At what point do the adult children in your house stop being welcome guests and start being squatters? I would really like to know the answer to this question because I believe my children are coming dangerously close to this break point.
My youngest, EM2, recently turned 18 years old, and she will be moving into a dorm room to attend college next month. She is by all legal accounts an adult, and yet this is the same child that will set her alarm clock for 11 o’clock in the morning so she does not “oversleep” and miss lunch. This is the same kid who, last week, wandered into my bedroom in the middle of the night to wake me up and tell me that there was a large bug in her bathroom and I needed to go kill it.
Of course, to be fair, my wife does that to me, too. But, I digress.
Last month, when we bought a new television set for the living room. EM2 asked me if she could have the old set in her bedroom. I told her, “No, you can’t. The only time you ever come out of your room is to grab food or watch tv. If you had a set in your room, I would never see you.” Before the words were completely out of my mouth, she was dragging the tv into her room. Of course, I let her do it, because … I’m not an idiot.
I haven’t been able to get my hands on the tv remote for the last five years. Finally, I can go an entire day without having to watch K-Pop videos. I’m going to call that a win.
Recently, my wife left on a work trip to Texas. She left me alone with the kids and the dog for five days. Before she left, she told the girls that they were responsible for taking care of the dog; feeding her, letting her outside to go to the bathroom, and just generally paying attention to her. Of course, we all knew how that was going to turn out.
The first morning, EM1 and EM2 got up and went to the State Fair to hang out with friends. I decided to sleep in since I had nowhere I needed to be that day. When I woke up, I wandered out to the kitchen to make some breakfast and I noticed the dog was still in her kennel crate. She was staring at me with a look that very clearly stated, “What the hell, man? Am I really supposed to be in here?”
I texted my daughters and asked if they had fed the dog. They texted back, “Sorry, we forgot.” Then I asked them if they had at least let the dog outside to go to the bathroom. They said – to absolutely nobody’s surprise – “Sorry, we forgot.”
I opened the back door and let the dog out of her crate. The draft from the dog running past me almost sucked the couch right out of the living room and into the back yard. When the dog squatted on the lawn to pee, she continued sliding across the grass for about twenty feet from her own momentum. About five minutes later, still squatting, she looked over her shoulder at me and said, “You gotta talk to those kids about this, man.” (I don’t know why the dog talks like she was raised in the 1970’s. She just does. Get over it.)
As the girls have gotten older, I have asked them to take on a little more responsibility around the house. I asked them if they would like to start helping with fixing meals at dinner time. They both said that they would, but apparently their idea of “helping” is to go hide in their bedrooms until food is already hitting the table. The same is true with cleaning up afterwards. As soon as they have finished eating, they are back in their rooms and I have dirty dishes to gather up and wash. And that is assuming that they bothered to hang out with the family while they ate rather than just take everything with them into their bedrooms. On a good day, those dishes might make it back to the sink. On a bad one, they will disappear altogether, and I won’t find them again until a week later when they start to smell.
I don’t want anybody who reads this to get the impression that my children are completely useless. I mean … they are completely useless. I just don’t want anyone to have that impression.
My hope is that by the time EM1 and EM2 have finished college, they will be able to get jobs, find their own places to live, and become productive members of society. If not, then my hope is that I will be able to throw them out of the house without involving the police.
I am trying to keep my expectations realistic.