<p>My home will always be my children’s home. It will always be available to them if they (or my someday grandchildren) need or want to come home.</p>
<p>We moved to a different state the summer before our son started college, but he had been at boarding school. Our daughter was a rising college senior. We set up rooms for them in our new house, but it never was “really” home for them. Our son spent parts of a couple of summers with us, but mainly lived at college. Now he has his own apartment in a different city and our daughter is married, so they don’t have “rooms” here, although it seems like we still have a lot of their stuff. If someone needed to come back “home”, we would set up space for them and make it possible.</p>
<p>Both kids have leases and jobs. They will always have a home with us, no matter what. However, I highly doubt it would become too permanent. H&I would drive them out with our HGTV marathons and DVR recordings of every bike race ever televised.</p>
<p>When I graduated from college, my father gave me 30 days to find a job and get out of the house. I had no intention of moving back to my hometown and I was fortunate to find a job and place to live in Boston very quickly. Still…I thought the 30 day limit was pretty harsh and cold.</p>
<p>When is your home no longer your child’s home? … from whose viewpoint? … from my kid’s viewpoint the day they say they’re ready to go home; and they are talking about returning to school instead the home with the old fogey parents.</p>
<p>When you hear your kids say they are “going to their parents’ home” or “going to their hometown.” I heard that for the first time this spring from my recent college 22 year old grad who hasn’t been “home” for any length of time for three years.</p>
<p>Given the way housing prices are still high in this area relative to salaries earned by most college grads who are not doctors or investment bankers, I am beginning to wonder if my children will need to wait until they inherit this property to be able to afford their own houses.</p>
<p>As the answers indicate, it can differ widely. I left home and never came back except for short visits. But it was always home when I returned for those stays even in places that I never saw until I showed up for the first visit. Home is where the family is. My husband never really lived in his mother’s home as she moved into it as her mother became infirm, and it was not where he grew up, yet he still considers that home of sorts. One can have more than one home.</p>
<p>Some of my friends and I have been on the verge of throwing out some of our older kids who have been no pleasure at times to have at home, but those young adults still consider it home. I love the idea of providing a sanctuary in our home for our children, but am just not saintly enough to do it graciously sometimes.</p>
<p>My children will always be welcome in my home. But at some point, there will be an expectation that they are financially and emotionally self sufficient, with the means to work and support themselves without my help, and have independent living arrangements. Exactly when DH and I believe that should be accomplished will depend on individual circumstances. There is no absolute age that comes to mind.</p>
<p>From the perspective of a current college student, it is a very murky issue. One of the hardest questions I am asked these days is what is my address/ or where do I live. Do I put where I am living currently (my summer apartment), where I spend most of my year (college), where I pay my taxes and my parents live (hometown), or where I feel most at home (my grandmother’s house). I was recently signing a petition along with a friend, we both got to address, paused looked at each other and asked each other where we lived.</p>
<p>I also find the definition of home depends very much on context. There is going home for break, going home to school, going home as in my dorm or apartment.</p>
<p>I know my parents will always have a bedroom for me, and they have hardly touched my room since I left for college 2+ years ago, but I stopped really defining that as home last summer when I realized I had spent a total of about 10 days there over the previous year.</p>
<p>S (freshman in college) called when he got back to campus after coming home for spring break.</p>
<p>S: Hi Mom,
Me: So you made it home safely?
S: No, I left home.
Me: Sorry, I meant “so you made it back to the dorm?”</p>
<p>This still gives me a warm feeling to think about.</p>
<p>He’s been home for the summer for a little over a week. Given the poor job prospects here, this will probably be his last summer with us. But he’ll always have a home with us if he wants or needs it.</p>
<p>My husband and I are definitely in the camp of “our children will always have a home with us.” That is probably partly in reaction to our own experiences. His mother moved to a small one-bedroom apartment during his freshman year in college. During breaks, he had to sleep on the couch in her apartment, which never felt like his “home.” </p>
<p>I came home the summer after freshman year to find that my mother had completely redone my room – rearranged all the furniture and gotten rid of my desk, taken down the posters, boxed up most of my stuff. She redid everything to suit her tastes. I had a difficult relationship with my parents, and after freshman year, I just stayed at school during the summers and worked. Summer after sophomore year, I went home one weekend for a surprise visit and my parents were outraged. They kept saying, “you have to call us before you come here! what if we’d rented out your room?” I’ve never forgotten how bad that felt. That was when I knew that my parents’ house would never be my home again. And luckily I never needed to live with them again, though in my mind, that was never an option.</p>
<p>I want my children to feel that they will always be welcome here, whenever they want or need to be here.</p>
<p>I was talking to one of my co-workers a couple weeks about this. She’s 65ish and lived in the same house for a long time. Her son lived with her until he was into his 30’s and she was okay with that for the most part because her husband was fairly sick for quite awhile. When he passed away and she started seeing another man, they decided to move into a smaller house. She figured at that point, the son would finally move out and move on. She said he instead bought the house from her and lived there until his eventual wife and he built their own home.</p>
<p>My children will always have a home with me, but I know that if I ever sell the “family” home they may not feel the same way. If that happens, I’ll try to make wherever I live welcoming to them. For me, my parent’s house was no longer “home” after my mother died. Even though the last house they lived in was not the house I grew up in, it was still home because my mom was there. After she died, it was just a house to me.</p>
