When Adult Children Return Home: How to Cope

“We enjoy each other’s company,” she said. Luck“We really miss her presence, but we don’t feel that empty, lonely feeling.” And her daughter, she said, “has found her independence.”

Soon, Krieger, a nutritionist and cooking show hostrealized that having the three of them living together again in a New York City apartment would require more adjustment than she thought—not just around sharing bathrooms and planning dinners, but also around changing parenting rules.

“I can’t sleep because my daughter isn’t home yet,” she admitted. Her daughter texts her updates late at night, but Krieger said, “I don’t sleep until she gets home, which is probably 2 or 3 a.m. I check every half hour and I go crazy if she doesn’t update me.”

“But I see this as my problem,” she noted.

“The biggest challenge is trying not to be critical—trying not to say, ‘Why is your room a mess? Why is my house a mess?’ It’s just more chaos,” said Roberta, who is using her first name to protect her privacy. Her two Gen Z sons, ages 23 and 25, moved back in with her and her husband after graduating from college. She also worries about them going out late at night, driving, and says her and her husband’s lack of privacy is a “nuisance,” especially when the boys have girlfriends over.

“The best thing is that I know my son is safe here,” said Elizabeth, whose son recently graduated from college and moved back home indefinitely. Luck. Elizabeth, who also used her first name for privacy, said she worries about his future. “He doesn’t seem motivated to find anything,” she said. “Plus, I don’t think he even knows what he wants.”

These mothers are not alone in balancing the ups and downs of having their children move in with them after college. About a third of young Americans aged 18 to 24, or 57%, live with their parents, up from 53% in 1993, according to a recent Pew Research surveyAnd while 45% of parents said the experience was positive, that doesn’t mean they don’t have more to learn.

“It’s a change,” Mark McConvillean Ohio-based clinical psychologist and author of Startup Failure: Why Your Twenties Are Immature…and What to Do About It, told Luck“It’s ‘You’re an adult now… and so we’re roommates now as much as anything else.’” And even with the best intentions on each side, he says, “There’s a natural regression that happens. You get upset when your 25-year-old leaves dishes in the family room, and they get upset when you remind them about their dishes in the family room.”

Adjusting to children’s return “will be different for different families,” he said. Laurence Steinbergprofessor of psychology at Temple University and author of You and your adult children. “Nobody knows what the rules are and nobody knows how to do this well.”

Partly because it’s hard to change how interactions have evolved once they’re in place. Teenager“Your kids have moved home, but they’re not going back in time to their own psychological development,” he said. “I think you have to give them independence. But it’s going to be bumpy, because no one’s really used to it.”

Here are some tips to make the transition easier.

Communicating with your adult children

“I think it’s really important to have conversations about expectations,” Steinberg says, suggesting that, for example, with dinner plans, an adult child might commit to a certain number of family dinners each week and agree to communicate if plans change.

Essentially, people have to figure out what they expect from others and then communicate it clearly.

McConville says that can require a bit of mental gymnastics. “So if you’re my 23-year-old daughter, and you’re out until 3 a.m., why is that my business? Unless it involves you driving my car and you’ve been drinking. But I would address parents: What is your business, really? It’s not about parenting. It’s about your right to comfort.”

On the issue of an adult child staying up late and it causing distress, as in Krieger’s case, he would suggest engaging with the child and explaining, “‘This is about me, not about you. I don’t know how to not be up and anxious when you stay up late. And if you would just send me a text or call me, I would be able to sleep.’ I would make an appeal to try to ask for that reciprocity from that child. To me, that’s a reasonable request.”

Change your perspective—and overcome stigma

If you’re still having trouble letting go, Steinberg suggests this: Imagine you’re dealing with a friend or even adult siblings.

“Are you going to put restrictions on what she can go out of? No, you’re not going to,” he said. “If you’re having trouble as a parent, try to imagine that this is just an older sibling or a friend who lives with you, and treat them that way,” he said, admitting that it would be “difficult” but possible.

