<p>I don’t think we’re supposed to post links here but there was an interesting piece in the NY Times Home section today about a family whose teens were very upset that their parents were downsizing due to the economy. They didn’t think the house had enough room for them. Did anyone read this?</p>
<p>You can post links to articles and websites, but not to personal blogs (general ones are fine) or to Youtube.</p>
<p>Dke- I read the article. Whereas it’s understandable the college age and graduating high schooler felt displaced, for the kids to air their feelings in the paper may cause the family members all more grief since lots of people will criticize the kids for not pulling together. The family seems to have a lot of issues they’re working through (blended family,continuing economic stress). I respect the parents a lot for making the move to sell their house before finances get tighter and I hope the kids adjust and gain perspective.</p>
<p>Here’s the link:
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/garden/10nest.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/garden/10nest.html</a></p>
<p>I respect the parents, too, but I also think that the kids have a right to feel upset. If a reporter is invited into their house by their parents and the reporter asks how the kids feel, I think the kids have a right to not lie. Often, I get a “how dare those darned ungrateful kids be upset!” vibe from the parents’ forum, and I don’t always understand it.</p>
<p>My parents each had a lot of things that I didn’t get to have. They each got to have parents who stayed married to each other until death parted them. My grandparents each had their own modest homes that were theirs until they died or moved into retirement communities, whereas my parents divorced and had to sell our home to pay for their two-year, brimming-with-lawyers divorce. Do I think it’s unfair? Yep. Life’s unfair! That’s how it goes, and I have to accept it, but I still get to feel upset about it.</p>
<p>I realize that things change, and situations change, and that nobody can predict what their reality will be five years from now. I don’t begrudge my parents their life changes, and I don’t feel as though they ought to have made any different decisions because they’re both much happier now. I’m glad for my parents, but I at least need to acknowledge that it strongly impacted me, that I was very upset by it, and that I have feelings about it, too… And I think these kids have a right to feel upset, and to feel worried, and while I’m not sure “lied to” is a fair word choice for the situation, perhaps it’s valid to say that they felt misguided as to what their futures would hold. And they didn’t have any control over that aspect of their futures, either, which is something that is very unsettling to most people.</p>
<p>…but anyhow, I just wanted to voice the opinion that these kids probably have a right to feel whatever they’re feeling before this turned into another “gosh, those ungrateful kids!” thread… ;)</p>
<p>I, for one, do think they’re ungrateful. “We felt lied to, boohoo.” If we were talking about six year olds or elementary kids, sure, I could accept that they don’t quite grasp the situation and can only look at it from the perspective of their own wants and needs. But a nineteen and a seventeen year old should be mature enough to accept the realities of their parents’ change in situation without grousing and pouting. The twelve year old sounds like the most mature one–he is the one offering to sleep on the couch to keep his older brother happy! If the older siblings are so heartbroken, maybe they should move out and see what they can afford on their own.</p>
<p>The new house “feels like a tenement” . . . the daughter is trying to find outlets to “ease her claustrophobia” . . . Give me a break. I think someone needs to get off their drama-llama. I’m not sure if it’s the kids or the purple-prose reporter.</p>
<p>I agree that the children are being very ungrateful. I doubt it was their parents’ dream to downsize either. Sometimes hard times call for hard decisions. It may well be a good exercise for the kids to learn to live in the real world, where things don’t always go the way you want them to go. The kids were not “lied to”; they merely assumed that life would always be as they pictured it.</p>
<p>I can certainly understand them being upset. I’m sure the parents are upset, too. I just think it would be more appropriate to be upset with the situation rather than with their parents.</p>
<p>Naturally: I totally agree with you. They sound like ungrateful spoiled brats in my opinion. The only mature one of the bunch is the 12 year old offering to sleep on the couch because he wants the older sibling to be happy. </p>
<p>Have those older kids thought for one minute about the sacrifices that their parents have made to allow them to grow up living in their fantasy home (with a pool, pool table, and more) and send them off to college? Of course not. All they are interested in is how the move is going to effect their living space. </p>
