At what point
Is a parent's house no longer a kid's "home"?
I was reading and I've seen a lot of different opinions on people considering their parents houses still their home, on whether both houses of split parents are the kids' home and a lot of words indicating that a child shouldn't feel like a visitor in a parent's home regardless of how much or how little time the kid spends there.
So I'm just curious - at what point is it acceptable to treat a kid or a skid as a guest in house where one (or both come to that) parent lives?
Is it 18? Is it graduation from high school or college? Or is it never and the kids should always be welcome to think of mom or dad's house as their home?
There's been a lot said about how. The kids should have their own space in the home too - ideally their own room.
I guess I'm wondering in general and partially because of think of my situation where SD16 sued to have visitation lowered and got an unenforceable CO so we haven't been graced with a visit in over 2 years. We have since moved and are a few thousand miles away. If she did decide to visit, we don't have a room for her. There's a bed in the basement, but its not a finished basement and DHs office is there as well, so during a regular week, she wouldn't be able to retreat there for privacy or alone time. I wouldn't feel comfortable with her staying in the baby's room so that would be the option.
Largely, if she showed up right now, I would have a difficult time thinking of this as "SD's home too". She's DHs kid and I would try to make her feel welcome,but I would feel like she was a guest.
Guess I'm just wondering if there's something I'm missing in the overall idea of a parents home always being a "home" for their kid...
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Comments
I would like SS to always
I would like SS to always feel like he has a home with his Dad, even as I will eventually balance that with a healthy dose of 'You know, you're an adult now. If you aren't in crisis, and you have any self respect you should GTFO'
Is it that you'd like him to
Is it that you'd like him to feel he always has a home in Case of a crisis? Cause I think a lot of parents when they become empty nesters will downsize and move into a home with less space. And while I can certainly understand putting a kid (or skid if that needs to be defined) up for a night or a week or whatever, would you consider if their home and want to make sure they had a room a space and privacy? Or would you consider it a stop over and giving them a helping hand but not needing them to feel too comfortable while encouraging to get their life together and get back out?
I mean,if BM died tomorrow and we got a call that SD needed to come live here,we'd rearrange things to make that work, but she's still a minor. We'd finish the basement for another bedroom. If she made that call after she was 18, I can't see us putting in the money and effort to make a space for her here so that she felt "at home".
I'd like to be able to one
I'd like to be able to one day buy a home that has enough space for my three kids, including SS.
And like many women before me in my family, I'd like to keep their rooms livable for them after they leave, just in case something bad happens and they need to come home.
My parents made it very clear that if something super terrible happened and I needed to come home with the kids, they would make it work, and had already prepared for such an eventuality.
I don't want to ever have to impose, but it means a lot to me that they feel that way.
I want to give that feeling to my kids.
My home is NOT Snookis home.
My home is NOT Snookis home. She is a guest. I do love her in a way and I don't want bad things for her in life. But my house stopped being HER home the moment she tried to attack me and kick me down the stairs with my baby at my feet.
If she hadn't been violent
If she hadn't been violent toward you,do you think you'd feel differently? She's 19 right? So as a legal adult, if she hasn't attacked you, would you still consider it her home?
Its very likely that I would
Its very likely that I would if she was not a violent, thrown off person infatuated with the thug lifestyle. And her blatant and blaring disrespect to her father makes her hard to swallow too.
Just out of curiosity, how
Just out of curiosity, how often was she there before she attacked you? Was she a full time, 50/50, or EOWe?
Full time. Her mother was a
Full time. Her mother was a crack whore that left her when she was a baby.
She has been through alot but has so far emulated her birth mothers personality and actions. Its quite sad. I think that being like her mother was is how she feels some bond to her.
I hope one day she finds herself before she gets killed
That kind of violence would
That kind of violence would change everything for me too.
At the point you move out on
At the point you move out on your own. My parents are still together, but since I left at age 20, I don't consider that my home.
In my family I did not live
In my family I did not live with my mother except for two years in grade school. Now as an adult I have moved within 10 minutes of her. She always asked if I was coming down because I lived north of her. Now it is are you coming over or are you coming to the house. I now own my own home and she will ask me which home I am going to but I was never not welcome in her home except for one time and that was my stepfather being a nutter not my mom. FDH and I considered our home SSs also but not the SDs because they had not wanted to see their father in over 4 years and they were only EOWe at best visitors. By the time we got together they were too PASed to be a part of the family. My parents still have my youngest brother's bedroom set up the way he left it when he joined the military and he did leave some of his stuff in it. Our middle sibling uses his bedroom when he comes to our parents house. based on my situation I think it is fluid. When FDH died my mother said come home and I left our house and went back to my parents. It all depends on the relationship and the circumstances. My parents knew that even though I was moving home as an adult it did not matter because I was not staying so they did not sweat it.
I tend to think about it as a
I tend to think about it as a very circumstantial idea. I've just seen a lot of very vehement words on here about (usually) Dad's home being the skid's home too. Which in many cases, I agree with. 50/50, both houses I see as "home". Where I think it can get trickier is with the EOWe or less, particularly if a kid is being PASed.
When SD was visiting regularly, it was once a month, so maybe 2, maybe. 3 overnights except at Christmas time or during the summer. I did consider it to be her home too. As soon as that ended, I guess I stopped thinking about our place as her home. I think about BM's house as her home. If she were to begin seeing us regularly, I hope I'd feel that it washer home too,but I'm not sure I would. Maybe because of the age, maybe because of the extent of the PAS and how she treats DH.
I'm just very curious about other perspectives on it.
