HOW TO: Survive When Your Adult Child Moves Home

The economic downturn has taken a hard hit on recent college graduates, who are choosing to move home in increasing numbers. While the free rent and home cooked meals might be a treat for young adults, parents often struggle with having children back in their home after years of an empty nest. For those parents, Linda Perlman Gordon and Susan Morris Shaffer wrote Mom, Can I Move Back in With You: A Survival Guide For Parents Of Twentysomethings. If you are a parent with an adult child at home, heed these tips from their book:

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• Learn from other cultures what works and what doesn’t work when adult children live at home.

• Adjustment and compromise are essential to avoiding resentment and bad feelings.

• Provide support, but don’t enable dependency, which leads to decreased self-esteem and delayed maturity in adult children.

• Negotiate rules and responsibilities when adult children move back and reevaluate them as needed.

• Be patient with your twentysomething. Maturity is a process that takes time. Learn to measure adulthood by behavioral characteristics, rather than markers or milestones.

• Enjoy the time together; it doesn’t last forever.