<p>Those kids (except the 12 year old) need a reality check. Boo hoo—they’ll have to make due with a small bedroom and less living space. They should be grateful that they have a loving family to come home to and an opportunity for a college education. It’s time they learn about priorities.</p>
<p>Well… Here’s how I read it. The parents grabbed more than they could afford with that mega-house, and people like that sometimes overemphasize status and material things. So when the current economic times force them to downsize, the kids feel confused.</p>
<p>Interesting article. Please allow me to share my own family’s experience with “downsizing”.</p>
<p>A few years ago we moved from an affluent suburb of a very large city to a much smaller city in an unfashionable state. We did this for my career, but my wife and I also viewed this as an opportunity to slow down our pace and learn to live with less, while focusing on home life without the hassles of long commutes, high property taxes, etc.</p>
<p>Our children (now 17 and 10) were pretty much neutral about it. They weren’t eager to leave their home, but they came along in the spirit of adventure.</p>
<p>We sold our typical, suburban, 3-bedroom home near the big city and moved into a 2-bedroom apartment. This was meant to be temporary until we sold our house, but, thanks to the crashing real estate market, that took over a year. During that time, we got used to sharing a small common living area, cooking meals in a tiny kitchen, and having to take the dog out on a leash since we no longer had a back yard.</p>
<p>The most striking change is that our kids had to share a bedroom for the first time in their lives. They are seven years apart and the opposite sex, so this created all kinds of new considerations related to changing clothes, different bedtimes, different taste in music, you name it.</p>
<p>We were prepared to deal with tremendous stress; however, I’m delighted to say that we made the adjustment just fine! We decided to stay in the apartment, where we remain today, in order to keep our expenses low while my wife finishes her degree. What little strain there was has been eased by our son moving to a residential high school a little over a year after we moved, but rather than being happy to have the room all to herself, our daughter misses her brother and begs for him to come home on weekends, even though it means giving up her “single” room.</p>
<p>We do more of everything together: cooking (including grilling out on our tiny grill on our tiny porch), watching TV, reading out loud (something we never did in the big city 'burbs), and generally appreciating the forced togetherness. Even I, who grew up like an only child as the oldest by far of five kids, have learned to love this situation.</p>
<p>So downsizing is great, at least for us. There is a part of me that thinks the kids in the NYT article are whiny brats. But, now that I know what this is like, I can see that it’s not for everyone. You have to be very tolerant and very willing to have your privacy violated at every turn. (Thank goodness we have locks on the bathroom doors; it’s the only way I get any reading done.) This isn’t for everyone.</p>
<p>But a preference for living in close quarters would seem to be part of being human, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t evolution favor those who work well with friends and family being around them constantly, since that was (probably) necessary for survival back in humanity’s hunting-and-gathering days? Or is that a misapplication of Darwin?</p>
<p>I didn’t read the article but I have thought about this a lot. Two things:
- When my son was about 10 we were outside his bedroom window doing some yardwork. He asked me who lived in the house before us. I explained that a couple did and then just a single old man that stayed in the house for years alone after his kids grew up and his wife died. I told my son that his dad and I were not going to do that. Told him that when he and his sister grew up his dad and I were going to move on and make new memories for ourselves somewhere else. He was mortified. He couldn’t believe we weren’t just going to live there forever frozen in time for whenever he wanted to visit
I think a lot of kids, even young adults think that way.<br>
Second, we have done some minimal downsizing. My kids have never experienced our family being on a budget. We have worked ridiculously hard and have benefited from that all their lives. This past year I have been talking about budgeting, have begun using coupons (which I hadn’t done since I was a SAHM 18 years ago), etc.
They are not greedy but they are having a hard time grasping the fact that they can’t order on the internet with my credit card number they memorized and then just tell me about it after the fact… I know it sounds ridiculous…we don’t overemphasize status or material things (you’ll have to take my word for that) but they still are having to adjust and understand the change.