Overall, Steinberg said, it’s helpful to understand that while adult children living with their parents isn’t the “norm” in the United States, it is in other places, including in Italy and many Asian countries. “And for reasons that aren’t really clear—maybe because the United States values ​​independence so much—it’s seen as a kind of failure… But I think as it becomes more popular, it will lose some of that stigma.”

Facing the Financial Challenge of Supporting an Adult Child

Steinberg said he often gets asked how he copes with the uncertainty of having an adult child at home. “They say, ‘How long is this going to last? I don’t have a plan to support my 35-year-old daughter,’” he said.

The inevitable follow-up question, he says, is, “‘If I’m helping to financially support my kids, does that give me the right to decide how they spend their money?’ And I don’t think so. Although I do think that if you see your kids living a lavish lifestyle on your money, it’s okay to say, ‘It seems like you don’t need as much support from us as you’re getting.’” He would stop short of monitoring credit card statements, however.

McConville says parents often ask whether they should continue to pay for their adult child’s cell phone or gym membership — and if the child is capable of working and paying for those expenses, he says, “I tell them the answer is no.” But, he adds, “to me, how you change the ground rules of your relationship is very, very important.”

One formula he suggests to parents is to first agree on a specific, reasonable date far enough in advance to make the change and have it etched in stone. “It could be, ‘Oh, you know, on September 15, you’re going to turn 21.’” There’s something about tying it to a calendar that tends to make it easier for kids to accept, he says.

“Because my theory is that there’s a voice inside that says the same thing, like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m 21 years old and I’m still playing video games.’”

When to Worry About Your Adult Child—and What to Do

It’s natural to feel a little sluggish or anxious after graduating from college. But warning signs can include a young person having trouble finding a job, “managing their life,” or taking steps to change their situation. And all of these can be signs of depression, Steinberg says.

“If my child were employed in a career-related job with income, I wouldn’t be concerned at all,” he says. “And I would consider the living arrangements to be primarily a consequence of a financial decision, in which case it’s very reasonable.” But if you feel you have reason to be concerned, he suggests, communicate it “gently” and also “make it clear that it’s due to concern, such as, ‘You haven’t seemed yourself lately. Is there something going on that you’d like to talk about?’” Consider suggesting therapy if you think your child would be more comfortable talking to someone other than a parent.

McConville believes it’s pretty obvious when a child is truly stuck. He asks parents to think of their child as a line on a graph and think about the direction of that line. Is it going up, even very slowly? Or is it going sideways? Or is it going down? For the latter, he says, “their behavior patterns are clearly unproductive—stay up late playing video games or watching YouTube until 4am and sleep until 1 or 2pm.”

To address that problem and encourage change, he suggests offering an abstract principle rather than specific advice.

“Kids don’t want to argue with abstract principles. So you don’t say, ‘You have to get a job by next Friday.’ You say, ‘If you’re going to live with us, you have to do something constructive.’ That’s a very broad category, but kids don’t argue with that because it just makes sense.” Make it clear that anything constructive—whether it’s working or taking courses or volunteering—is acceptable.

“It’s really a way to defuse a power struggle,” McConville says. “And then you have to stand up for it as a non-negotiable.”

Everything is temporary—and sometimes that’s wonderful.

In general, Steinberg says, “people feel uncomfortable having negative feelings about their children.” Plus, he says, people don’t like uncertainty.

“You know, when your kid comes home from college for the summer, come September, they’re gone. But when your kid moves back home after college because they can’t afford to buy their own place, you don’t know when that’s going to end.” And furthermore, if you think of it as something that’s not normal, “then I think it’s natural to feel like, ‘I hope that ends,’” he said.

But maybe it’s just temporary. And in the meantime, it can be great: Remember, according to to PewForty-five percent of parents—and 55% of adult children—found that living together had a positive impact on their relationship. That’s consistent with what Steinberg heard from students who moved back home with their parents during the pandemic.

“It’s not where they want to be, but it’s not as bad as they thought,” he said. “A lot of people got to know their parents as people—and that brought them closer.”

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