Chris Erskineâs boomerang kids dilemma: How much is too much help?
The latest culinary masterpiece to grace the kitchen is chia pudding with mango. Our younger daughter made it ... or planted it ... or whatever you do to create chia pudding.
This is the generation that is living with us now, raised on competitive cooking shows and oddball ingredients that they insist are good for everyone, in that earnest, all-knowing way twentysomethings have.
I mean, how do you know if chia pudding is ready? Do you open the fridge to find a bowl of sea grass, flowing and wonderful, like Amy Adamsâ hair?
Excuse me, sweetie. Do I eat this or mow it?
This week, Iâve turned to other fathers for solace about the boomerang generation. Like me, theyâve had children return home for economic reasons. Itâs a wonderful experience and a trying experience. Itâs parenting on a post-graduate level.
Itâs chia pudding with mango.
âSo howâs your grocery bill?â my friend Chuck asks. âSkyrocketing?â
Thereâs that â the practical aspects of having our adult children home. They donât take short showers, either, and wash 18 loads of thongs and dirty T-shirts at once.
Then thereâs the plumbing bill from the extra hair â thick as yarn â that our Rapunzel leaves in the bathroom drain each morning.
I estimate that each adult child living at home adds $500 to $600 a month to the family budget, in chia seeds, almond milk, organic granola, gasoline, insurance and cellphones.
Thatâs not even accounting for wear and tear on the house. Having an adult child home is comparable to boarding a horse.
Like Chuck, I love having two of my adult children home even as I grumble about it. We see it as sort of a hostage situation, except the identity of the captors is unclear. Neither Chuckâs family nor mine charge rent, in the belief our kids need to bolster their savings if they are to ever afford a place of their own.
âSheâs actually thinking about moving out,â he says of his daughter, 22, home since graduating from college in December.
Yet there is no practical plan.
âOne of my running mentors said my daughterâs using the âpower of magical thinking.â Because you think it, it will be,â Chuck says.
And he echoes all my own feelings. That theyâre adults yet theyâre not adults. That theyâre a joyous presence though not quite an asset around the ranch. Sometimes he has to make chore lists, as do I.
The ability of a 21-year-old to stroll right past stacks of dirty dishes with a clear conscience should never be underestimated.
Chuckâs daughter is working part time. Mine is working an entry-level job that requires 12-hour days, so our situations differ. But we both have to stop to make a point sometimes: âWe are not your personal valets.â
To those without kids, we seem like the biggest saps. They believe our kids are taking advantage of us. One such reader weighed in after my column about the foster beagle we inherited when our older daughter moved out.
âYouâre treated like youâre not really necessary for their functions until they decide that you are, and then are left with whatever they canât care for,â he noted.
Yeah, so?
I donât think anyone who hasnât had kids can understand. And todayâs harsh economic realities sometimes require an uncomfortable and over-the-top level of compassion.
âAt 60, I have resigned myself to the fact that the boys may be living with us longer than I may be living with us,â another reader, Frank, wrote of his sons, ages 17 and 21. âThere is no job security for them and the rug will be pulled out many times over their career. In the digital world, someone writes a free app and 10,000 people are out of work.
âBut my boys have a resilience that seems to be the strength of their generation,â Frank said. âThings roll off them â especially my admonitions â and that is a valuable virtue to have.â
The dirty little secret is that even good dads have seesaw moments when they wonder: âAm I doing too much, or not enough? And whereâs the payoff?â
âThe only reason I can see for having children is to observe someone going through everything that you went through. Except, this time, you try to intervene to make it better, but you just waste your effort,â Frank continued.
âParenting is probably inextricably linked to masochism.â
And yet, Frank wrote, âAlmost on cue, my 21-year-old comes through the door and says something remarkably funny that makes me laugh. Hard.â
So, he concluded: âI changed my mind. Iâm glad to be a parent.â
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