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My wife and I have two sons, 23 and 27, who refuse to leave our house. Both are college graduates with marketable degrees, but they refuse to get real jobs. Both have earned quite a bit playing online poker and just laugh in our faces and tell us to shut the hell up when we tell them that gaming is not a way to earn a sustainable living.
We let the 27 year old move back in with us after graduating from a top school here in Georgia to help him establish himself. My other son had just started college and was living in the dorms. The son living with us had a part time job at Starbucks that he quit because he was "tired of making drinks all day." He had already started playing online poker, so he was able to supplement the income he had been making at Starbucks. We told him that if he was going to support himself by gambling that he needed to find a new place to live. He threw a huge tantrum, got in our faces, cursed us out, and dared us to kick him out. He and I got then got into a physical fight, before my wife jumped in and helped me pin him down until he calmed. He stormed out of the room and was gone the next day. Two days later I returned home from work to find him back in my house. He started sobbing saying that he was sorry and missed home. He promised to pay extra in rent, be more respectful, and move out within 6 months. I accepted. 6 years later he is still with us.
My other son moved directly into my house after school with no job. We told him that he had 4 months to find a job or else we would need for him to leave. He supposedly got a job at a local mall, but my wife and I found out that he had started successfully playing online poker and had been lying to us the whole time. My wife and I gave this son the same ultimatum we gave the older one, stop gambling or get out. He promised to stop gambling and find a job, which he told us he did but we do not believe. We believe he goes to his friends' homes to play when he tells us that he is at work.
My wife and I are at our wits in and cannot get our sons out of our house. On top of everything, they do not clean up behind themselves, they bring young "ladies" back to our house making all kinds of noise into the night, drink excessively and tear our belongings up, and sometimes come in from partying when my wife and I are getting ready for work.
We don't want to strain our relationships by getting the authorities involved, as we love our sons and have plenty of decent times. We are also getting older and may need to rely on our sons for help if our physical conditions warrant. But it is time for them to go. My wife and I are getting ready to retire and we do not need to spend our retirement dealing with this mess. How do we get them out in a non-confrontational manner?
You should have called the authorities when it got physical because it sounds like you're afraid to deal with them.
Otherwise, cut off internet service and don't have food around for them to get into. Make it not very enjoyable for them to live there. Move out temporarily and have water and electricity service stopped. You could say you want to try apartment life and may be selling or renting the house out later if you decide. That's about the only way you could do it non-confrontationally.
Your sons are addicted to online gambling. You can't have a reasonable conversation with them. They are not capable of that right now.
You can give them a deadline to get out and a list of acceptable behavior until they go. And tell them what the absolute get-the-hell-out-of-my-house deal-breakers are. And don't beat around the bush and sugar coat anything. I understand your concern that you may need to rely on them someday. But you do realize that they probably won't be capable of that unless they get their heads on straight. It's possible that they could really take advantage of you even more if you had to rely on them.
Tell them you love them but will not enable this behavior beyond the move date you give them.
Turn the house over entirely to your sons. Have a lawyer pull up a quit-claim so they are now owners, lock stock and barrel, of the house. Including all responsibilities and financial obligations.
Then, move out.
Then, call them, and tell them the house is their inheritence. That's all they get. Will the rest of your estate to charity.
Then change your phone number so they can't call and complain about it.
“If you want your children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.” -Abigail Van Buren
The problem of adult children moving back home with parents, and staying at home longer than absolutely necessary, was the focus of a 60 Minutes segment called “The Millennials Are Coming” (referring to the “Millennium generation,” or those born between 1980-1995). Addressing the growing problems associated with adults who have a sense of entitlement in our society, many young adults believe they have the right to quit their jobs for frivolous reasons and job-hop to their hearts content. On their parents dime.
Today more than half of college seniors move home after graduation. It’s a safety net, or safety diaper, that allows many kids to quickly opt out of a job they don’t like.”
What’s not to like? Someone else pays the bills, worries about paying the mortgage and taxes, takes care of the yard work, free cooking and maid services – some parents actually doing their grown kids laundry! It’s like these “kids” have a personal butler, housekeeper and a super-rich uncle all rolled into one – you, dear ‘ol mom and dad.
“Living at home gives these kids an opportunity to be choosy about their job choices. If they don’t like the way their boss treats them, they have the luxury of quitting and living with parents until they find their next job. Kids no longer have to settle on a job. It’s no longer uncommon to have several jobs on your resume.
Having been overly-praised and coddled throughout their childhood and teenage years, many young people believe they deserve and fully expect to be rewarded for four years of college education (of course paid for in full by their parents – plus spending money) with a job paying $50,000 immediately after slipping off their graduation cap and gown. Besides the unrealistic expectation of being very well paid right off the bat, the job has to be “fun” and offer a “flexible” schedule too. Or not.
Perhaps these twentysomethings, thirtysomethings and older adult kids have been spending too much time reading and perpetuating Ryan’s Easy Entitlement Excuses for Slackers and Moochers advice about adult responsibility and independence, which brought on lots of negative, but well-deserved comments and reactions.
