Is it normal to have had enough of parenting kids 18+

[Mamabear2424]

I am exhausted and drained parenting teens and young adults, is it normal to feel totally like 'im done'?? Of course will always be there for them no matter what but i feel i want time for me now, time to think about me a but more. Am I being unreasonable and can other parents understand ??

I'm totally fucked off with it. I work full time then extra jobs to help with the cost of living. Meanwhile my eldest has just finished college and the youngest school and I'm the only fucker that does anything around the house. If I don't cook they eat junk food. It doesn't occur to them to run the vacuum over the house nor empty the dishwasher. I don't do their laundry though so that's one thing.
I cook around twice a week so I'm not waiting on them but it annoys me that they make such poor dietary choices and are too lazy to learn to cook.

Mine are still young teens so I'm not at this stage but I remember my Mum saying by the time my youngest sibling (I'm the eldest of 4) was a teenager Mum was fed up of parenting. She was also caring for my grandfather by this point, was going through the menopause, and was back at work (she was a SAHM when I was at home). So I think a lot of things happen about 50 that makes you want to be done with parenting.

Figure out what the main things that take up the most of your time are/things that exhaust you the most and push them back on to your children. For example, they need to learn to drive or get the bus/use taxis more. They need to cook once a week for the family. They’re responsible for cleaning their own rooms, bathrooms, changing their own bedding, sorting out any appointments they need to attend.
You must do this for yourself and also for them. They won’t be self-sufficient well adjusted adults and will struggle to function if you don’t force them to do these things!

I've always loved having my kids around, and hated it any time they went away. The elder two did move out for a few years. All three kids are living at home now for various reasons. One is in a FT, permanent professional career, and pays a token amount, and moans constantly about it, seems to think they're thus entitled to maid service. This was agreed to enable them to save for a house.

Despite two of them not contributing a bean, they have to be nagged to do anything, and even then it's very small tasks. They're hanging round my house, watching my TV, lounging on my sofa, leaving their mess at their arses, and I'm tired. The amount of fucking takeaways they get does my head in!! Supposed all of them to be saving money...

There's the lifts, the career/work crises, the fact that I clearly don't have a scooby what I am talking about...

I adore them but I am now finding it hard to live with them.

But I think that’s a hit of a red herring. When age of majority was 21 you were still allowed to drive, get married, leave school, work, have kids, join the army etc younger than that. The age of starting work has increased from 14 to pretty much 21 within 100 years. Yes younger people tend to be more reckless and impulsive than older people ( and actually we should let them because it does have benefits to society as a whole) but that doesn’t mean they’re complete incompetents who can’t deal with adult decisions.

So as an example in my early twenties I was responsible enough to hold down a professional job, pass professional exams, pay the rent and bills ( basically the important stuff that I was old enough to realise I had to prioritise or bad things would happen). But also I was hungover a lot, had fuckwit boyfriends, a cavalier regard for my personal safety ( minesweeping mainly) and had to avoid the bank manager the last week of every month, so I was still a bit immature but overall I adulted just fine with no parental input. Made mistakes, learned from them.

This, exactly.

I was pretty much left to my own devices from 12 onwards and vowed to be a better parent to my own, meaning much more involved with their lives.
However my mum stepped up when I was 37 and struggling with a baby and PND. Then again when I was 60 and going through cancer treatment. I don't think you can ever "sign off" as a parent.

You're buying your adult child food and bragging about how independent he is?

As a student I'm legally required to provide some assistance to him until he graduates.

Yeah, i would really like everyone to just move out now. Been doing this too long

If we felt about our young adult kids the way we did when they were 18 months not 18 years, it would be hell! Thank god for instincts I say.

This is so true, and it's scary how many adult children are still supervised/mollycoddled by their parents these days. They need to be free to make mistakes and mess things up, just like we all did. For a start off, OP, just stop "reminding them" about stuff!

I dream of time alone as hb and I both retired from a business we ran jointly and all I can say to what I presume is most of you - just wait till the love of your life is at home every day, you'll want to kill him

@Nowaysunshine This reminded me of a character in a TV series I was watching recently. Her H was about to retire and she was worrying about it - something along the lines of she could only love him for an hour and 48 minutes a day so didn't know what she was going to do!