BUT they are not in any way being whiny or complaining or any of that. They do understand and they certainly understand that regardless of the economy I am not going to stay frozen in time in a big house…</p>
<p>they have shelter, food, and love. Egad, talk about brats. The parents have responsibility in this in that they raised those kids. Take that girl to a real tenement and see how she feels</p>
<p>One week after I left for college, my parents moved out of our four-bedroom house in the 'burbs where I had lived my whole life and into a two-bedroom apartment in the Big City. When I came home for Thanksgiving, I came to a place I had never laid eyes on before. My bed was the fold-out couch in the den. I remember that, at 10:30 at night, I had to ask my parents to stop watching TV so I could go to bed. </p>
<p>It was not physically comfortable, and it certainly was an emotional upheaval for me. I came home from college – a place I was trying hard, very hard, to adjust to – to a place I had never seen before. My friends were an hour and a half away and I had no way of getting to see them, unless I went for an overnight (which, at Christmas-time, I did for days on end.) </p>
<p>It was very upsetting to me, even though I had “shelter, food, and love.” I’m 60 years old, and I still remember it with resentment.</p>
<p>I’m angry that I don’t have a room in my own home anymore. My brother moved into it. I still get upset when he says “his bed,” “his room,” etc. and put up lame decorations and completely changed things around. IT’S MY ROOM. I know I don’t pay for it, but it’s one of the things that has made me feel increasingly disconnected from my family. I don’t plan on going home this summer, but rather sub-letting a friend’s house. Also, I never go home during the school year even though I’m only 45 minutes away except for the occasional dinner, because I have a comfortable bed back at school. I don’t like being a nomad in my own home. </p>
<p>This is just sentiment though. I appreciate shelter during the summer, food, etc. but it was so weird coming home where I didn’t have a room anymore. It just sits weird. The kids in the article might be dramatic, but having a consistent house then taking it away while you aren’t there takes away from a sense of normalcy. My whole family felt this way when our grandparents moved out of their home of nearly 30 years to move across the country to a retirement home, because that was something we were used to always being there.</p>
<p>On the other hand, my parents were considering a move from our home in the middle of Nowheresville, FL to a coastal town, and I strongly supported that, not only because I hated the town we moved to for my HS, but because I wanted to be close to the beach. The house was going to be of similar size with a pool. It didn’t work out though.</p>
<p>I don’t think the kids are brats. They were asked how it felt, and they described their thoughts and feelings. Guess they should monitor those reactions better. Or lie. I thank Aibarr for trying to temper reactions here, for what it’s worth.</p>
<p>For us–we have always taken “how it feels” into consideration for our kids. We didn’t move to a “better” neighborhood when they were young, because they were happy here. Perhaps they paid the price in not going to “better” schools, but they survived. I remembered how I hated changing schools, and did not subject them to that.</p>
<p>That being said, my kids know that we are not going to keep the house they grew up in much longer. But they are 26 and 23, not teenagers. And they, fortunately, have time to adjust. We bought the house we intend to grow old in two years ago. If we can find jobs where it’s located, we’d sell the old house immediately. But as it stands, we spend every spare moment there. My kids know we’re not “home” on the weekends; we’re down the shore. Luckily, “down the shore” is near the place they grew up going to on vacations, so they can see the upside.</p>
<p>But I’d never discount the feelings of home being uprooted. As for the family in the article; keep in mind the younger son is living with both parents. the older kids are the ones who went through divorce and the loss of the home they grew up in. I don’t think it’s fair to compare reactions.</p>
<p>The younger son (the 12 year old) won’t get to live his teenage years in the kids’ fantasy house with pool, kids’ living room, etc. that his older siblings did. Plus he slept on a couch all summer because his college aged brother whined so much about sharing a room. His older brother didn’t seem very concerned about that.</p>
<p>I can only go by what was in the article, but I felt the article portrayed the teens as spoiled brats.</p>
<p>"They had expanded the ranch house they bought in 2001, turning it into a 3,000-square-foot home with room indoors for games like pool, table tennis and Foosball, making it a prime sleepover destination. “The master bedroom was on the first floor,” Mr. Evans said. “There were three bedrooms and a second family room upstairs. The kids had 1,200 square feet to themselves.”</p>
<p>But then in mid-June, the moving van arrived, and the Evanses left behind their own personal vacation land and squeezed uncomfortably into a 1,200-square-foot rental, while they began building a marginally bigger home. The couple had decided that with the economy uncertain, they had to conserve money and live more modestly.</p>
<p>Leaving the home they once believed would be theirs into retirement was a painful decision, one many baby boomer families are facing. It’s an issue that especially resonates in suburbia, where highly taxed, stressed-out parents wrestle with the prospect of moving sooner than they had planned. But children can be uncomfortable with decisions that change their notions of security, and their unhappiness forces parents to consider what they do — or don’t — owe their offspring.</p>
<p>In the Evans household, the oldest child was upset about the change, even though he is a college student at the University of Central Florida. “We always believed that was going to be the place we would come back to with our own kids for Christmas and Thanksgiving,” said Andrew Inman, 19, who, along with his sister, Brittany, 17, is Mrs. Evans’s child from a previous marriage. “We kind of felt lied to.”"</p>
<p>I’ve always thought it was ridiculous that so many people our age and older are continuing to live in large homes after their kids grew up and left. Seems like a waste of money. </p>
<p>I think that many of us managed to have nice visits with grandparents who lived in 1,200 square foot or even smaller homes. The idea of a family visit is to visit family, not visit a resort.</p>
<p>H’s parents downsized to about 1,000 square feet after they retired, and our kids still had a nice time with them. We weren’t going there expecting luxury. We were going there to see relatives.</p>
<p>How about interviewing some kids whose families lost their house to foreclosure? I am sure there are plenty around. We were very very lucky to have moved after 2nd son graduated from high school minimizing his disruption and letting him go through his entire schooling in one town. Then we downsized economically (only marginally in square footage) and avoided financial ruin in the process.</p>
<p>the quote that kind of stuck in my craw was, “We kind of felt lied to.”
