How I Dealt With My Adult Sons When They Moved Back Home

Welcome to Ethels Tell All, where the writers behind The Ethel newsletter share their personal stories related to the joys and challenges of aging. Come back Wednesday each week for the latest piece, exclusively on AARP Members Edition.

I don’t think there is a parent out there who doesn’t look back upon the years they spent raising their children and wish they had done something differently. Between the tried-and-true “I shouldn’t have spent so much time at work” and “We should have gone on more vacations,” I think it’s safe to say we all have our regrets.

Lately, mine have been less of the time-is-fleeting sort and more on the practical side. My sons, ages 21 and 23, have recently moved back home temporarily. My oldest is here to catch his breath after three grueling years at an Ivy League law school and another three stressful months studying for and taking the bar exam. The youngest is taking a break from undergrad and is home to save money while he works. I consider myself fortunate that they are here, and I take comfort most nights that my birdies are all in the nest.

There is one aspect of this situation, however, that I’m not so grateful for — and it makes me feel like an absolute failure as a parent. My kids are slobs. Absolutely, without a doubt, the messiest people I have ever met. We are talking dirty-every-dish-in-the-kitchen-before-cleaning-a-new-one slobs. They also wear every piece of clothing before washing anything and deposit their dirty clothes directly on the floor. They leave garbage and empty beverage containers on every surface.

And I fear it’s my own fault.

When I was growing up, all the kids in my family had chores, and we did them, no questions asked. There are 16 years between the youngest kid (me) and the oldest, so in the beginning, there were lots of hands to do the work. But as my older sisters and brother moved out, the bulk of the chores fell to me. When I was a teenager, there were times when I’d be vacuuming, scrubbing the bathtub or loading the dishwasher, and I’d see my mom, chilling on the couch with a cup of coffee in one hand and a Marlboro Light in the other, and I’d wonder why the hell she wasn’t doing any of this. So when I had kids, I decided I would not treat them like indentured servants.

But maybe I veered too far the other way. Sure, the kids were tasked with cleaning their rooms, picking up after themselves and taking out the garbage. But I took on most of the manual stuff, like vacuuming, cleaning the hardwood floors, scrubbing the bathrooms and deep-cleaning the kitchen. I’m a perfectionist with a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder, so no one could do it as well as I. Instead of teaching my kids how I do it — or making them do it and quietly going along behind them and fixing what they didn’t do too well — I just did all the work myself.

And now my chickens have come home to roost.