When is it Time for Your Teen to Leave Home?
With some cultural exceptions, it is concerning when a teen doesn’t want to leave home once completing high school. Part of being a teen is struggling for independence and it ends with your teen having an identity separate from you, their parents. When they don’t want this independence, you have to encourage them to leave. You have to encourage them to grow up.
These teens may have had everything done for them by parents or siblings and have no desire or confidence in their ability to do things on their own. They may also have had a meshed relationship with their parents that didn’t offer enough breathing room to let the teen develop their own identity. Either way, it’s a big deal learning how to maneuver things like getting a job, an apartment, paying rent, and bills. This can be worrisome for anyone, but for teens that have been shy to branch out on their own, this can be very scary.
Still, they will never get that confidence or motivation to leave living with you, their parents. So, instead of continuing to protect them, get a newspaper or sit at the computer and take the initial steps with them, then leave them to figure it out on their own. If they are motivated enough to organize outings with friends then they can have a date by which they need to have found an apartment. Otherwise, they should be tenants in your home and contribute in some monetary way to the household expenses (rent, utilities, their own groceries, etc.). Chores are not enough.
As I said, there are some exceptions to this nudging and they include cultural norms that dictate the teen lives with the family as a young adult as a way of adding to the family till, saving money or keeping the family close. For teens that suffered from a chronic illness (e.g. anorexia nervosa, depression or cystic fibrosis) it may be very difficult to separate if they are delayed in social development, which depends on how much the family and associated medical team encouraged normal development of milestones like independence and dating. If your teen’s chronic illness makes them too ill to live on their own, you should still look into group homes and day activities that offer socialization with peers and allow them to develop intimate relationships with others. When these teens are treated normally they too want to leave home.
As there are exceptions for the teen that may need to stay with the family, there are exceptions for teens that need to be asked to leave the home.
- Bullying others in the household especially if there are younger siblings
- Dangerous situations due to drug use or gang affiliation
- Disrespecting the rules of your household (dating, socializing, monetary contributions, etc.)
Teens need to know they can stand on their own two feet. This is the only way they develop the confidence to interact with the world. Keeping them in their old room until they figure something out has nothing to do with being a “good parent” and in fact is opposite to your job as a parent, to socialize your teen and let them discover their identity outside of your home. Believe in them enough and let them begin to believe in themselves. This is the only way they will truly know what they are made of.
Related posts:
Loading ...