A friend recently said to me, “I’m thinking about making my kids do chores.”
The “kids” to whom she was referring are college graduates, who just returned home after getting their diplomas. They do have jobs, driving to them in cars that their parents bought them.
Before you judge, let me add that these are terrific young people, raised by good, caring parents. Yes, they now live at home, rent free, and my friend makes a point of rushing home to have dinner ready for them. Not because anyone demands that she do so but … well … just because. She’s a mom.
And I hasten to repeat that they have jobs. Not important professional jobs, but they are employed. They work and earn money. This is more than can be said for some of my other friends’ offspring, who currently live in their houses and do … nothing. Well, OK, that’s not entirely accurate.
They play video games.
As the mother of two 20-somethings, I find this whole subject vexing in the extreme.
When do you step in and help out? And when do you just let them flop? I don’t know if there’s any one correct answer, except maybe not to throw them out because they don’t meet your standards of morality. Like, because they’re gay or pregnant.
I was stunned when my kids became teenagers to discover how many of their schoolmates had been driven out by their parents because they were gay, or otherwise unacceptable. It made me much more sympathetic to panhandling kids outside the convenience store. Sometimes, they really were homeless.
“Jack’s living under that store awning because his parents kicked him out,” my son would nonchalantly observe as we walked into the sushi joint in our suburban neighborhood, pointing to a former schoolmate who looked dirty and disheveled, under a tree with a backpack.
This was obviously always disturbing, and sometimes we had kids move in with us when they were in a jam. Teenagers really are helpless when the adults in their lives let them down. There aren’t many places for them to go.
But, on the other hand, you have young adults with caring families who never seem to mature, who live at home with every expectation of being supported, apparently, until they’re eligible for Medicare.
“What can I do?” parents sometimes ask me about their adult kids who live with them, who won’t work or go to school or take their meds or do what they need to do. “I don’t want to make them live on the street.”
Let me just say that my son, Cheetah Boy, still lives with me. As everyone knows, it costs $5.2 billion a month to rent any shoebox-sized apartment these days, so kids live at home. I like having him here. He can reach the top shelf on the kitchen cupboard. He washes my car and waters the tomatoes. I have someone to listen when I complain about the neighbors. Lately, miraculously, he’s even been remembering to put the trash cans on the curb before the trucks arrive.
And he works. Hard. He drives an Amazon truck for 10 hours a day and comes home beat every night. He pays for his own car, phone and insurance. No, I don’t make him pay rent, but he does chores. As I point out to him sometimes when he’s sluggish about that, “This is not a hotel!”
When he was a teenager and balked at getting a job, I made him print up a stack of résumés, put on a button-down shirt, and drove him to the local mall. I told him to hand out the résumés and not get back in the car until he had a job interview. It worked. Twice. He got jobs. Nowadays, kids will tell you, “No, Mom, you don’t understand. You have to apply for jobs online.”
This is true, but it’s a combo package. Meet the store manager, hand out your resume, and then apply online. That way, you don’t get lost in the shuffle. It works.
I had exceptionally stubborn children. But I was old and stubborn too. Don’t want to follow my rules? Step 1: Your bedroom door comes off its hinges. (One of my friends said to me, “Oh, but he wouldn’t like that.”) Step 2: All electronics are removed from the bedroom and locked away. Step 3: Cancel telephone contract. Step 4: Change Wi-Fi password. (Want Wi-Fi? Get a job.) Step 5: Well, OK, I don’t know what Step 5 is, because I’ve never had to resort to it. The previous steps have always worked.
I know more than one parent who actually buys weed for their adult nonworking child because “he needs it.” Um, yeah, if you want him to never work again.
Right now, I’m trying to decide what to do with my 25-year-old Toyota Corolla that I inherited from my mom, now that I have a newer car. Give it to a kid? Make them buy it? Sell it? I don’t even know if there is a right answer. And I don’t even have an ending for this column, because I’m still confused. Tell me what to think. mfisher@scng.com