Young Adult Children Living at Home Again

I drove away from dropping my daughter off at college, and about an hour down the freeway, I

pulled into a parking lot and began to sob as I had not sobbed since my divorce 15 years earlier.

Hands-on parenting had been my favorite job ever, and that stage of day-to-day parenting was

coming to an end.

But come the following June, I was nervous about my daughter coming home for the summer. I

knew she had gotten used to relying on herself, and I had gotten used to not having to cook or

clean for her.

It was clear that we needed a plan for how to be two adults living in a common space. Not

roommates exactly—after all, I was still paying the rent and buying the groceries—but certainly

not the parent-teen relationship we had had her senior year of high school.

While she was in the middle of finals and end-of-the-semester projects, I knew she didn’t have

the bandwidth to have a reasonable conversation about our agreements for the summer, so I

decided to both offer a respite—and set an expectation: Specifically, I told her that for the

first week when she got home, I was going to treat her like a cherished guest. I was going to do

her laundry and cook for her and spoil her to pieces. We could go out to dinner or to get an ice

cream cone, and it would all be my treat. At the same time, I let her know that on Sunday

afternoon at the end of that first week home, we were going to sit down and hammer out an

understanding of who was going to be responsible for what and when for the summer.

On Sunday, I explained that while I knew that she would want to go out and see her friends if

she was going to live in my house, I expected to see her more often than if she were living on

her own. I also expected her to contribute to the smooth running of the household. I

expressed it, as, “Having you here can’t take more work than not having you here.”

From there the conversation really wasn’t that hard.

She offered to cook a couple of nights a week and to do the grocery shopping with me on the

weekends as long as I was flexible about when we did it on the weekend.

I agreed to pay for any food for the family; she agreed to pay for her special protein powder

and things I wouldn’t usually buy—like the Starbucks caramel macchiato syrup she had fallen in

love with. Just as during the college semester, she continued to pay for her own shampoo,

body wash and toothpaste. We agreed that if I was getting takeout for the whole family, I

would pay, but if she was ordering a late-night pizza via Door Dash, she would pay.

We worked out that while on her day off it was perfectly okay for her to sit in the living room

and binge-watch old Grey’s Anatomy episodes, I also didn’t want to have to nag her about

leaving the living room ready for the next person—ie, dishes to the dishwasher, blankets folded

and pillows fluffed.

She took over again the chores she had had during high school (recycling and garbage to the

curb on Wednesday nights) and emptying the dishwasher whenever it was clean. Likewise, she

kept her own bathroom and bedroom clean (and cleared the decks enough so the weeks our

cleaners came, they could actually vacuum, etc.).

The biggest argument we had was about her communicating to me where she was and when

she was coming home. Our agreement while at college was that she would text a friend or her

roommate if she going to the library and staying late or going to a party on her own. That way

somebody knew where to find her and when to be worried. Texting me where she was and

what she was doing felt like she was being treated like a child again; I knew I wasn’t going to be

able to sleep soundly if I was worried about her coming home safely. In the end, we settled on

her continuing to have a “check-in” relationship with a friend who was also home for the

summer. In other words, she would text her friend that she was home from the party rather

than coming and waking me up as she did in high school. The friend knew that if she woke up

and hadn’t heard from my daughter and couldn’t get a hold of her, it was time to call me, so I

could decide if action was needed.

She was working her own job and had her own schedule. I acknowledged that she had been

monitoring her own screen time and regulating her own need for sleep since last September

and it would be foolish to have rules about that now (as long as her being up didn’t disturb the

rest of the family).

Since she was cooking two nights a week, that satisfied my need to see her on a regular basis.

As part of our agreement, we decided to have a formal check-in every two to three weeks to

iron out any issues that came up.

One issue that came up that I hadn’t even anticipated was the fact that I was still working full

time. When it looked like I wasn’t busy—because I wasn’t actively on a Zoom call—my

daughter wanted my company. Of course, I wanted to spend some hang-out time with her,

too, but it really didn’t work for me to do that unplanned. I would end up feeling torn between

wanting to get my work done and being resentful that I even had to work. Things felt much

better when we made a couple of middle-of-the-day dates with each other. By blocking out the

time beforehand, I didn’t feel torn that I wasn’t getting something done.

That summer set the stage for her subsequent college breaks—and even for some extended

stays during Covid. It is wonderful to reap the benefits of all the years of training your

children—to get to enjoy and appreciate them without the work or the worry.