Success is often about how to handle transitions. With a little planning you can make any transition a stepping stone to a new level in your life. This August many UC Davis students will move back with their parents for what both parents and adult children often hope will be a short term. The internet is full of advice on the topic of moving back in with your parents, first we’ll deal with the practical stuff and then we’ll have a fun look.
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Moving back in with your parents, in most cases, is totally different from crashing with a friend. There’s a whole different dynamic, relationship, and added set of expectations. It pays to lay these expectations out from the start.
One way to do this is to draft a lease that includes these expectations. U.S. News & World Report suggests:
Negotiating a lease will force both you and your parents to think through some of the questions/difficulties that your new relationship will face. If you wait until there’s an incident, it will be harder to find a good solution.
Start with the following topics to get the conversation going:
- Money: Do they have certain expectations about how you spend your money while you’re living with them?
- Schedules: Does your parent expect to know when you’ll be gone? Will you have a curfew? When will they be home?
- Habits: Discuss basic living habits. For example, what time does everyone wake up and go to bed? It helps to be aware of how these habits might affect everyone in the house.
- Pitching in: If your parents aren’t charging you rent, they might expect you to help out in other ways. Discuss how they expect you to pitch in.
When you move in with your folks, it’s easy to fall into your old child-parent roles, because you lived those roles for so many years. If you’ve been on your own for a while, it can be a frustrating adjustment for both parties. Outlining your expectations can alleviate some of that frustration.
Discuss Boundaries
You want to get along with your parents, and setting boundaries can help with that.
Consider all of the common boundaries you’d have in a normal tenant-landlord situation. For example, what’s the house guest policy? Your parents may not want too many guests in their home, or they may not want anyone there during specific hours. Also, where will you stay? If you’re in your old room, are other areas of the house off-limits? If you work from home, do you need a space for a remote office?
Beyond that, also consider privacy. Most parents can’t help but to chime in about your social life, finances, and career. Discuss any concerns you have about their chiming in beforehand, but let them lay out any of their own concerns, too. The Art of Manliness says it’s about redefining the relationship from vertical to horizontal:
For most of your life, your relationship with your parents has been vertical — they stood atop the family hierarchy, guiding, directing, and dictating how you lived your life.
Now that you’re an adult, your relationship to your parents needs to change to a horizontal one. Instead of engaging with your parents as a child, you need engage with them as fellow adults and on terms of mutual respect. Share your expectations and ask them what they expect from the new living arrangement and fight any urge to cry out “That’s not fair!” If what your parents expect is different from what you want, then you’ll have to find another living arrangement.
If there’s disagreement, you’ll want to address it now rather than after you’ve moved in.
About.com has A Guide to Moving in With Your Parents, which among other great advice, suggests:
4. Be Prepared for Parental Judgements
Fourth, if you moved home to get out of debt, don’t be surprised if your parents seem upset when you go on a shopping spree or seem to deviate from your plan. Your parents are making sacrifices to have you home in their space and by covering some of your expenses. Your parents will likely have a hard time keeping their opinions about your finances to themselves, especially when you are the one that opened the issue by moving back home.
