“The Fourth Stage of Parenting No One Tells You About” – a mother’s survival guide to life with her grown children
You know when you’re pregnant and people call the first few months after the baby is born the “fourth trimester” where you have no idea what you’re doing and then catch up over time? Turns out you can apply this to long-term parenting, too.
The first phase of parenting is the management of babies and young children, where you lose sleep just to keep them alive. the second stage, the sweet bit, happens after plugging forks into sockets and before “I hate you give me a tenner”; and the third and (formerly) final phase lasts from puberty until they leave the house after losing even more sleep and wondering if they’re lying dead in a ditch from turning off their phones at 3am. Then they move out and everyone gets on with their lives.
Now, thanks to the madness in the housing market, there’s a fourth stage that the parenting books didn’t mention because it didn’t exist. The one where your baby is now a 300 month bouncy adult and is still at home, using all the wifi and eating all the food and still putting empty juice packs back in the fridge.
Raising adult parents might seem like a contradiction in terms, like silent scream or human slaughter, but here we are: The median age of a Irish adult leaving home is 27.9 in 2021. That’s almost 460,000 adult children – another contradiction – still in rooms that used to be full of teddies and toys, instead of being out in the world as independent beings, buying their own toilet roll and paying their own gas bills.
Last Christmas I gave my 22 year old a book called How to grow up. This Christmas she gave me one titled How to give zero f*cks. That’s where we are in my house – 20-year-olds living with a 50-year-old for economic reasons (hers, not mine) as they endlessly try to transition from parents and kids to roommates. Except that we’ll always be the former, no matter how mature and independent they are or how distant I am.
The 22-year-old tells me that she has read a Vice Article on how to have sex in your parents’ house, which seems a bit ridiculous – you just go to your room and close the door, right? Far more useful – albeit less clickbaity – would be articles on how to clean the fridge at your parents’ house or what day to take out the trash cans at your parents’ house. Because although they have lived in their parents’ house since birth, this knowledge remains a mystery. It’s mom stuff. The stingy domestics become the symbol of the greater stasis – my biggest mistake was believing that my grown children would do that Naturally develop into adult roommates. They don’t. You have to redraw boundaries. They literally have to put a bold sign on the garbage can that says TUESDAY.
Close
Author Suzanne Harrington and daughter Lola
“It’s difficult,” says Dr. Vincent McDarby, 2022 President of the Psychological Society of Ireland. “Adult children seek autonomy, but neither party can move away from their assigned roles.”
He says the most important part of renegotiating common space from an adult-to-adult perspective is clear communication: “Don’t attribute negative motivations to other people’s behavior. speak it out Silence has never solved a problem. And also remember that change can trigger anxiety, which means people can sometimes hesitate – so it’s up to the other person to provide a nudge.”
An unscientific straw poll of other menopausal women with adult children who are still at home – my friends – shows that Empty Nest Syndrome has replaced Idris Elba as our number one fantasy.
“For me, the best part was when the older one moved out and came home as an adult,” says Kaye (56), an artist. “But the younger one, who is 21, is upset that I don’t stock the fridge with his favorite foods, even as I point out that I don’t earn more than he does and can’t afford to feed three people. It will be a relief when they leave so I can focus more energy on myself – it’s hard to have creative headspace when they’re around. Still, I understand how hard it must be for some kids not to take their mother for granted when she was always there, part of the furniture.”
Close
dr Vincent McDarby, 2022 President of the Psychological Society of Ireland
Even if your kids are paying rent, which they absolutely should be unless they’re legally bankrupt, and even if you’re all getting along well and you’re all doing your best, menopause means the mummy brain has come loose; in the animal kingdom we would have eaten them long ago.
But her own brain is still developing.
“The prefrontal cortex [PFC] doesn’t stop developing until the age of 25,” says Philippa Vafadari, psychotherapist and parent of two twenty-somethings. (The PFC is the bit that regulates thoughts, actions, and emotions). “So there’s that, plus the fact that unlike our parents’ generation, there isn’t the same societal pressure to get married and have kids young. And the economy is very different from previous generations. All of these factors combined can slow down independence.”
Because of this, not only is it pointless to start sentences with “when I was your age,” but probably to hear them angry. My kids know I’ve been financially independent since I left home at 17; You know I was living in London when I was 19, Barcelona when I was 21 and Brazil when I was 26 through a series of low-paying jobs. This was made possible by affordable rents and not by handouts from parents. And dare I say my ability to slum it.
“I don’t want to neglect it,” says Lola, my 22-year-old daughter. “My friends live in horrible, damp, mouse-infested apartments and pay their entire wages in rent to some random landlord. Why would I want to do that?” She pauses. “I’m dying to move out, but not that desperate.” I totally get that.
There’s slumming to save money and slumming while getting royally ripped off – the latter is nonsensical and soul-wrecking.
There is a third way. It may require a bank loan or the sale of a kidney, and it only works if you have outdoor space, but putting your child in a shed — a posh, a “garden room” — has become a thing.
Both my daughter and her 24 year old boyfriend live in new isolated sheds in their respective parental gardens; They are cozy and private, with Wi-Fi and electricity. The former bedroom is rented out to language students to pay off the shed loan. It’s a bit complicated and far from ideal, but that’s where we are until someone wins the lottery.
Meanwhile, my other adult child, 20, has flown in the Coop and is subletting an apartment in town. He loves to.
Then he writes that he has to move back home next month because his sublease ends. I need to put my TUESDAY sign back on the trash can.
Expert tip: Why empathy matters when sharing a home with grown children
“I think from a psychological perspective, the challenge is that having an adult child at home is out of sync,” says Professor Eva Doherty, Consultant Psychologist.
“Developmentally, parents should be done raising children and more focused on their own needs and being with their friends. Anything that happens developmentally out of sync can disturb us mentally. There are many other examples: losing a parent at a young age, being unemployed early in your career, etc.
“Additionally, it can be difficult to let go of the parenting style and adopt an adult-on-adult relationship pattern. So when you see your adult child’s messy bedroom, late stay, or not coming home, it can be difficult to resist the temptation to react the same way you did as a teenager.”
Professor Doherty explains: ‘I think that an adult child should have the same freedom that is afforded to a partner in a cohabitation relationship.
Close
Professor Eva Doherty, Consulting Psychologist
“At the same time, it is important to maintain mutual respect. Presumably, there will be reasons why the adult child continues to live at home or has returned home and therefore may be facing challenges of their own that require empathy rather than problem solving. There is some evidence that those of us who report that we are good at showing empathy are actually more likely to try to solve other people’s problems for them than to show them empathy.
“Empathy is not the same as sympathy. For example, saying “sounds like you’re having a hard time right now” or “not being able to save enough money to get your own place must be really frustrating for you” will be more effective than saying “if If you didn’t spend so much money on takeout or going out and buying makeup and clothes, maybe you could save some money.” The trick with empathy is to focus on the emotion being felt rather than trying to find a solution to the situation.”
https://www.independent.ie/life/family/parenting/the-fourth-stage-of-parenting-no-one-tells-you-about-one-mums-survival-guide-to-living-with-your-grown-up-kids-42294608.html “The Fourth Stage of Parenting No One Tells You About” – a mother’s survival guide to life with her grown children