What’s that book? Nobody promised you a rose garden ?</p>
<p>Thanks, garland. I tried…</p>
<p>It’s very, very difficult to face a situation where you have to abandon the sense of home that you’ve come to know. When you couple a move or any major life change with a return from a foreign environment like college, that’s something that would put most adults in a tailspin. It’s traumatic, it’s what they’re feeling, and that’s something that they have to deal with. It’s real, and it can’t be discounted.</p>
<p>Pouting and temper tantrums shouldn’t be put up with, of course. But to have strangers on the internet condemn these kids (particularly the ones who aren’t throwing tantrums, but who are just expressing a feeling of confusion or anger, or who are upset when they’re told the initial news… who says that the college kid wasn’t grateful that his younger brother slept on the couch so that his older brother could have some private space?) for what they’re feeling… I don’t feel like that’s right. I kind of feel like anybody who’s been in that situation understands that feeling of baselessness, of being untethered and not having a real “home”… and I wouldn’t want to blast anybody for feeling hurt or upset or surprised by that situation. Particularly a teenaged kid, who hasn’t matured yet or found their certain footing in the real world.</p>
<p>Sure, nobody promised you a rose garden (or maybe some of them <em>were</em> promised a rose garden… How many times did my mom and dad swear to me that they’d never get a divorce just to assuage my childhood worries? Real life sure does stink sometimes!), but don’t these kids at least have a right to be surprised by the harshness of reality? They’re transitioning from childhood to adulthood. I think surprise and upset at how things really turn out is kind of the name of the game of adolescence. Aren’t they allowed a period of shock? Aren’t they allowed to admit that without being called out as ungrateful brats?</p>
<p>(I <em>am</em> playing devil’s advocate, to a certain extent. I do think some of them were being unreasonably bratty, but I don’t think it’s right to refuse to consider their point of view. These are tough times for the parents, but the kids shouldn’t be expected to tap dance and sing “Put On a Happy Face” in order to cheer up their parents, either… Bottling up that sort of upset isn’t healthy, just the same as being a little snot-rag isn’t healthy.)</p>
<p>NJres, I wondered the same thing. Why are we hearing from children who had 1200sq ft of living space to themselves and are now pouting that are they forced to living cheek to jowl in homes that are still larger than the average home in the US. </p>
<p>I’d love for these “children” (some are actually adults) to speak with children whose homes were foreclosed on or who were evicted. Heck, I can arrange for them to speak with my own kid who has moved six times in 17 years as the child of an active duty military member.</p>
<p>My jaw just kept dropping. If I had an 18 year old child who was whining about sharing a room with his 12 year old brother, yes, one of them would have spent the summer on the couch but not the same one as in the article. </p>
<p>I could go on and on. When you teach children to value things, they get angry when things are taken away. Too bad they didn’t teach them to value each other.</p>
<p>I thnk the parents very good naturedly took on more than they probably needed for the kids’ sake (pool, pool table, paved hoops,etc.) but unfortunately it does seem to show in these kids’ attitudes. After all, they should be leaving the nest pretty soon, anyway, IMHO. I do remember my roommate (post college) complaining that her parents (well-off people) sold their big place in the Boston area and bought a small condo in Florida. She used to say that there was no place to stay on holidays with two other sibs, spouses,etc. and she took it that she didn’t feel welcomed anymore.</p>