When the kids come home after college
One of my patients and her husband have seen a number of shifts in their living arrangements lately. Their youngest daughter just went off to college, but before the dust had cleared in her bedroom, their adult son moved back in with them.
By next summer’s college break, their daughter will be back home, and that revolving door will swing wide open once again. When my patient came for her visit with me, we talked about how their empty nest was now so much more full than they could have anticipated.
In my work with patients at the Institute for Health & Healing, I am very aware that my patient and her husband are not alone. The no-longer-empty nest often has adult children and possibly a parent or grandchild thrown into the mix. Communal living is becoming more the norm than the exception and requires a fresh set of family skills to be done well.
Here are some tips that may help make your own full nest a happier place to be:
Assume good intentions, and have a healthy sense of humor. These go a long way in any relationship.
Your home should be your haven and the haven of everyone else living with you. If there is anything that is getting
in the way of that, it needs to be discussed openly and honestly.
Create more love, peace and friendship in the home. Your best behavior should be reserved for family, and yet we often unload our worst traits on our loved ones. Friends come and go, so if you are going to expend energy on any relationship, your family will potentially pay off with the most long-lasting and satisfying emotional dividends.
Schedule a weekly SOUL meeting, which stands for “synchronize our unlimited lives.” During this meeting, check in with each other to see if anyone is in need of support, figure out who will be calling the plumber or buying the groceries, discuss plans for the week, air grievances with each other, etc.
There should be fair share in the giving of support as well as the divvying up of chores so that no one person is either getting a free ride or saddled with doing everything. If there is a particular chore that everyone hates, consider having everyone pitch in financially to hire someone else to do it.
Holding a weekly meeting helps institutionalize good communication, cuts down on nagging, holds everyone accountable to their promises and puts everyone on a more even playing field, allowing all to be adults in the home.
Have a family discussion about how much money is needed to run the household, and figure out how much everyone will fairly contribute to it. If financial concerns make it hard for anyone to pitch in, then an equivalent amount of sweat equity in the maintenance of the home should be substituted. This comes back to the notion of fair share and will help preserve everyone’s dignity as contributing members of the household.
De-clutter. Get rid of anything you don’t absolutely need or want, and ask everyone to do the same. If you have to move objects every time you want to sit down and eat, you won’t sit down for a meal very often. If your couch has junk on it, your evening will always start with irritation.
Set standards for cleanliness that you can all agree on. Give a little but don’t give away your right to a clean and comfortable home. Shared living means shared responsibility for making your home feel livable.
Be creative. Think first about options A, B and C to solve any problem but then open up to the possibility that there are also options D, E and F that you haven’t even thought about. Be open to the possibility that you don’t have all the answers, and see what happens when you all put your heads together to think outside the box.
You are living with adults now, so the relationship needs to shift toward more adult interactions. You can’t tell your kids you want them to be adults and yet treat them like children. Assume that they are capable of living their life, mistakes and all. They won’t learn to fly if you are afraid they will fall every time they test their wings.