<p>As far as I’m concerned, my home – wherever I live – will always be my son’s home, as long as he wants it to be. I’ve already moved twice since I lived with him for the first 10 years of his life in the house where he grew up, and that hasn’t made the least bit of difference to either of us. Obviously, that may change (at least from his point of view – I don’t think my feelings will ever change!) once he’s out in the world and has a home of his own. My father still lives in the apartment where I grow up, but I haven’t thought of it as home for more than 30 years, since I finished law school and got a job and moved into my own apartment. Perhaps if my mother were still alive I’d feel differently, but especially after my father remarried, I never felt at home in his apartment.</p>
<p>My house is right here where I am sitting… and it is my ‘home’… but really my parents home is what comes to mind when I think of ‘home’. I think we lived there for 20 years and I’ve been here for 2. That being said, my college apartment never felt like ‘home’ to me.</p>
<p>Our home will always be open to our kids, but that didn’t stop us from having the oldest pack up all of her belongings into boxes so that her younger sister could move into her room after she went off to college. I can’t see keeping a kid’s room as a shrine if you have a better use for the space.</p>
<p>This will probably be their home until we move elsewhere at retirement, but, of course, they will always be welcome. I haven’t touched their bedrooms, mostly out of laziness and no real need for the space. S1 graduated college 3 years ago & hasn’t lived here since. S2 will be graduating in Dec & isn’t planning to return home.</p>
<p>Hard to say. We are planning to sell our home of twenty-two years,the only home our kids have known. And yes, we are taking down the junk and cleaning out their bedrooms. We want to live in a different area and a smaller house. Our kids will always be welcome in the new house but I know they will never think of it as home.<br>
I have heard both my kids refer to our house as “my parent’s house” but when they talk to me they’ll say “I’m coming home”. I believe they will always consider this house their home even after DH and I sell it and move on.</p>
<p>DH’s parents moved from the house that had been his home all thru h.s. and college when he was twenty four. They have lived in two different places since and DH has never referred to either as “home”. It’s just Mom’s house. </p>
<p>Our oldest is two years out of college and living on his own. Doubt he’ll ever return except to visit. Youngest has one more year of college and then will very likely end up back w/ us while job hunting. DH is adamant that there will be a time limit on the stay. S2 is not the most aggressive guy and DH is afraid that if he gets too comfortable he may never leave. I know DH would never toss him out with nowhere to go but will strongly encourage him to be making moves toward independence.</p>
<p>Our home will always be open to our Ds for as long as we live there, although even our youngest now has her own place. Two of our Ds are married and own their own homes, another lives in the UK, and the two youngest have finished undergrad but are still students. Their rooms are still their rooms and when we have big family gatherings, they still stay overnight. We’re in the midst of a big renovation at the moment and they were all consulted about things related to their rooms. I actually love having them around when they’re visiting and although none of them has ever returned home to live for any lengthy period of time after graduation, I would have had no problem with that.</p>
<p>Son2 is far from home living in a part of the world with a very different culture and says “he misses home.” He misses his siblings and us and all that is familar to him even though he has not lived "home for four years. I guess when you know you can’t go home than home becomes the place you want to be. My husband and I got very accustomed to him not living here but his being gone and not being able to see him when ever we choose is so different. I think about how much he changed when he first started college until he moved away after graduating, and I realize how much he will grow in the two years he is away and I feel like I am missing out on something wonderful. It is amazing how much impact this has had on his brothers. We miss him so much.</p>
<p>Our kids are always welcome to come home during transition periods but would not be welcomed back once they are married…they belong with their spouses then.</p>
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<p>Those transition periods can happen even after marriage.</p>
<p>Three years after I got married, my husband and I found ourselves in a situation where we had nowhere to live for several weeks. My husband had just finished his doctorate and had a postdoc waiting for him, and I had finished a limited-term job and had a new full-time job waiting for me. Our apartment lease was ending, and we could not move into our new place until his postdoc started because the housing was tied to the postdoctoral appointment. So we were temporarily homeless.</p>
<p>My father, who lived about an hour from where we were moving, allowed both of us to stay at his house for several weeks during this transition – which was certainly above and beyond the call of duty and saved us a bundle of money that we would otherwise have had to spend on a motel room or some other form of temporary housing.</p>
<p>See my view is that their spouse is now a part of my family, so they are always welcome in the family home as well. </p>
<p>I was at a wedding this weekend, where the father of the bride, who was on his fourth wedding, described it as “I’m not losing a daughter, I just got one more kid to worry about.”</p>
<p>I figured after I posted that someone would misunderstand my post. I should have written it clearer. Their spouses are always welcomed home, but I would never take a kid back because they are on the outs with a spouse. There place is with their spouse and their responsibility is to work it out. I of course would hope they would have the maturity to stay with their significant other rather than running home to mom and dad, and I would also not expect abusive relationships because that is a different story altogether.</p>
<p>The bad thing about posting is that you forget people don’t know you. I guess I have to remember that posts could get taken the wrong way.</p>