Oh YES totally, listening to my lovely 17 yr old DD talking about a gap year before uni......Undergrad then post grad...no plan as to who will fund all this..
meanwhile
I am working in my own business long hours, looking after my live in elderly parents one with Dementia, ferrying long school runs for two teens in their preferred schools, at 53 it is exhausting...l am not looking forward to funding years of study, as l feel done and want to slow down.
Luckily they are polite and respectful, help out quite a bit..( though not enough!) jump in when there is a crisis with GPs.

At a year older than DD. (18) l was working after completing two years at College and holding down a part time job, paying a small contribution to my parents.
Paying for my own car....and left at 19 to travel the world, no contribution expected or given by parents, and my friends were the same....
We just got on with the ups and downs, learnt hard lessons...now on MN there is uproar if you dare suggest an 18 year old should stand on their own feet!

For me the Menopause was a tremendous shift in attitude, l was simply done with looking after others...

I totally agree you never 'sign off ' as a parent of course and I never would, but this post has shown me that many others feel the same, and it makes me feel better, i am not alone , i am not a horrible selfish parent, i have given myself and more for over 20 years and yes , peri menopause is there and maybe that plays a part? thank you mumsnetters, team parents wanting to be free ! (but still love their adult kids.......)

Yep

Enough said

I did run away, well tried to (moved in with my dp, left them the nice family home) and they followed me! Acquired a step daughter too whose moved in

I love them all but I'm done with parenting especially getting people up for work, university etc when they have phones and alexas!

Mine are 20&23 both living at home, both in uni and I'm done.
Sick of food shopping, cooking and clearing up. They are able to do all these things but never to how I want it.
I want to come in to clean tidy house as I've left it when I went out!

Oh yes! The waking up part. Why do I have to wake up young adults? Before anyone says let them face natural consequences unfortunately I get to suffer those consequences too if they don't get up. I forgot my son was back in college the other week so didn't wake him up. That meant me having to drive him at rush hour for a test which was essential to him completing college.

I know my mum was absolutely over it by the time we late teens. We were allowed in the house but had to fend for ourselves. Including contributing money.
Except for the youngest, who she would take care of to this day.
Youngest is 30.
I've wondered if this was a multiple children thing?

Yeah I can relate to this, dd is 17yo and I'm really running out of steam, the last few years have been difficult with various teen difficulties.

I swing between feeling bereft that she is nearly an adult and ecstatic that she's nearly an adult 🥴

Most people on this thread seem to have forgotten about the pandemic?

I was an early 60s child, very independent.

I didn’t have to cope with 16 months stuck in an attic because of a CEV parent trying to study for my A levels with very little support from Sixth Form College, though.
If your children are 17-20 atm, there’s a good reason why they need more support than you did at the same age. Give them a break.

Oh totally understand this! Sometimes you do feel like you having “nothing left” to give. (My youngest is going through assessment atm.)

Also, I do think your experience of parenting as a woman is massively influenced by how supportive or not your dh/partner is.

My oldest is 18.5yo and it's so hard, harder than I thought it would be.
I feel like everything I do is wrong and I blame the internet for that.

When my parents were raising us they just did what they felt was right and got on with it, there was no parenting forums etc to ask these questions to, just their friends.
But for us now, I think I'll apply a bit of tough love then will read how damaging that can be for kids, so I might try to be more helpful/involved but that's not teaching them to be independent and I wind up confused and not knowing the best way to go about things.

Classic - my son works 15 hours a week and has dropped out of sixth form. he explained that working meant he was too tired to mow the lawn. I pointed out that I work 40 hours a week and do everything else as well. I could see his brain go 'oh-erm-yeah'. He mowed the lawn.

God I hear you mothers! I'm DONE! I have my youngest boomerang back with me aged 23. She's never gonna leave, she going to come back from Greece for whenever she goes in one of her haunts and I'll have moved out to a studio flat because (did I mention?) I'm DONE!!!!
Been a single working mother too, some people commenting on here have clearly never had to do that so to the rest of us... may we get our freedom soon. Cheers from my imaginary new life in the hills of southern Italy...