlie. I don't miss the shitty stage of life...I remember in particular a flatmate with a drug problem and a mouse infestation which our landlord refused to deal with. And it doesn't sound as if where you are is particularly safe . I would never force my children to move out to somewhere unsafe.

But I do think having to live independently and budget for commercial rents helps you to grow up in a way which it's difficult to replicate if you stay at home. For one thing, it helps you transition from being "cared for" to caring for others, which is vital for a healthy adult relationship. I was a lazy teen who never really helped and I remember my mother's amazement when I was visiting a few years later when I cleaned the kitchen, hoovered the house and helped to strip the beds without being asked... Being responsible for my own place had made me much more aware of the minimum needed to run a house and how tiring it was for one person to be responsible for that (DF fairly useless). I now can't see her bustling about when we visit without offering to help.

I would be happy for my DC to live at home as young adults if they want, although I would like to see them strike out independently at some point!
Once past eduction, I would also expect them to contribute to the household via chores, a bit of cooking and yes, rent if they have a decent job.

I understand and I agree with you that there are some certain points of living independently that make you a more empathetic and helpful person @MessAllOver. I wouldn't disagree with that at all.

But I also think that there does need to be a line drawn between letting your child become complacent in their security in your house, and pushing them out into whatever circumstance is available so that they can learn on their feet. I don't think there's any age for that middle ground to apply to a general population and so for that reason I think there shouldn't be any stigma attached to staying home until whatever age is appropriate for the individual. The period of growth between adolescence and adulthood is already a painful and difficult route, and so I think there should be empathy for people who need to take a little time and retain some dependence to keep themselves safe and sane.

Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox! I'm in a much nicer flat now (though still surrounded by drug dealers it seems) and I've been fortunate enough to have a partner to offer some dependence from the family I didn't have, but I think true independence comes from the desire to be independent. Not from getting kicked out, or parental pressure. I would never subject my children to being forced to live in dangerous neighbourhoods or being -£800 in overdraft every month just so I could say "well, at least they're independent!"

(sorry another rant. I'm more fired up about this than I had realised! )

@berrygirlie. I hope things continue to improve. Fwiw, my parents wouldn't have kicked me out in those circumstances. They live rurally so the reality was that we all had to leave to find work, so not the same resentment there.

@MitziK

I knew I was on borrowed time from the age of 10.

Got to 16 and the panic started. She was making noises about changing the locks and, in any case, she'd been married with a baby by 17 so why I was expecting to be kept through college when I should have got a job.

Got to 19 and it was relentless. So I found the one way I'd be able to move out (one way because she took all but my bus fare to work to make it more uncomfortable for me).

DD was born 10 months later.

I get you, @MessAllOver (sorry if it's coming across very ranty!). I'm just trying to offer a bit of experience because it was very hard, and it's sometimes difficult to see how hard things can be when you've not lived them- general "you" not you specifically! I'm a bitter young crone though, so what do I know?

@Eng123

I hope I would never ask my children to leave. As for saying 25 years at an absolute maximum! Why have children at all? They leave when they are settled enough.

Absolutely this.

Depends. 17-24 working/studying, behaving like a young adult, respectful etc, no issues.
24-32 - not even looking for work, acting like a mardy teen....clear off.
42 - cannot use the washing machine, earning 32K a year, giving parents £200 a month, fuck right off (I worked with this woman).
I’ll be encouraging DD to live independently from her early/mid 20s if still at home, why? Because it’s a life experience I want her to have.

My 3 all live at home and as I type this, the 20 and 21 year old have been up all night gaming despite having lectures in the morning!

I am in no rush to move them out, but often annoyed how loud they are!

I think kids today are missing out on the crap that actually builds resilience, whether you like it or not.

Resilience doesnt come from being supported, although support is so essential to have.

Because one day, your parents wont be around to look after you emotionally. So resilience is important.

The way you develop resilience is from finding yourself in less than ideal circumstances, pulling through it, and realising you have the inner resources and nouce to get through them.

So not being able to pay the rent, and having to sell some stuff, or find emergency shift work, or negotiate with your landlord, or take in the responsibility of borrowing money from a friend. Later in life, if you find yourself in more serious financial difficulty, you will know you can get through it - because you have done before.

Alongside resilience, it's also important to learn about doing without. Theres definitely a difference between me and my sister, who left home to go to university, and my brother, who stayed home until 25.

Its dumb small things, like hes never had to use shitty shampoo, because mum bought the shampoo, and it was always naice. Hes never had to come home drunk and realise theres fuck all to eat in the house. Hes never had to walk home for an hour at night because his bank card got rejected - he can just call a taxi and use some of mums money to pay at the other end.

And why should he? Why should he needlessly experience those things? Well, because it's about again developing a type of resilience, and also developing a sense of empathy. I think this is especially important for middle class kids. It would be insulting to suggest the things I listed above are in any way equivalent to the daily struggles of being homeless, or of being severely down on your luck. They're transitory. But put back to back over the early adult years, they do create a very real practical experience of what it means to not have the things you want, and to be uncomfortable.

My brother is a lovely guy, but he also has the faintest sense of entitlement to him.

I think if you go from being 25 and living at home to being catapulted into your own home with a mortgage and some bare comforts, you have missed out on learning physical and mental coping techniques in such small ways that they sound ridiculous written down.

What those people do when they reach their 40s and life suddenly falls apart, they cant pay their mortgage and their parents die... I dont know.

@GalaxyCookieCrumble

My 3 all live at home and as I type this, the 20 and 21 year old have been up all night gaming despite having lectures in the morning!

I am in no rush to move them out, but often annoyed how loud they are!

What happens when they have work to go to? Will they pull a sickie because they’re living at home and it’s alright because their parents are paying all the bills anyway? Are you kept awake by grown adults playing X Box all night??

You say "kids today", @CrotchBurn, can I ask why you think it's specifically the younger generation that avoid independence? (sounds accusatory but genuine question)

My children are 4yo and newborn. DS1 asked the other day why people don't live with their mummy's and daddy's when they're grown up, he seemed upset by it. I told him he can always live with me if he wants to and I meant it- ask me again when he's 40 though

@berrygirlie just think looking around me it is a generational thing. People who are in their 30s now seem to have, on the whole, done the classic leaving home at 18 thing. It seems to be that the people who are in their 20s now are where the shift towards staying home happened. So from my perspective it's definitely a "kids today" thing.

I do understand why it happens though - house prices are largely to blame.

@CrotchBurn I guess being of the younger generation, I can't comment on how things used to be. I suppose there has probably been a shift towards staying in your family home until a later age, but I don't know how much of it is voluntary. With the difficulties of getting on the property ladder and the fact that it's not easy to support multiple people on one income anymore, I think it makes sense from a financial perspective to stay home as long as possible. If I had the capacity to I would have stayed home longer, and I'm willing to acknowledge that my own potential children will have an even tougher time than my generation when it comes to moving out

(though as a personal anecdote, the vast majority of people who I knew from school are currently in university residentials, though I'm not sure if you would consider that "moving out" technically?)

Mine can stay as long as they need to, I would expect them to move out when they can financially do so comfortably and when they are mature enough. I will charge then board if they'd Tay at home for a while after getting a full time job but hope to be happy to put it away to give back to them towards house deposit or whatever