Patch Voice: Closing the Bank of Mom and Dad

By Colleen Walsh Fong

Are your kids overly dependent upon you? It can happen in what seems like the blink of an eye. One minute you’re the team mom organizing the snack roster. Suddenly you wake up to realize you’ve become CEO of the Bank of Mom and Dad, funding capable grown children out of habit--yours and theirs. It happens so gradually you don’t even realize it until you have a dependent adult child in your basement or guest room.

The first time I noticed things were a little out of balance was when one of my then teen kids handed me his coat to hold. I took it without batting an eye. And then it hit me how programmed I’d become to doing everything for my kids. A “Hey, wait a minute. You’re bigger than me now. Hold your own coat!” later I felt freer than I had in years. Even with the light bulb on purses and chapsticks are still passed to me from time to time. But I remain firm in my resolve not to take them.

There are lots of reasons we parents fall into the enabling trap. Some stem from safety concerns. At the risk of being placed into the “I-walked-10-miles-through-the-snow-to-school-and-back” category, I can’t help contrasting my childhood experiences with my kids’.

A huge treat for my siblings and me was a mid-week trip to the local mall. We’d pile out of the car with instructions to meet at the fountain 2 hours later. My age was still a single digit. I’d go off on my way, usually ending up in Kresge’s where I could browse the penny candy bins, buy a 5 cent bag of popcorn, and pick up a birthday gift for my mom all with the quarter my grandmother had slipped me on her last visit. My mom presided over an allowance-free zone so we all looked forward to that secret exchange of coin. My errands done I’d skip around the mall and then meet at the appointed time.

I enjoyed freedom at an early age. My mom opened the door on pre-kindergarten mornings and let us out. We rode trikes and then bikes around the neighborhood as soon as we could pedal without a guiding hand. Seriously, I think my bike-riding instruction lasted all of 3 minutes. I got one big push by a neighbor kid who’d sold her bike to my parents for $5 with the condition that she had to teach me how to ride it. I had to either hold my balance or scrape my knees. I’m sure my mom was in the kitchen peeling potatoes or something at the moment that I first balanced my bike, and not hovering around with a movie camera to immortalize mastery of my every milestone. And yes, I admit it; I taught my kids how to ride their bikes and snapped a few pics of our proud moment, too. Nothing wrong with that.

I don’t know any parents who would let their young kids roam a mall, go to the movies, or ride a bike unsupervised today and with good reason. Unattended children are all too often nabbed from their own driveways and turn up missing or dead. So our opportunities to instill a sense of independence are fewer and we have to choose them wisely.

Another problem is how much stuff the Joneses shower on their kids. It’s really hard to be the meanies who keep saying no. And sometimes we shouldn’t. What’s wrong with letting kids feel like they deserve some nice things? Nothing. As long as they don’t feel entitled to have every nice thing, and all at our expense. Putting everything their hearts desire into their hands robs them of opportunities to learn how to earn their own ways and how to manage money. Better to let them feel the pain of some bad financial decisions at a young age when the consequences are small than to lose a house to foreclosure as an adult because they never learned how to save and budget for a video game.

But let’s admit it. Sometimes we just make excuses for our kids for various reasons. And here I’m talking about healthy, able-bodied kids. We love to see them have fun. It feels good to give them stuff. We like to have them around--they’re good company and we love them. Some of us may even feel the need to buy their affections.

A favorite and oft heard excuse for an adult child living off of his parents is the “he can’t find anything in his field” one. The implication being that his parents must support him, including paying for automobile insurance, health insurance, phones, gasoline, and maybe even slipping him a few bucks, like my grandmother did, for spending money. It seems to me the implication should be that he is therefore underemployed, not unemployed, while looking for something in the right field. Just so he contributes to the household expenses--or at the very least pays for his own phone, insurance, gas, and spending money in order to take some responsibility for his adult being. After all, his parents can still slip him a few bucks now and then.

Here I feel compelled to mention that my late brother, Bill, suffered with Asperger’s Syndrome. And when I say suffered I mean it. His was a tortured life in which he was bullied and shunned by others. Yet he worked from the time that he was legally able until he became disabled near his 60th birthday. He didn’t get a pass on paying rent to my parents. It was a small, nominal amount that I’m sure didn’t even cover the cost of his meals, but he contributed nevertheless. It was good for him. It gave him purpose and some semblance of normalcy. And the right to think of himself as an adult. When our parents passed away, Bill could carry on.

This is good food for thought when deciding what and how much to do for our children, and for how long.

At what point and at what age do we start to draw the line on subsidies? That’s for each of us to decide while considering what we can give, what our kids can do, and any special circumstances that may surround them. But whatever age we set for cutting off financing or calling in our loans our goal should always be to parent our children into responsible adults who can care for themselves and make it in the world. Because we won’t be there forever to provide a safety net. The sooner we start them on the path to independence the better off they will be.

If you’ve moved from nurturing parent to enabling co-adult it may be time to cut off the revolving credit line, call in your loans, and close the Bank of Mom and Dad for your child’s own good.

Colleen is a freelance writer specializing in producing custom content for businesses.

Image Courtesy of Natara / FreeDigitalPhotos.Net