<p>DH and I have such fun with DD, but I’m here to tell you we do not want her moving back home. I know that sounds harsh when I say it that way, but we have such great times when we all get together that I’m afraid it would ruin things if she lived at home again. She graduated college last year, works a couple of jobs and rents a house with friends about 25 minutes from us. DH and I have come to wholeheartedly embrace the empty nest. Could DD come home again if she needed to do so? Absolutely! I do think it would be very difficult for her to move back home after living on her own for the past five years, though. She’s very independent and I can honestly say I’m afraid we would argue … a lot! I prefer a neat house and she is a messy girl. She stays out till all hours of the night which is not my business but, if she lived here, I’m afraid I would be constantly listening, consciously or not, for her to get home safely. </p>
<p>Last week, on her day off, she came and picked me up, took me to lunch and then we went for pedicures … all her treat for a belated Mother’s Day (first time we had free together during the day). The young lady doing my pedicure overheard us talking about DD’s house and she asked DD if she was married. DD told her no and the girl then asked me why she didn’t live at home with me if she wasn’t married. I told her I love my daughter and I love doing things with her, but she’s a big girl now and needs to be out on her own. I asked DD if that hurt her feelings and she said “No! Why would it? It’s true.” </p>
<p>When DD went away to college five years ago, DH and I were so sad for the first few months but then we realized, if she was so stinkin’ happy, shouldn’t we be happy, too? We had spent the past 18 years concentrating on her so much that we were a bit nervous, wondering how things would be without her being in the house. We started hiking, biking, visiting the driving range occasionally and just rediscovering one another. Thankfully, we realized we still liked one another … a LOT! We go on trips and frequently go out with friends. Eventually, I would like to downsize to a home that’s approximately half the size of the one we currently have. I feel like two bedrooms and two bathrooms should be large enough to offer a comfortable stay for guests for a couple or three days, but nothing so comfortable that they’ll want to stay for an extended period of time.</p>
<p>Our home will always be their home too, whenever they need it. I suppose I might have a different answer if I had a child with no motivation, no job, and no sense of responsibility, but fortunately that is not the case. Our daughter bought her first house and is married now but still comes by on a regular basis, and they come for dinner at least once a week. Our son lives an hour away in an apt. in LA, but is out of college and working full time and is totally on his own. He did ask if he could move in for a month or two later this year between leases, and we gave a resounding yes. Our younger two are still here- one part time and one still in high school. We are lucky in that our kids have turned into great adults and we really enjoy them.</p>
<p>My brother has one child who doesn’t work, doesn’t help around the house, and does not go to school. He would be out of my house pretty quickly as he seems to need a real dose of reality. The rules here are go to school or work and pay rent- fortunately that has not been an issue for us. With the current economy, I suspect there are more kids living with parents after college until they find jobs, but as long as I knew they were making an effort to find something, that would not be a problem.</p>
<p>My brother-in-law, who I knew in high school, was expected to move out when he turned 18 even though he was still in high school. His mother was quite well off so money was not an issue. He finished high school living with various friends. He is polite to his mother, but does not go out of his way to see her and she can’t understand why.</p>
<p>This hits “home” to me because my mom, brother and I are preparing to sell the family farm. My Dad was born there and it was the only home he knew. Since his death, my mom can no longer manage a 200+ acre farm. My brother and I simply cannot imagine not going there for holidays and extended visits. We can’t even talk about it, but it has to happen. We both have grown children and our own homes, but we still feel as though we are losing a member of the family.</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>That pretty much sums it up for me.</p>
<p>When we bought our house, H says it is the home he plans to live the rest of his life in. We will always have space for our kids, as it is their home too. Both know it will be a welcoming place for them.</p>
<p>My family home got too crowded after I left for college for me to comfortably return, so I moved out about a month after I came back “home.” Fortunately, I had a full-time, well-paying job and found a very nice & inexpensive apartment located near my job. It worked well for me & my family. I had not intended to move out & live on my own and am the only family member who did so so soon after returning from grad school. Most of my other sibs lived there until they got married or at leas 5+ years after they finished their job and started their careers! We were all welcomed, but I never regretted moving out.</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>agreed!</p>
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<p>I know another man who bought his parents’ home. In his case, he had been living elsewhere in the same community for more than a decade at the time when his parents decided to downsize and move to a condo. He and his wife bought his parents’ house because they loved the neighborhood and they knew that the house had been impeccably maintained. They raised their child there and still live there now, in their late fifties.</p>
<p>Another family I knew owned one large house and one small one in the same neighborhood. Both houses actually belonged to a middle-aged widowed woman (generation 2), but the other residents, at various times, included her father (generation 1), her daughter and the daughter’s husband (generation 3), and the daughter’s two children (generation 4). During the years when I knew them, the younger woman separated from her husband, who went to live elsewhere; the oldest man died; and the middle-aged woman remarried – and every one of these changes led to a rearrangement of the occupancy of the two houses!</p>