Living With An Adult Child: The Good, The Bad, And How To Deal With It

I’ve been pretty emotional since our daughter moved out a few weeks ago. My feelings have been bouncing from feeling happy for her to being sad for us.

Our daughter is the baby of our three children and she’s always been a free spirit. The day after she graduated from college, she moved across country to start a new job. Over the next several years, she moved five more times, and lived in four different cities.

Then, about four years ago, she was caught in a situation where her plans for another move fell through at the last minute. She was forced to move back home with us. It was supposed to be for a short time while she made new plans, but due to some medical issues and a number of other factors, she ended up being with us for longer than expected.

She travels a great deal for her job, so there were long periods where she was away from home during that time. Still, we learned a lot about living with an adult child. And she learned a lot about living with your parents as an adult. I think I speak for all of us when I say that, in general, we don’t recommend it 🙂

There’s a lot of good about living with an adult child.

In many cases, our children leave home when they’re grown and the time we spend with them after that is limited to a few hours here and there. In our case, we had some extended time to enjoy relating to her on an adult level.

When your adult child is living with you, you’re no longer concerned with raising them. It’s not up to you to discipline them, monitor what they’re doing, or try to teach them. That frees you to enjoy the experience of being together without any pressure to parent them.

I will always cherish the memories we made just doing simple things around the house, like cooking together, playing board games, or binge-watching endless episodes of “The Middle.” We thoroughly enjoyed the good times we had together.

In addition, just having another adult in the home was a benefit. She often helped with the household chores like cooking, shopping, or cleaning. If Bob and I were away together, she could take care of our home (and garden!). It was reassuring to know that we had someone there we could count on.

Then there’s the “not-so-good” about living with an adult child.

Our daughter was very respectful while she was living with us. But I’m not gonna lie – there were times when it was difficult for all of us.

A big part of the problem is that adult children are, well, adults. Now you’re dealing with a person who has developed their own opinions, perspectives, and ways of doing things. And if those are different than yours, it can create conflict.

For us, living together in the same house led to TMI – knowing Too Much Information about each other. We live in a two-story, three bedroom, two and a half bath house with a two-car garage, but even then there was not enough distance at times. Conversations were overheard, habits were observed, we could feel the emotional temperature in the room, etc. Our daughter didn’t need to know every time we had a disagreement or when we were worried about something. And we didn’t need (or want) to know every detail of her life, either.

I know there are many circumstances where parents need to care for their adult children, so I hope I’m not being insensitive to that. But if possible, I think it’s a healthy thing for adult children to leave their parents and live their own lives apart from them. And at this stage in our lives, it’s time for Bob and I to focus on ourselves – on our relationship with each other and our future. It’s too hard for either party to do those things when you’re living together.

Here is what we learned from our experience living with an adult child:

Don’t do it if you can avoid it! Now that our daughter has moved out and is living apart from us again, my greatest regret is that we let the situation go on as long as it did. I say that knowing she would say the same thing. We all know how fast time flies, and there were some difficult challenges that came up while she was with us that prevented her from making a change sooner. Four years passed by in a blink, and then here we are. But I’m sad that those years were sort of lost for her, being at home with her parents when she should have been living an independent life and building her future.

Lots of families we know are in the same boat. Some of their adult children have never left home. Others were like our daughter and moved back because of unforeseen circumstances. Either way, if you have an adult child living with you, or an adult child wants to move back in, here’s what I would tell you:

1. Have a sit-down discussion where you clearly outline your terms. Talk about how long they’ll stay, what you expect from them while they’re in your home, and the boundaries you’ll set. Write all of these things down and have everyone sign it so you can refer back to it as needed.
2. Make them pay you an agreed-upon monthly rent. And don’t make it too low. The amount should be as close to what they would pay elsewhere as possible. If necessary, graduate up to the full amount. The purpose of this step isn’t to help you. It’s to help your adult child get to the place where they can manage living on their own.
3. Take the money your adult child pays you each month and place it in a separate savings account. We talked about doing this when our daughter moved back home, but didn’t follow through. In hindsight, she probably wouldn’t have stayed with us as long if we had helped her to save the money from the start.
4. Don’t make living at home too comfortable. I laughed when we watched the movie Failure to Launch, but there’s some truth there. If you’re letting your adult child live rent-free, and you’re cooking for them, cleaning up after them, etc., they won’t have much incentive to leave.
5. Hold regular progress meetings to discuss what is being done to prepare for them to move.
6. Be tough about enforcing the agreed-upon move-out date, but help them understand that it’s for their good, not for yours.
7. If necessary, accomplish the move in stages. For instance, if they can only afford a studio apartment or a room in a house with roommates, you can offer to store some of their belongings until they can move up to something bigger.
8. Offer specific support if needed and reassure them that you have their back.

We love all of our children and want them to feel like our home is always their home. But we also know it’s not good for any of us for them to stay too long!

Have you experienced living with an adult child? Tell us about it in the comments below!

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