<p>In several current threads, I have noticed that views seem to differ on when the household in which a child grew up is no longer that child’s home. Some people seem to view the child as a guest (meaning that the child can be asked to leave at any time) from the moment he or she turns 18, while others consider the parents’ home to be the child’s home even after college graduation.</p>
<p>What is your view? In your family, when is the parents’ home no longer the child’s home?</p>
<p>In my family, it’s when the child has a permanent home elsewhere. Living at school does not count, even if it’s a year-round apartment.</p>
<p>Simply…when they have their own home.</p>
<p>I’ve always liked the saying " Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in" (Robert Frost). So I would imagine that my sons would always have a “home” with us. But in reality, they are expected to make their own home asap after college graduation and getting that first job. Oldest son – check! He considers his San Fran apartment his home now, although we do expect him to visit us in the old homestead occasionally.</p>
<p>For us, I guess our home will be the kids’ home until they enter into their own leases/mortages.</p>
<p>I asked because in my experience, this is a topic where theory and practice often differ.</p>
<p>My father adamantly believed that grown children are always welcome in their parents’ home. Yet he downsized to a home too small to accommodate both of his grown children less than a year after his older child graduated from college. </p>
<p>My husband, on the other hand, adamantly believes that grown children should live on their own starting at college graduation. Yet one of our children had a three-month gap between the end of college and the beginning of graduate school and the other has a six-week gap between the end of college and the beginning of a job. In practice, my husband did not object to either of them staying with us for as long as they needed/wanted during these transition periods (and in fact, as each of them finalized their plans, it turned out that they needed to stay with us for less than the full transition period). </p>
<p>And I suspect that both kids started to feel that their parents’ house was less and less “home” from the moment they got 12-month leases on off-campus apartments, even though they were still undergraduates at the time.</p>
<p>archiemom: I’m envious! </p>
<p>In answer to the question, our home seems like it will always be our children’s home, but I’m not encouraging it. For oldest son, who still doesn’t have a full time job, he’ll be here for a long time. This year has been a difficult one for him, but he needs to have our financial and emotional support. </p>
<p>For my other two (who are still in college), I’m trying to get them to mature a little faster. I told one of my kids this weekend that if he’s going to be miserable at home, he can move out and be miserable somewhere else, thank you very much. I think that started to help him realize that not only does he have to be here, but also that he needs to apprciate what he’s got when he is.</p>
<p>When is your home no longer your child’s home?</p>
<p>When I move to a place where they have never lived.
But if they need to, they can move in there, too.</p>
<p>+1 mominva!</p>
<p>Well, our son has been living with us for over a year. It will be a happy day for all of us when he moves to his own apartment mid-July. I don’t know what would have happened to him had he not lived with us but it has been trying at times. Like limabeansson, our son needed our financial and emotional support. I honestly wondered if this day would ever come. </p>
<p>I never felt that once the children were 18 they needed to be on their own or once they graduated they needed to establish their own household. D has a 12 month lease and worked in her college town last summer and is again this summer, so she feels that she comes home to “visit”. I doubt that she will ever live at “home” again other than at breaks. </p>
<p>It can be very stressful to have your adult children live with you! I hope I never have to live with them in my later years.</p>
<p>As long as I live here, she will have a “home” here. I am in my 50s and I still call the home I grew up in “home” so I have two.</p>
<p>While my children each have their own home in another city, this will always be home for them. My son actually owns his home where he is in medical school, but comes to visit often enough. My daughter lives 12 hours away, working full time and has her own apartment; she doesn’t get to visit as often, but she will always have a place here. Both of their bedrooms almost look like they still live here, as there are childhood things in their rooms that they didn’t take with them. If I put it all away, the rooms would look deserted! </p>
<p>So to answer your question, pretty much the same as mominva above; my kids will be welcome home with us whenever needed. Actually, if they become lazy, good for nothing adults, I would not feed into that and allow them to live on my dime, but I don’t see my children never trying their best to provide for themselves, so hopefully that would never be an issue.</p>
