Recent polling shows a historical, and troubling, trend for millennials. More millennials (32 percent) live at home with their parents — the first time more live with their parents than with significant others since 1880. Financial hardship isn’t the only cost, as Kim Kardashian lived at home for a time. The trend is “robbery,” writes Jared Buckley, a millennial skills coach.
And it’s these millennials who are being affected by the robbery. “No matter what the reasons are, the decision is robbing Millennials of their transition into adulthood for further development. Millennials need to plan to move out and develop,” he writes. He also explains “Why Living at Home is Stealing Developmental Growth.”
Buckley is all about teaching hard but necessary lessons. His six-year-old daughter, who has Down Syndrome, was close to the edge of the pool, and so he pushed her in to assure she could get to the edge of the pool on her own.
“The life of parenting is surrounded with experimental learning opportunities to help children grow,” Buckley says. “But the opportunity is not always acted upon by parents,” he continues, and so parents lose out on the opportunity not just with young children, but with adult children living at home. Parents have expressed to Buckley how they worry about making it easier for their children to put off leaving home.
It’s parents who may be doing the robbing, as many underestimate the readiness of their children to live on their own. “Of course they may fall and probably will fall, but in those failures, great lessons are learned. The reality is young adulthood is messy and in that messiness, identities are discovered,” Buckley reminds them.
He also discusses how “crucial” it is for millennials to leave home and develop skills learned once they leave home. Parents need to realize and allow for that, and millennials need to make the decision they can leave and live on their own, and together they can make a plan.
