My House, My Rules

My family has rules, your family has rules, and the one thing I think we can be fairly certain of, no matter what those rules are, is that our kids may not be obeying all of them while they are away at college. While their transgressions might be large or small we assume they are responsible adults, capable of making their own decisions, right up to the moment when they cross our thresholds and then — my house, my rules?

key in door
What family rules do you have for your returning college kids, if any?

Is Your Family Policy “My House, My Rules?”

The issues, be they drinking, vaping or just mixing whites and brights in the laundry, are complicated by our changing relationship, our ability to accept the adults they have become, our need to control what goes on in our own homes and the presence of younger siblings watching ever so closely.

So what to do, when the person who returns home bears all the signs of adulthood, but is very much your kid?

When my sons lived at home, my family had the usual dos and don’ts. Underage drinking — a big don’t. Letting me know where you are and with whom — a big do. Impeccable manners towards all adults at all times — another major do.  And then there were the usual, keep your grades up, keep the noise down after midnight, and STOP kicking that ball in the house.

Did they always obey? Certainly not, but they took a good shot at it. But, now they have another place they call home as well.  In that home, I am going to guess they are following whatever rules they have chosen to live by. The question is, what to do when they are in our home, the home they grew up in, my home?

When Christmas time rolled around, that meant two kids home from college. I had missed them so much I had failed to think through all that they brought with them when they returned. It took only minutes to remember. As soon as one son entered our house his high school friends arrived in the driveway and whisked him away to their favorite junk food joint. “Don’t worry mom I will be right back,” he said with that smile sons know to give their mothers, the one that melts your heart thus making it nearly impossible to protest, and he was out the door.

So where to begin. There was fact that in mere seconds he had returned to his pigsty ways and spilled dirty laundry out of his bag and all over the entryway. It wouldn’t have been so bad but he threw it on top of the pile his younger brother had already left when he returned from school. Then there was a gang of kids I adore, but actually had not intended to spend the entire winter break with, who were seemingly here to stay. Finally, I had to face the fact that my kid, who was home, was already gone.

My first instinct was to grab the rules, the ones he knew well and had long lived by, and start checking off his transgressions. But then, even before I could furiously start tapping my cell phone and send off a nasty text I would soon regret, I stopped and thought.

At that moment our house was the nicest most comfortable place he knew, but this will not always be the case. One day dorm rooms will be replaced with apartments, apartments perhaps with houses. If our house is only a place of physical comfort, it will not long be his home.

Every night there were more kids sleeping in my house, every morning less food in my refrigerator.

I couldn’t stay up late enough to even see who was here or if the lights were turned out and what little food remained was put away. A couple of mornings I awoke at 5:00 am to hear their laughter and chatter as my day began and their night had not yet ended. After a few more valiant attempts at self-control, I asked myself, was it my house, my rules and if it was, could it be their home as well?

The conventional wisdom says that they are adults and in dealing with adults it is important to lay down the rules of engagement. This wisdom says that if you make the rules of living together clear, chaos can be avoided. Here is my problem. They may be adults, but they are not just any adults. Chaos, I know from two decades of being a mom, is part of family life and I am pretty sure that real wisdom is never conventional.

I guess for me it comes down to this. I know they know the rules, after all, they grew up in this house. And out of respect and love for us I hope they will abide by them, and while I will issue occasional reminders, I will no longer enforce them.

So at Christmas a soccer ball and an expensive lamp had an unfortunate encounter (funnily, we still have the soccer ball.) And as I took the pieces of lamp out to the garbage, I said nothing. One of my kids stayed at a friend’s all night without a word of his whereabouts, and I said nothing. Why?

Because I want this now and forever to be home.

Sure I want good manners and thoughtful behavior and I hope after two decades of nagging that I will get it. But more than anything I want this to be the one place in the world that my kids can totally and entirely be themselves. I want the home they grew up in to be a joy and a refuge from the challenges they face in life. More than I worry about knowing where they have gone, or that my refrigerator is always empty and my entryway a pile of dirty laundry, I want this home, my home, to always be theirs.

So I find as I think about welcoming my adult and near adult children home for the holidays, that my patience is far greater, my willingness to nag far less and my only hope is that for them this is forever home.

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About Lisa Endlich Heffernan

Lisa (Endlich) Heffernan is the co-founder of Grown and Flown, the #1 site for parents of teens, college students and young adults, reaching millions of parents every month. Lisa is a New York Times bestselling author.
She started the Grown and Flown Parents Facebook Group and is co-author of Grown and Flown: How to Support Your Teen, Stay Close as a Family, and Raise Independent Adults (Flatiron Books) now in paperback.

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