Home is where you reside.
Home is where you reside. What you put on your driver's license. Sometimes people have two homes - I do now.
I had my own place by the time I was 20. Even when I lost my job and fell on hard times I never considered going back to my parents' home. One summer I bounced around spending a week at a time with friends. I'd rented out the home I owned as I was going back to school in another state.
I did move back in with my parents decades later but that was to take care of elderly parents - certainly not for my convenience.
I had roommates forever it seems like. When money got tight that was the thing to do not try to go mooch off of my parents.
"Failure to launch" really is FAILURE - failure to become an adult.
In my case I did not want to
In my case I did not want to be in the house where my FDH killed himself and my parents did not want my daughter or myself to stay there for our mental health. I stayed with them until I bought my house and we had it livable a little over a month after closing.
That truly was an emergency
That truly was an emergency situation. Not a "failure to launch" at all.
Several of my friends moved home when their husbands were in Viet Nam for a year. Fifty years ago many married women could not maintain a home when their DH's got drafted and were gone for a year. Especially the 19 and 20 year old brides.
Thanks Oldone! You are right
Thanks Oldone!
You are right about the brides moving home and I think it was also a bit of social convention and perhaps not being comfortable living alone. Women did not really move out on their own that much. I know when my mom moved out of her parents home in 1972 she moved in with girlfriends because it was not easy to make enough money to live on your own as a woman.
We all have house keys to my
We all have house keys to my mother's house. We are all allowed to drop in and out. Eat lunch there and watch tv (she has every channel available to purchase on satellite) and I think it is because that is how my grandparents raised their kids. My mother has keys to my house also. I usually call my mother first to see if she is home before I go over and my mother also has family dinners several times a week and calls to tell us come over for dinner. I know this won't work for everyone but we were also raised to not go in our parents room and not touch the guns. NOTHING had to be locked up and we never pushed the boundaries (at least I don't think my halfsiblings did).
Honestly when I moved out
Honestly when I moved out when I was 19 I no longer felt my parents home was mine. I did move back with them when my ex left me. But I had a different room and had no say in anything. It was truly a transition and they made it clear that was all it was.
I never felt like they were being mean just that they wanted me to stand on my own feet.
I think it should be when the kid moves out to school or whatever that they are welcome to stay the summer and breaks but their home no more. They should be making a life of their own at that point.
I dont feel SD17 will ever
I dont feel SD17 will ever have a home with us again. I told DH last night Im packing her stuff next weekend I dont want her taking things out a handful at a time over a 6 month period. She wanted to move out, DH wanted her out. There are no do overs in this.
SD14 her home is with her Momma, she lives with her all but about 6 weeks a year. Her choice...she had a choice when we removed her sister. She chose to stay. that is now her home. She is welcome to visit
For SS16, today. His room is
For SS16, today. His room is SO's his phone is SO and SO can check it anytime. The home he pays the bills for will be his home.
That's not to say he shouldn't feel comfortable while he's a minor still in school. It's just that it's not his home, he's staying there until he gets pushed out of the nest. And if he doesn't like the rules he can always move out, that's per SO.
This is a touch one. I think
This is a touch one. I think it depends on the relationship between the parents and the kids so it will definitely differ scenario to scenario, family to family.
My parents tell me that their home is always going to be my home--but as I grew older and moved out, I started respecting their home like a guest would. I'd call them before I dropped by, I'd ask if I could pick things up, I didn't stay for dinner unless asked (they always ask), etc.
They still have a room for me in case I ever needed to stay the night, but it doubles as their guest room, and they soon want to turn it into a baby room for our baby, with a bed so if we do spend the night, we'd have somewhere to sleep.
I noticed that I began to feel more and more uncomfortable with treating my parents home as "my home" once in college, doubly so ever since I got married, because I now identify my "home" as the one I have with DH, and then triple so when I got pregnant.
I think it all depends on what each family feels comfortable with.
I think it is their home
I think it is their home until they have their own....Not while in college, of course.
As for the SD suing to live with BM. We have that and she has no place in our home. Her home is with her mother. She is not welcome here since she sued us to live with BM. She chose that, we didn't.
As for our boys, they will have this home as their home until they have their own apartment or house after they are done with college. For my son, that may be until he is done with Med school....As it should be.
We will downsize in a few years when the last one graduates, but the plan is to get a place with two extra rooms with Beds in there for them to come home when needed. We are thinking a two bedroom townhouse. I work from home, so my office will have to have a couch that pulls out for when we have both kids home at the same time....
Got it all planned out.
"I think it is their home
"I think it is their home until they have their own..."
well said!! although i do have one caveat - unless it's been their home for a very very long time... in which case it's more of a sentimental 'home' than a literal one.
when i moved out, my parents also moved. the home i had grown up in, the property i roamed my whole childhood, was no longer for our family- they now had a different house which i had not lived in, therefore it was not, nor ever would be, my home.
now DH also, after moving out, never moved back in with his parents. but they are living in the same house they've been in for several decades, since DH was 8. they did not keep his bedroom or anything (just 'guest space' now) so it was considered 'home' strictly in a sentimental sense. (of course, this was back before MIL went off the deep end...)
although the boys dont live with us, i want them to think of our house as home due to the fact that Dumbass is an incapable idiot who cant hold a job or pay rent- she was evicted a few years ago and has bounced around with the boys ever since (between her parents, Mr Potato Head, and New Dick) so just for the stability of having a 'home base,' i want them to consider it their home as they have no other option of stability elsewhere...
JUST until they are old enough to be on their own!!!