13 Important Tips on Living with Parents as an Adult
There are many reasons why as adults we remain with our parents or come back to them after living by ourselves.For example, you parents might be too old and sickly already and there’s no one to take care of them except you, so you remain with them to take care of them.
A popular reason has to do with money. Life is getting harder these days especially for young adults who are just building up their finances. Many adults these days are forced to stay with their parents for a longer period than they intended to, because of harsh economic realities.
But except for having to share your private life as an adult with your parents, there are many great benefits with living with your parents as an adult:
1. You Get to Share Your Life with Your Parents: A vast majority of us love our parents. In fact, most of us either took in and take care of our parents personally when they can no longer fend for themselves, or we pay elder care companies to take care of them.
2. You Get to Save Money: This is especially true if your parents are rich. There are parents who still support their financially needy children even in their adulthood.
You might think that parents who do this are spoiling their adult children, but the economic realities of life often require that some parents are forced to support their adult children so they can financially survive.
3. They Can Take Care of Your Family, Especially Your Children: In many parts of the world, adults stay with their parents or their parents stay with their adult children so they can help each other.
Often, married adults who both work leave their children in the care of their parents while they work. This is especially prevalent in poor to developing countries, where families can’t usually afford childcare.
4. You get to Share Your Life with People You Trust: A vast majority of their people trust their parents. In fact, a lot of us seek the advice of our parents for important matters, especially our problems.
If you have to share your secrets, who would you rather trust? Your parents or your flatmate, even though they might be a very close friend of yours? The answer is obvious. You can be more open and direct with your parents than with other people, even close friends.
Whatever your reasons are for staying with your parents, there would be times when living with your parents can seem very uncomfortable or even confrontational. Here are a few tips to make staying with your parents as an adult more seamless:
The information in this article is based off my real life experience returning home to live with my mother.
Table of Contents:
1. Discuss Your Living Arrangement with Your Parents2. Establish Your Boundaries
3. Self-Contain Your Bedroom
4. Get Outside the House as Much as You Can
5. Stay Independent
6. Set a “Me Time” Everyday
7. Accept the Seniority of Your Parents
8. Respect Your Parent’s Lifestyle
9. Handle Arguments with Diplomacy
10. Ask Your Parents to Treat You as an Adult
11. Save Money
12. Always Help Out Whenever You Can
13. Express Your Appreciation of Your Parents
Final Words
The Details:
1. Discuss Your Living Arrangement with Your Parents
Unless you have an emergency, like your home or apartment burning down, or being evicted by your landlord, you should first discuss your living arrangement with your parents.
For example, your parents might expect you to pay for some household expenses like grocery and electric bills. This is understandable considering that you consume grocery products and also use household utilities like electricity, heating, water and the internet.
Not paying for your share of the household expenses might be understandable if you are unemployed, but if you are earning money, it is just in good taste that you also contribute in paying household expenses.
There are also a lot of things you need to discuss with your parents. For example, will your parents allow you to have guests or even hold a party? Can your girlfriend spend the night at your parent’s house? Can you play loud music?
Make a list of the living arrangement issues you want to discuss with your parents and then negotiate with your parents. This way, you and your parents won’t have misunderstandings or even quarrels when the issues eventually turn up.
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2. Establish Your Boundaries
Everyone needs a bit of privacy even though they’re living with someone else. This includes your parents and you.
For example, your bedroom is usually yours and yours alone. Even your parents are not supposed to enter your bedroom without your permission, and you have to do the same to your parents’s bedroom.
Your parents must not also rifle through with your possessions, and you are expected to do the same with your parent’s possessions.
You also don’t have to share your friends with your parents, and your parents don’t have to share their friends with you as well.
Setting boundaries with your parents means deciding which parts of your life you would be sharing with your parents. The same with them too, your parents also have to decide which parts of their life they would be sharing with you even though you both live in the same house.