“By moving home after graduation, you have little or no rent which allows for more freedom when searching for a job. There is no need to sell out to an investment bank if your real goal is to work with underprivileged children. Depending on where your parents are located, you are probably missing out on the big city night life and social scene, but you have lots of opportunities to find the perfect job, regardless of pay. If ditching the social scene for career sake doesn’t demonstrate responsibility and independence, I don’t know what does.
Moving home with mom and dad will immediately save you about $700 a month in housing costs. At least there is some extra cash flow. In two years, you can save up enough to move out on your own without worrying about going into credit card debt for basic necessities like fixing your car or buying groceries.”
Read those two paragraphs again, slowly. The first mistake many well-intentioned parents make when grown children move back home is not requiring the kids to pay rent, and I’m not talking about a measly hundred bucks a month either. If your adult children have the idea that living with you in your house means they have lots of time and opportunity “to find the perfect job”, including their numerous excuses, excuses to the contrary, you’re in deep trouble.
“Too often we give our children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.” -Roger Lewin
Parents, if you need good reasons why you should kick out your grown adult children, or your kids are lazy slackers who treat your home like a free bed-and-breakfast or hotel, read Ryan’s ridiculous article and the comments for a real eye-opener. Kick ‘em out. Drop the guilt complex too. You are not a people pleasing doormat for your adult kids to wipe their dirty feet on. If you don’t let go of the guilt nonsense, your grown kids are going to try and use it against you. They know your emotional hot buttons and kids push those buttons until parents give in, or until parents use tough love and make it perfectly clear the manipulation attempts and guilt-tripping won’t work.[.
Just like this story about Mike and his mom’s attempts to move him out of the house, kids will pull every trick in the book including, ambivalence, dismissal, out of hand rejection of the whole idea, yelling and swearing, anger, declaring that his parents have given up on him or hate him, announcing they will never see him again, enlist the “help” of relatives, etc. Kick ‘em out anyway.
How to Kick Grown Children Out
If your grown kids have basically become a permanent fixture on your couch, or are not fulfilling their part of the contracted arrangement by putting in the time and effort to find a job and move out on their own, the freeloading and mooching stops now. If you have been spending months or years trying your darndest to get a lazy, unmotivated, abusive, disrespectful adult child to move out on their own, implement Tough Love 101.
In the final analysis it is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.” Ann Landers.
Close your wallet or checkbook and put up a handmade sign over “their” bedroom door saying “the bank of mom and dad is hereby closed for business, effective immediately”. Parents should not enable their grown children, keeping them from growing up and becoming independent, by giving them money when they are old enough to earn it for themselves. Doing so deprives and cripples them of the opportunity and need to grow into mentally, emotionally and spiritually mature human beings providing for their own needs and wants. Encourage and motivate, yes. Enable, no.
Decide on a move-out date and circle it in red on the calendar, then place it in a location in plain sight and mark off each day that passes towards the final move date. Have a formal, sit-down conversation with your adult child(ren) and explain the move-out date and that it is nonnegotiable. No extensions are allowed. Whether it’s 30 days, 60 days or 90 days is up to you parents, but the maximum number of days is ninety. Moving out sooner is fine (and preferred), but no compromises to the set date may be made that extends their stay.
Greatly reduce the comfort level of your grown kids home environment in order to force them to leave home, finally. That means stop cooking for them; stop cleaning up after them; stop doing their laundry; stop being their taxi service or chauffeur; stop giving them money for any reason; stop paying their bills; stop buying their favorite foods, drinks, alcohol, snacks and cigarettes on your dime. Do not give handouts of money for food, clothing or entertainment either. Parents are also under no obligation to include adult children to tag along, and pay for expenses, when mom and dad go out for an evening of fun.
Remove the TV and remote from their bedroom, along with other electronic devices and unnecessary luxury items, and implement a “no friends over” rule. Put a padded lock on your bathroom and bedroom doors and hang onto the key, where you can hide or lockup items your grown kids should not have free access to. Shut off and discontinue service to all non-essentials: internet, cable and mobile cell phone services. By this point, your kids will likely have gotten a clue that you mean business and they need to move out. No if, and’s or but’s about it.
If not, then some tough love advocates advise making things disappear around the house. Things like toilet paper in bathrooms other than your own, paper towels, napkins, use of the microwave (hide it away), closet hangars etc. Before I would go so far as to start dismantling beds and hiding away stuff these kids leave around, I would be more inclined to simply ask for the house key, open the front door and escort the kid outside and close the door and lock it. Then change the locks or have a locksmith come and do it.
Understand that many of these suggestions and ideas are intended as a last resort, when you’ve tried everything else to motivate, help without enabling and encourage your grown kids to move out on their own. Where they belong. This is not about being a control freak or controlling the lives of your grown children..
The question of how to throw grown children out of the house is, by far, one of the most frequent questions I have received by parents to date. This is about restoring the peace and tranquility to your home and marriage, and your own financial stability and wellness before you parents and/or grandparents lose your entire savings or retirement accounts to unmotivated, lazy, entitled slackers and moochers who have overstayed their welcome in your house. No more free rides in life. Kick ‘em out once and for all. It’s for their own good, and yours.
By lyn...authors last name unknown
Last edited by Dollydo; 01-11-2012 at 06:33 AM..
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