It was perhaps when my parents—who also happen to be my housemates—left to go travelling for a couple months recently that it (26)_____on me why I had not yet left the family home.
It wasn’t that I relied on them for (27) _____ reasons, or to keep my life in order, or to ease the chaos of the home. These days, I rely on them for their company.
I missed coming home and talking about my day at work, and I missed being able to read their faces and sense how their day was. I missed having unique (28)_____ into the tiny details that make a life.
While the conversation about young adults staying longer at home is (29)_____by talk of laziness, of dependence, of an inability for young people to pull themselves together, (30)_____do we talk of the way, in my case at least, my relationship with my parents has (31)_____strengthened the longer we have lived together.
Over the years the power dynamic has changed and is no longer defined by one being the giver and another, the taker. So, what does this say for our relationships within the family home?
According to psychologist Sabina Read, there are “some very positive possible (32)_____when adult children share the family home”, noting the “parent-child relationship may indeed strengthen and mature” in the process.
But, she notes, a strong (33)_____doesn’t simply come with time. “The many changing factors of the relationship need to be acknowledged, rather than hoping that the mere passage of time will (34)_____connect parents to their adult children. It’s important to acknowledge that the relationship parameters have changed to avoid falling back into (35)_____from the teen years.”
