How Long Should You Financially Support a Child Who's Left the Nest?

A friend of a friend had her first child leave the nest. She did it a bit too soon, left before graduating from high school to go live with some boy. The daughter did get her GED and fortunately is not pregnant. Despite the silver lining of moving out of a dysfunctional home, the daughter is not making good use of her life. She has no job, doesn't even try for one, lives off her husband's meager income and spends money like its water. As a result there are frequent calls home to mom and dad begging for money to cover the rent, the utilities and even groceries. Yet they have lots of computer toys, games and movies whenever they want.

As a parent of young children I look at this situation and try to learn from it. My first lesson is this: no matter how hard it is, I cannot continue to support an ungrateful lazy child so she can squander everything I work for just to play house two states away. I know that some lessons have to be learned the hard way. It would be very difficult for me to tell my child, "no, I will not send you food money. You have to get a job." It would be very tough. But it's something that must be done in order for that child to learn that life is hard and you cannot suck your parents dry. That poor daughter is very immature and in order to keep her from disappearing from their life completely they continue to feed her habits. But this only serves to destroy the potential for this young woman to learn how to lead a good life. I honestly can't imagine what she does all day long with no job, but her Facebook account talks about frequent shopping trips and she comes home with useless junk. I'm guessing it's all funded by mommy and daddy.

Take this as a lesson if you are a parent. If you give your kids free license to abuse you chances are they will. If your kids are still really young take the time to teach them about life's responsibilities and back it up with actions, not just words. Life is hard and it's not a free ride. The lessons can be painful but they must be learned.

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