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<p>In some instances, this can also happen if the parent marries someone with whom the child has never lived.</p>
<p>My husband’s parents divorced while he was in college, and then each of them remarried. A room was available for my future husband’s use in his father’s home during college breaks, but he felt like a guest there because his father’s new wife was a stranger. That household was never his home, and he spent as little time there as possible.</p>
<p>My home, wherever it is, will always be home to my daughter, but she is expected to have her own home when she is graduated from college and has a job. Believe me, she doesnt want to be here in the lazy suburbs, anymore than I want her to be. She is just as anxious about not living home with easch passing college year. She always considers where she is living, be at school or now her off campus apartment, home.</p>
<p>Putting the shoe on the other foot, when you were growing up, when did you feel that the place you were living at was your home and that your home was not your parents’ home? For me, it was when I got my first apartment after I graduated from college and got a job. The concept of the physical “home” moved away from my folks’ house.</p>
<p>But “home” is also an ethereal concept…as in, “I’m going home for Christmas.” I still say that…</p>
<p>Our homes are always open to our kids. My wife had the same arrangement with her parent/sister and I’ve always been welcome in my mother’s home. One of my siblings has the same arrangement with her daughter who recently graduated from college. Another sibling has this arrangement with their son (he’s 22) but they are paying for him to stay at a shared apartment with other students while he takes courses.</p>
<p>Our ethnic tradition is on familial support more-so than independence.</p>
<p>“I” don’t have a home. “We” have a family home. So, since they will always be a part of our family, my kids will always have a home with me. </p>
<p>Several years ago, we were moving to Italy for an extended period. My husband and kids moved about six months ahead of me, leaving me with the house, the furniture, the cats, everything that makes up our physical home. It was the saddest time of my life. I felt adrift. When I got off the plane in Pisa and the three of them were standing there grinning at me I knew I was home. I want that for my kids.</p>
<p>Our son has been away at schools for last 6 years. Three different schools, 4 different dorms and 2 different apartments.<br>
He is now back here, in the house he was born into and grew up in. It is definately HOME for him.</p>
<p>We are enjoying having him around, he is mostly lovable. BUT he is actively job hunting and I suspect (and hope) that he will find his new home soon. He has no plans to stay here with us and we agree that once he has a job it is time for him to move on.</p>
<p>Son needs to have more freedom and independence and privacy than can happen here.
No matter that he is 25 years old, if he isn’t coming home from a friend’s house, he needs to tell me so. NOT ask for approval, just inform me so I don’t go all worried mom on him. When he lives on his own, he won’t be dealing with my nonsense since I won’t be aware of his comings and goings. The way it should be.</p>
<p>Someone mentioned that it may seem less like home when a parent marries someone new.</p>
<p>Coming “home” to visit may also have an added layer of awkwardness after your grown child marries someone you don’t know very well yet. When that happens you have a stranger in your house, so to speak.</p>
<p>Our children will always be our children. Our home is their home as long as we have it. They are always welcome to come back to our home. Both are college graduates and both could very well live at home again at some point. We will welcome them. They both know that if their time at home exceeds a temporary status we would need to discuss it…but truthfully…they will always be welcome.</p>
<p>My parents had the ‘3 month’ rule. After HS I had 3 months to find a job and be out on my own OR I could go to college and they would pay (I had to work part-time). After college I had 3 months to find my own place and pay my own bills. I have often wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten a job and moved out but luckily I had a decent paying job.</p>
<p>I have told my son the same rule applies. I know times are tougher now so I might agree to ‘6 months’ after college graduation. </p>
<p>Parents need to set some rules otherwise they may have their kids living at home forever… If your kid is not motivated you are setting them up for a lifetime of failure if you continue to take care of them.</p>
<p>My son will always be welcome here - temporarily… in between moves, etc. but I would not allow him to live at home permanently after graduation.</p>