Are Parents Helping or Enabling Their Adult Children?

The primary job of a parent is to prepare their children for how the world really works. We teach and train our children from childhood the knowledge and skills necessary to become independent adults, self-sufficient and upstanding members of society. In the real world, you don't always get what you want. Many young adults today have unrealistic expectations when they initially go out on their own. Many feel they are entitled to immediately live a middle-class life style (or better), because that's what they're used to. They weren't born, or were very young children, during the years their parents struggled to make ends meet, pay their bills (and on time), having to eat hot dogs and beans instead of steak dinners, struggling to live within their means. Many young adults are living at home with their parents, not out of true need, but out of what I refer to as the "Whine Factor." They whine about the costs of housing, and how they just "couldn't possibly live in a tiny little apartment, in a sub-standard neighborhood." They whine about having to live on red beans and rice, Ramen noodles, or macaroni and cheese, because their current salary doesn't allow for the kinds of meals they were used to at their parents home. (Someone get me a tissue.....snif) What happened to teaching our children how the Real World is?! That in order to have the things you want, you have to work very hard. That you have to perhaps work two jobs instead of one, all the while going to college? Many young adults, some who now have children of their own, believe their parents somehow "owe them" financial assistance, to rescue them from the burden of their own poor money-management habits! Excuse ME.....?!

Let me see if I get this right. Young adults, married or living together, working full-time jobs, with or without a child to support, choose to spend their money frivolously rather than ensuring they are living within their means, and when they run into financial trouble and can't pay their bills, the parents owe it to their children to rescue them?! Sometimes even expected to "help" many, many times over? Huh?! I'm of the thinking that if my grown, adult children, choose to spend their money on things they "want" rather than their "needs" (like a place to live, utilities, food, etc.., like the rest of us do) and their electric gets shut off because of non-payment? Okay! Over-indulgence is one of the most insidious forms of child abuse. So their food goes bad and they have to throw it away. Maybe, just maybe, it's more of a "help" to allow them to experience the consequences of their own poor choices, in order to learn the valuable lessons needed to be grown, independent ADULTS. Continuously rescuing them from their choices and subsequent consequences, giving them money as a fix to their immediate self-made problem, allowing them to move back in with their parents, this is called "help"? I think it's actually enabling our young adult children rather than help, preventing them from the realities of the real world. In the real world, you work long and hard for the things you need and want. That's the only way to truly appreciate what you have, when you've worked very hard for it, all on your own.

As the cost of living soars, more young adults are turning to their parents for financial help. Sometimes the best help of all is saying no. I read an article entitled "Keeping Your Kids Afloat" in the AARP magazine. After reading the article, and visiting the message board associated with the article, and reading many comments from parents and grandparents alike, it became immediately obvious to me that parents need to learn how to "Close The Bank Of Mom And Dad".