When the Nest Isn’t Empty – Boomerang Children
When the Nest isn’t Empty
You may have anticipated this empty nest phase of your life, and planned to manage this as a normal life transition. However, things did not end up turning out as you thought that they would. You may still have adult children living at home. According to the 2021 Census 58% of adults aged 18-24 are living at home with their parents and 17% of adults aged 25-34 are living at home with their parents. This phenomenon of adult children returning to live at home with their parents is called “Boomerang Children.” The influences on the financial needs of Boomerang Children include a shortage of affordable housing, increased student loan debt, and employment volatility. Other factors include delayed milestones, personal development, and the need for health care support. Many families find themselves in this situation, and are attempting to find balance in how to have healthy relationships with these children, who are now adults, in their home.
Life with adult children in the home can cause unexpected stress.
The present circumstances may create conflict if the adult child has differing lifestyles, values or habits. Parents may experience a loss of privacy or have difficulty adjusting their roles with adult children. This can increase emotional distress including frustration, anxiety, and disappointment. Increased conflict in your marraige is likely if the two of you disagree on the approach of having adult children in the home again. Overall, strife can occur with so many individuals in the home attempting to share space once again. It’s natural for this new and unexpected transition to feel difficult.
What can help ease the stress during this challenging time?
- Establish clear boundaries. Discuss together house rules, responsibilities, and timeframes to set expectations and avoid misunderstandings.
- Create a supportive environment by engaging in open communication through active listening without expressing judgement.
- Discuss finances openly and set an expectation to contribute to the household.
- Balance freedom and structure by respecting their privacy while holding household standards.
- Be patient. Give each other grace because adjusting to living together can be difficult for both parties.
Despite the challenging time of life together, it can also be a time of growth and joy. There are ways to continue to connect with your adult children andmake the most of this extended time together. It all starts with how we choose to look at the situation and decide to embrace it.
- Share experiences. Spend time together intentionally on a regular basis doing something you both enjoy like watching a favorite show together, meeting up weekly at a favorite restaurant, taking an exercise class, or traveling.
- Be open-minded. The younger generations have many things to offer including preferences in food, music, and décor. Be open to allowing them to teach you something.
- Encourage their interests. Just like when they were younger, be their cheerleaders and show interest in their passions and pursuits.
- Allow them to take a larger role in decision making. Allowing adult children to have input in holiday plans, meal choices, and household decisions will foster respect and provide opportunities for growth.
- Reconnect with your spouse. This is especially important! After spending years raising your children and making them a priority it is critical to prioritize your marriage. This is important for YOU, but it also provides a role model for your adult children of what healthy relationships look like. Plan regular date nights, experience new things together, support each other’s roles, and start new traditions.
Counseling can help smooth the adjustment of Boomerang Childen in the home
Transitions can be difficult, especially when they do not happen as we expected. Counseling help is available when you find it difficult to process the new needs of the family or need support engaging in the difficult conversations. Putting off addressing concerns can allow difficulties to grow, This transition can be a beautiful experience with reasonable expectations and helpful tools.
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Adults Setting Boundaries with Parents: A Guide
When you are in the sandwich generation phase of life – an adult with children and aging parents of your own – you are feeling pulled in every direction. In this situation, you could be assisting your parents manage their finances while simultaneously helping your children deal with middle to high school social stressors. An adult in this situation has numerous responsibilities and can feel hectic and out of control of their own lives.Many do the best they can to keep up with the expecations of others. But others fall into a pattern of giving to the point they emotionally break. This is when adults need to set boundaries with their own parents.
This is all an act of love and responsibility for the family in your life. We know that to be true, but it becomes overwhelming. Eventually, it causes a loss of your own sense of a self. You too are a person with wants and needs and finding time for you is still important and valid. The emotional strain of this is magnified when a parent has had emotional health issues of their own, are enmeshed into their adult children’s lives, or are finding difficulties in their own aging process. This is a major reason why adults need to set boundaries with their parents.
While it can be hard at first, setting healthy boundaries with your parents is important and can be done! Once an adult begins to hold boundaries and has communication that is filled with respect and compassion, family relationships become closer and more connected. Below are simple approaches to helping you rebuild and maintain those boundaries so you can find time for yourself again, and some calm and control in this phase of life.
Here are some thoughts on navigating this delicate balance in creating boundaries with your adult parents:
- Communicate openly and respectfully: Express your boundaries clearly but compassionately. Be exact in your language so there is no misunderstanding of what you expect. Let your parents know what you need while acknowledging their feelings and perspectives.
- Set clear limits: Identify specific behaviors or topics that make you uncomfortable and communicate your limits firmly. These specific incidences will help you to request and measure clear change over time. Be consistent in enforcing these boundaries. Tell your parent(s) know how you will respond if the limit is not respected.
- Recognize your own needs: Affirming your emotional and practical needs first is key! Understand that it’s okay to prioritize your well-being and assert your boundaries when necessary. Your needs are valid, even if they may differ from your parents’ expectations. Respectful communication creates space for both your needs and that of your parents.
- Be assertive, not aggressive: Asserting boundaries doesn’t mean being confrontational or disrespectful. Maintain a calm and assertive demeanor when communicating your needs to avoid escalating conflicts. Remember, love is a language too!
- Practice self-care: Take care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally. Setting boundaries with parents can be emotionally draining, so make sure to prioritize self-care activities that recharge you.