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3. Self-Contain Your Bedroom
There would be plenty of instances when you would have no space for yourself in your parent’s house except your bedroom.
For example, there would be days when your parents might be entertaining guests in your living room or your father might be playing cards with his buddies in the kitchen. These are instances when your parents might require you to leave them alone with their friends.
As a result, you might have to stay in your bedroom for a few hours or almost the entire day. This might be very uncomfortable if you have to go to the kitchen to get some food or have to go to the bathroom to relieve yourself.
But if you have your own toilet in your own room as well as your own food cabinet and even fridge. It might be entirely possible for you to not leave your bedroom for hours and even days.
Having your own entertainment like a television and even some kitchen & cooking appliances like a sink & a microwave can make you nearly independent from the other facilities in your parent’s home.
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4. Get Outside the House as Much as You Can
Your parents might like having you around and you might feel the same, but being in close proximity with your parents for extended periods of time can leave you and them detesting the sight of each other.
This is why to keep you and your parents enjoying each other’s company, you must spend some time away from each other. You can do this by not always doing things together. You could eat out and not bring your parents, likewise, they can do the same to you.
Also, being in your parent’s house for extended periods of time, especially in your bedroom can feel like you’re in a jail, always seeing the same things over and over again. Even a short walk in the neighborhood can refresh you, so get out of your parent’s house as much as you can.
Your parents might want the same themselves. Your parents can go out on dates without having to take you along.
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5. Stay Independent
Usually, when you move back in with your parents, they have a tendency to bring back their nurturing ways towards you.
For example, if you used to wash and iron your clothes yourself, your parents might start doing them for you.
Though this is a definite positive for you, don’t get used to it. Try to keep doing the same chores you used to do as an independent adult before you moved back with your parents.
You might even do chores that your parents are already doing like cleaning the house, washing clothes, ironing, gardening, and so on. This would not only lighten the load of your parents, but furthers endears you to your parents, leading to a more harmonious relationship with them.
Staying independent also means less readjustment for you should you one day decide to be by yourself again and become independent of your parents.
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6. Set a “Me Time” Everyday
Living with other people has always been a challenge, even if you’re living with your parents. That’s why its important to have a “Me Time” for yourself everyday, even only if for a short time.
This is very important because it minimizes any conflicts between you and your parents which could result in misunderstandings and even quarrels.
If you are constantly stressed when living with your parents but have no choice but to continue living with them because of some reason, like being unemployed. Then you can lessen your daily stress by “tuning out” from your parents.
You might even discuss with your parents why you are being stressed by living with them. Most of the time, your parents would be very understanding of you and would do their best to help you reduce your stress when living with them.
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7. Accept the Seniority of Your Parents
Your parents are different from any flatmates you’d have before. This is because they’re much, much older than you, and due to the fact that they are your parents. So, you should accept their seniority.
Another thing you have to seriously consider is that you are living in the home of your parents and not yours. Your parents are basically doing you a big favor by letting you live in their house.
There are hardly any people who would let you live in their house for extended periods of time. So be very grateful that your parents are still letting you move back in their house.
But this doesn’t mean that you should kowtow to your parents all the time. You should also reason with them at times. Especially if their policies or actions are already doing harm to you and your personal life.
For example, it’s perfectly respectful of you to give way and let your parents watch their favorite television show even if you’re already watching another television show. But you don’t have to be forced into watching the television show your parents like to watch.
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8. Respect Your Parent’s Lifestyle
Your parents already have their own lifestyle even before you moved back in with them. They might not like it if you attempt to push your lifestyle on them.
For example, your parents might like to sleep early and wake up early as well, but you like sleeping late and waking up late.
If you play loud music and stay active late in the night, they might resent you because you’re disturbing their early sleeping lifestyle. As a result, your parents might be forced to kick you out of their house.
So, respect your parent’s lifestyle. Remember, you’re the intruder in their house who’s being given a favor by your parents by letting you live with them. Face it, for the most part, it is you who have to adapt to your parents more than they of you.
