The necessary return home of young adults in the face of covid-19 is daunting. This event is especially true at a time when these young people are outward, and future-focused. Such a move home is developmentally regressive for both parents and young adults. No family member wants to go backwards. This disruptive move back home by college students calls for both parents and young adults to dig deep for the strength and patience to weather this. It is an imposition and change for which no one is responsible and no one anticipated. How do we respond to this crisis as parents? The Chinese character for change which means “danger and opportunity.” In this and the next blog – Part II, I would like to share some perspectives that may help us mitigate the danger and capitalize on the opportunity.
Dangers
On the danger side of this change, it is clear that some significant risks and stressors can arise out of young adults moving back in or late teens spending more time at home. It’s no longer business as usual.
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The stress and tension of self-quarantine can lead to internal frustration and anxiety and external anger and irritability. Although sixty percent of parents who have young adults living with them, like having them at home, moving back home after living away is more challenging. Just the “stuff” that comes back into the house and a different young adult circadian rhythm- up late- sleep in- disrupts the pattern to which parents have become accustomed.
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Parents can feel invaded, and their privacy compromised when college students move back in. Spontaneity and intimacy for couples declines. The invasion of stuff, space, and privacy become fertile grounds for resentment.
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Inevitably there is a level of unconscious regression by parents reasserting parental prerogative and act like they have a fifteen-year-old in the house. Likewise, young adults take the bait or set the bait and can act like fifteen-year-olds. Until I was married, my return to the home always felt like I had returned to being a teenager.
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One danger is that too much togetherness can be suffocating and a source of irritability. This may be particularly true if the house is small, with limited safe rooms into which one can escape. My mentor in graduate school, Carl Whitaker, said healthy families are fluid and allow for both closeness and distance. The latter needs to be supported even more so when we are in close quarters for extended periods.
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Another danger is that of failing to create new structures and boundaries that can protect members and ensure a smooth operation of the activities necessary to live together in some level of harmony.
Opportunities
On the flip side, this situation also presents a variety of opportunities for parents of young adults.
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The coronavirus external threat can bring out the best in all of us- parents, young adults, and kids- if we approach it with compassion, hope, and solidarity. We have to remind ourselves that family members are not the enemy. We can be pioneers in demonstrating love and understanding for each other that will get us through this.
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It will require us to raise our levels of knowledge, empathy, and forgiveness. Acknowledging our crabbiness and practicing the gifts of apology and forgiveness will provide the anesthesia we need to bear this unsettling disruption in our lives.
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This event is an opportunity to appeal to the angels of our better nature and the idealism of youth. We need to see ourselves as soldiers in a war protecting not just our family members but others. We all must follow the CDC guidelines and stay put. Young adults today are often accused of being self-centered, but research indicates this has always been a characteristic of youth. This generation of young people is also idealistic and altruistic and want to make a difference in the world. Here’s the chance to do that. Stay put to save lives.
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We can resist falling into the parent-child patterns and step up as a community of adults working together to make the home a safe place. Both parties need to act more adultlike and less like critical parents or reactive kids. Both parties should think of adult kids at home as roommates who need to share in responsibilities of home life.
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This is an opportunity for parents to step up in a different way to help the family not just survive but thrive. In this regard, parents can take more of a “team leader” role, which young people understand, and organize a meeting after dinner to discuss roles responsibilities, structure, handling conflict, ideas to support each other. Young adults need to be full participants in offering their ideas. Parents need to do their best to incorporate ideas from their young adult while being true to the core values they hold. It is a time to discuss togetherness and separateness, privacy, and space utilization.
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Parents need to encourage family members to express gratitude for each day we have as a family. In past threats to our survival, we sent our young people off to war. Today our sacrifice is to stay home with our young people and celebrate our efforts to make a difference in the health and well-being of not just our family members, but the community.
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Finally, parents, who may be at higher risk, need to model courage and optimism. It is a time to build resilience in the family. Adversity can bring out the “grit” in each of us. Parents can lift up and celebrate the strengths and actions of each family member. We need to model and cheer our members on with continual messages such as “this too shall pass,” “we can get through this,” and “it will be okay.” As a child if I fell and skinned my knee, my mother would say-“it will be alright.” We all need to hear this now more than ever.
See Part II for actions family members can take to stick it out together.
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