Reasons to Kick Your Child Out (+7 Easy Steps)
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OptimistMinds
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The Optimistminds editorial team is made up of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Each article is written by a team member with exposure to and experience in the subject matter. The article then gets reviewed by a more senior editorial member. This is someone with extensive knowledge of the subject matter and highly cited published material.
In this article, we will be checking out some reasons why you may want to kick your child out. Furthermore, we will also be perusing instances when you should not ask your child to move out, as well as describing a few solutions that you can use if you want to help your child to do so.
Reasons to Kick Your Child Out
The main reasons why you may want to kick your child out are:
- Helping your child become independent
- Teaching them about boundaries
- Helping their relationships
- Cutting down your own costs
- Protecting yourself
- Improving your relationship with them
Helping your child become independent
The main reason why many parents get their children to move out of the house is to simply help them in becoming more independent. Of course, this does not mean you need to push your child out of the house while they are still in their teenage years.
The best time to help your child move out is when they are equipped with some basic life skills like cooking and laundry, along with the right skill sets to get a job. Moving out can be difficult for any child, but it is important and essential for their survival in the world.
Teaching them about boundaries
Some parents kick their child out of the house when they feel that their boundaries have been crossed. These boundaries can be in the form of not obeying house rules, invading privacy or even overspending of their parents’ funds.
When you encourage your child to move out of the house, you will be making an important step in the process of installing and maintaining new boundaries. Making your child move out does not obviously mean cutting off all contact, but basically setting limits to your relationship.
Helping their relationships
In some cases, adult children move back in with their parents when their own relationships have failed. For example, if they have been dumped by their partner and are too depressed to live alone, this may cause your adult child to move back in with you.
In other cases, certain life changes like divorce can also make your adult child move back in with you. While this is important for their healing, it can sometimes make them too comfortable with you. This can again damage their potential for future relationships.
When adult children move back in with their parents, this can also damage their mental health and may even lead to the emergence of depressive symptoms. This can further damage their social skill sets and relationships.
When you encourage your child to move out on their own, you will be doing a major important bit to help them in their relationships. When they are out on their own, they will learn to put their social skills to work to network and create their own family.
Cutting down your own costs
Having children live with you is never going to be cheap, especially if they are adults. According to several parents, they have been forced to kick their children out of the house because they simply could not afford to have them home.
If you feel that your adult child’s spending habits are eating their way into your savings, you may want to consider getting them out. Spending parents’ money is definitely not always in the case of the child losing their job and having no income.
In some cases, the adult child may have a great job and savings, but may still want to spend their parents’ money because they are too selfish to make a withdrawal from their bank account. In situations like this, it is important that your child moves out as soon as possible.
Protecting yourself
You cannot always expect bliss and sanity when you have an adult child living at home with you. In certain disappointing cases, adult children have become major threats to their parents’, affecting their social lives, their finances and even their physical/mental health.
However, due to guilt, many parents refrain from asking their child to move out since they don’t want to be termed a bad parent. But, if you feel that you are in harm’s way as a result of your adult child, you need to do yourself a favor and ask them to move out as soon as possible.
Improving your relationship with them
This may seem quite contradictory, but kicking your adult child out of the house can be the best thing that you do for your relationship with them. As the saying goes, “Distance makes the heart grow fonder”; and this applies to parent-child relationships as well.
The difference between adult-children and younger ones is that the former definitely have a mind of their own and dance to their own tunes. This can make it difficult at home, especially if you as the parent have conflicting principles and views when compared to your child.
Once your child is out of the house, you can ensure that you meet them regularly and communicate with them so as to keep your bond strong. Also, any conflicts can be resolved easily when you have time and distance between you and them.
When Should You Not Kick Your Child Out?
Even if your child may be causing you immense stress and displeasure and you are ready to ask them to move out, there are certain instances when you might want to rethink your approach. In the situations below, you should not kick your child out.
- When your child is below the legal age, it is illegal of you as their parent/guardian to kick them out of the house.
- If your child has a disability that does not allow them to be completely independent, it is definitely not right to get them out of the house without any support.
- If your adult child is struggling with their mental health, it may not be wise for you to kick them out as this can only hurt them more. This is especially if your child has exhibited self-harming or suicidal behaviors in the past.
How can you help your child get out on their own?
If you have an adult child living with you, and are eager to help them to get out on their own, you can use the strategies and solutions described below.
Talk to them
The biggest mistake most parents make when it comes to helping their adult children move out, is that they skip out on the talking part altogether. It is essential that you talk to your child about what is going on in their life.
At the same time, it is also important for you to talk about the various obstacles that may be troubling your child in the outside world. Sometimes, these obstacles are simple enough but some may need professional assistance, for which you need to be prepared. These can include assistance like therapy or even financial guidance or aid.
Create a plan
Once you have understood what your adult child is going through and have empathized with them, you can now go ahead and create a plan for them to move out. When you do this, you need to make your child understand that you are not necessarily kicking them out. Therefore, using the right words becomes essential here.
Set realistic goals
While creating a plan, it can be quite easy to be carried away and set unrealistic goals. Unrealistic goals can only make your child even more disappointed later on. Therefore, make sure that the goals you are helping them attain are realistic and measurable, with a proper time-frame.
Set up loving boundaries
As a parent, it often is the norm to keep giving to your child, even if they are fully-grown adults. This can lead to boundaries being crossed, at your physical, emotional and financial expense. When you are talking to your child about the goal to move out on their own, you can also use this time to set up boundaries with them in a loving and supportive manner.
Encourage financial independence
Many times, adult children start spending their parents’ money when they move in with them. This can be excused in certain situations, like if your child has just lost a job or is unwell and thus, unable to work. As a parent, you need to assert yourself and encourage them to become financially independent as soon as possible, to avoid them getting into a comfort zone.
Ask your parent partner for support
If you have a parent partner, you need to get them involved in this process. It is important that you stand together as a unit in this, even if you have your own differences otherwise. When you and your parent partner enforce the rules together, your adult child will be all the more motivated to follow them.
Follow-through the plan
Finally, it is important to follow-through with the plan in its timeline. The enforcing part can be done pretty easily when there are smaller goals peppered throughout the main plan. Simultaneously, you need to be prepared for delays and obstacles when you are following-through, while keeping the main goal in mind.
Conclusion
In this article, we have checked out some reasons why you may want to kick your child out. Furthermore, we have also perused instances when you should not ask your child to move out, as well as described a few solutions that you can use if you want to help your child to do so.
If you like this article, please post your comments and questions in the space below.
Citations
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785225/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6656342/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-017-9461-1
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13676261.2020.1820970