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9. Handle Arguments with Diplomacy
Arguments and even confrontations with your parents is inevitable. No matter how harmonious is your relationship or how loving your parents are to you, you cannot always be in agreement with them all the time.
When disagreements with your parents eventually happen, try to diffuse it as fast as you can before it becomes worse. Small disagreements can usually be settled with a little talk between you and your parents.
But for more serious disagreements that can turn to quarrels, be sure to approach it with diplomacy. You idea is not to win or get your point across, but to make sure that you reach an amicable agreement with your parents.
This is because winning an argument is not always the best for your relationship with your parents.
You might win the argument, but if this leaves your parents bitter about the result, your relationship with your parents can deteriorate to such an extent that it ends with you being kicked out by your parents from their house.
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10. Ask Your Parents to Treat You as an Adult
Your parent’s paternal and maternal instincts would likely kick in once you’re back living with them again. While it’s great to be nurtured, your parents can overdo it to such an extent that they basically treat you like a young child again.
This can be very irritating especially if you’re already very grown up and have learned to be very independent of your parents for a long time already.
Being treated like a young child again where your actions, mannerisms, tastes, and so on are being constantly monitored and even reprimanded upon by your parents will make living with your parents very miserable.
If your parents still treat you like a young child that need to be monitored, remind your parents that you are already a grown adult who can make your own decisions.
If your parents don’t respect the fact that you’re now an adult and still treat you like a young child, you might have to make the hard decision to separate from your parents. This is assuming that you have the capability to leave your parents.
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11. Save Money
Unless you’ve decided to permanently live with your parents for some reason like to take care of them because they are already old and sickly, you should consider a situation where you have to leave your parents at some point.
As previously stated, you might find that the nurturing that your parents are doing to you can be suffocating for you. Rather than wait until you can’t bear it any longer, you can decide to leave your parents instead.
This is the reason why you need to save as much money as you can, to enable you to leave your parents and become independent again. Being independent especially requires financial independence.
Make sure that before you leave your parents, you have enough money to live on your own without their assistance.
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12. Always Help Out Whenever You Can
You might be very busy with your career or social life, but you still need to help out at your parent’s home whenever you can.
If you can, do all the chores that your parents used to do, and if needed, do a bit more. For example, instead of your parents having to pay a handyman to do a bit of light carpentry work at home, you can opt to do the light carpentry work yourself.
You can also voluntarily pay all or some of the household expenses of your parents. You can even give your parents some sort of allowance if you can.
You’re actually doing this to show to your parents that you’re not a freeloader, but an important member of your parent’s household. By doing this, you’ll likely endear yourself to your parents and gain their respect.
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13. Express Your Appreciation of Your Parents
If you think about it, you’re getting a lot of things in life free when you live with your parents. For example, you don’t have to pay rent when you’re living with your parents, unless they ask you to pay some of their rent expenses.
Your parents would also probably nurture you and let you have free access to what they have in their house, like free food, free use of their appliances and furnishings, and so on.
That’s why its just good practice to show your appreciation to your parents. For example, you can buy small inexpensive gifts to your parents when your salary gets paid. You can also take your parents out to dinner once in a while.
But you don’t have to spend money all the time to show your appreciation to your parents. Kind words and actions can just be as effective when showing your appreciation to your parents.
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Final Words
There are many reasons why you are still living with your parents even as an adult. The reasons could be financial in nature or you might simply want to take care of your parents in their old age.
But living with your parents is not easy. Usually, you and your parents would have a clash of personality. This is because their outlook in life and lifestyle might be very different from yours. But showing to your parents that you are now a responsible adult and an important part of their household would endear you to your parents while also gaining their respect.
But most of all, show to your parents that you appreciate them because they let you in back to their house and nurtured you again. It would be very hard to find any other people who are willing to do this for you.
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