- Seek support if needed: Ask for help if you find any of these steps intimidating. If you’re struggling to establish or maintain boundaries with your parents, consider seeking support from a therapist or counselor. They can provide guidance and help you navigate complex family dynamics.
- Be flexible: Recognize that boundaries may need to evolve over time as circumstances change. Asserting your boundaries is just the beginning of change. It does take time. Stay open to renegotiating boundaries as necessary while staying true to your needs and values.
Remember, setting boundaries with adult parents is about creating healthier and more respectful relationships, not about distancing yourself from them. By establishing clear boundaries, you’re fostering mutual respect and understanding within your family dynamic. If you need help preparing how to set these boundaries with your parents, please contact one of our clinicians who can help you get started!
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Infertility, Addressing the Grief
If you have ever experienced infertility or the loss of a child by miscarriage, then you are probably all too familiar with the roller coaster of emotions that often accompanies this type of loss. Although it may go unmentioned or unnoticed by others, the pain and grief of infertility (both primary and secondary) can be excruciating for those going through it. In fact, one of the things that can make this journey so painful is the shame and secrecy people often attach to it. This shame may be a result of one’s own ideas of what it means to be fertile, as well as influenced by their familial and cultural expectations about reproducing. While a variety of options now exist for creating families, the path to these options for many parents may be long, emotionally tiring, physically draining, and financially taxing.
The Emotional Toll of Infertility
In my experience, it matters little whether infertility is explained or unexplained—it carries heartache nonetheless. Most couples report that they assumed they would be able to get pregnant easily and unless they have some pre-existing condition that directly impacts their ability to get pregnant, it comes as a blow to find out the process may not be so easy after all. Some couples discuss adoption during courtship and others quickly jump to this option (or others) upon hearing they cannot conceive without intervention. Many others, however, struggle with accepting their infertility. Even if they do go on to have children, the loss of a child by miscarriage or years of struggling with infertility can leave a mark.
One thing that is important to recognize when dealing with infertility is the grief involved. I have worked with couples that were so focused on growing their family that they forgot to take time to grieve along the way. In the case of adoption, this can be particularly concerning because unresolved grief can inhibit a parent’s ability to bond with an adopted child. When couples have a mix of biological and adopted children, for instance, there can also be a difference in how each is treated based upon how they joined the family. Unfortunately, children quickly pick up on these differences and adoptees often feel unwanted or less loved as a result. Unresolved grief related to infertility can have wide reaching implications.
How to Address the Grief of Infertility
One adoptive mother I worked with likened her grief process to a picture she might keep on the night stand, explaining that the picture, like grief, never goes away; however, as time goes by, the picture might be moved to another position on the night stand and no longer kept at front and center. Her grief, due to years of infertility and unsuccessful invitro treatments, healed over time as she addressed the loss and what it meant for her as a woman not to be able to conceive and carry a biological child. With time, she shared, the grief took a back row to the other pictures on her night stand. I also worked with an adoptive father who had Hodgkin’s Disease as a teenager, the treatment of which left him sterile. While he always knew he would not be able to conceive a child, it was not until he was married that the emotions of this loss really hit him. In therapy, he confronted what it meant for him to be a virile man and his shame over “letting his wife down,” which was not how she felt at all, by the way. One man I worked with was happily married with several children, yet he had never grieved the baby he and his high school girlfriend lost because of a spontaneous abortion. He finally reached a certain point in his adult life where he could no longer ignore the impact this loss had on him. Even though he recognized that raising a baby at 16 would have had certain challenges, he grieved the loss of what might have been and how it led to the eventual break-up with his first love. Through the course of therapy, he even realized how this loss was also impacting his current intimate relationship with his wife. Together, we were able to work through these varying elements of grief and the client was able to stop blaming himself for what happened and finally feel peace. In many situations, I have helped couples sit with their sadness and acknowledge their conflicting emotions, as well as identify possible alternatives for growing a family in the future.
How to Provide Support if You Are a Friend or Family Member
If you are in a relationship with someone who is struggling with the grief of infertility or have a close family member or friend who is struggling with this, there are some things you can do to be supportive:
1. Listen. Don’t offer platitudes, things like “You’ll get pregnant. Just stop trying so hard. Don’t worry, it will happen with time.” Clients report that while these statements may be well meaning, they are not helpful and often feel dismissive.
2. Don’t offer advice. Instead, ask what would be helpful and how they need you to show up at this time.
3. Refrain from comparing your experience (or that of your sister, mother, cousin, co-worker) to theirs. Everyone experiences infertility very uniquely and it is so deeply personal, which again makes comparing feel very dismissive.
4. Remember your loved one. Send a simple text or card letting them know you are thinking of/praying for them. Let them know they are not forgotten and that you are there for them.
5. Finally, if you notice your loved one is becoming anxious or depressed because of their loss and grief, kindly ask if they have considered talking to someone. Finding a professional who is experienced with grief, infertility, adoption, and other related topics can be extremely validating and healing.
Sarah Groff, LCMHCS has over 22 years of experience in the mental health field, many of which have specifically focused on adoption, infertility, and working with the entire adoption triad, as well as assisting women with making a parallel plan for adoption and parenting. If you or someone you know may benefit from counseling to focus on one of these areas, please submit a request to speak with someone at one of our offices.
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