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| ▲ | diskzero 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This must be a generational issue. My kids took “their” things with them when they became autonomous adults. As parents, we raised our children that they would move out and establish their own identities and futures. We never created any expectation that their childhood home would serve as a storage facility, extended stay facility or even exist. We of course offer help and support when needed. I know this is in conflict with a lot of modern parenting for many reasons. Our primary goal was to create independent, autonomous, fully functional adults capable of funding their own lives and determining their own future. | | |
| ▲ | scottLobster 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | As a father of 3 kids under 5, we bought our house 2.5 years ago and it has appreciated so much that had we saved every penny for the last 2.5 years we couldn't have afforded it today. It doesn't matter how high performing your kids are if no good opportunities exist. So while we hope the world will allow our independent, high performance kids to succeed on their own, we're planning on having to provide unique opportunities via resources/connections ourselves to make that happen. Accordingly we're treating our house as something of a family estate, to be held in perpetuity and they can live in as long as it's good for them. It's not about keeping them as forever-children, it's about providing a base with a secure perimeter from which they can marshal their resources. For instance, we're right in the middle of two major metros. So if they land an unpaid/underpaid but prestigious internship in one of them, they won't have to worry about housing. | | |
| ▲ | diskzero 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | A very interesting and valid observation. You and your children are super fortunate and your approach seems like a very good hedge against some serious uncertainty coming up. We weren’t quite in the same position until much later, and I am somewhat envious of your position. Best of luck! | | |
| ▲ | scottLobster 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Likewise, and I wasn't trying to invalidate your approach. Raising independent kids who understand the imperative of building their own lives is absolutely necessary regardless of economic conditions | | |
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| ▲ | SubmarineClub 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Kind of hard to take my stuff when I was attending college and then working clear on the other side of the country. Other than renting a U-Haul and driving 2,800 miles, there weren’t many options. Which I even suggested, to which my parents insisted they were happy to hang on to the stuff until it was easier to do the handover. >never created any expectation that their childhood home would serve…facility, extended stay facility or even exist. Sounds like a pretty sad mindset to me. Between me and your kids, I wonder which are happier to visit their parents? | | |
| ▲ | diskzero 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I somewhat expected my post would generate this type of attack and then lead to my parenting style is better than years, my kids are more successful than yours, my kids are happier to visit us than you, ad nauseam. Parenting is hard and there are multiple approaches that lead to successful outcomes. Your approach worked and I am happy for you. Congratulations on your successful approach. | | |
| ▲ | qlte 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > I somewhat expected my post would generate this type of attack
It may not have been your intention but your post had a combination of a somewhat smug, lecturing tone and patting oneself on the back which is a bit off-putting. And implicitly made a lot of assumptions about other parents' intentions/lived experience raising their children based on a single factor that's pretty insignificant like # of sq ft of child's belongings kept in the family home.Also, for all you knew at the time you replied, OP could've still had stuff in their parents' attic because they joined the Marines at 18 and was even more independent than your own kids. There was a lot of projection onto a trivial story. Plus "must be a generational issue" just sounds like more of the same "my generation was responsible/good/normal unlike kids these days" meme that gets repeated by every generation as they age and is tiresome to hear as an explanation for everything. | | | |
| ▲ | HildeHolden 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >I know this is in conflict with a lot of modern parenting for many reasons. Our primary goal was to create independent, autonomous, fully functional adults capable of funding their own lives and determining their own future. This heavily implies that the children of other "modern" parents are dysfunctional adults. As they say "to throw the stone and hide the hand". The funnier thing is that your parenting style is a modern post-WW2 phenomenon. | | |
| ▲ | diskzero 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | There is no implication here. It is clearly stated as "Our primary goal", not your primary goal. You are reading way too much into this. I agree it is a modern post-WW2 phenomenon, but not sure what is funny about it. Societies and systems constantly change and evolve. This is part of progress, and yes, can also cause setbacks. My use of the term "conflict" might be what is triggering. Maybe "bucks the trend" or "not in line with" would be better. Many approaches to parenting are successful. I presented my approach. Others work. | | |
| ▲ | pessimizer 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Now you're characterizing what you've done as progress, to defend characterizing it as opposed to modern parenting, and you anticipated attacks from other people. I'll tell you why I think you anticipated attacks after I tell you a reason why I disagree. I agree that it has been a generational thing. It was called the "Me Generation." Me, me, me. In the animal kingdom, parents abandoning their children to be completely independent is mostly common among insects, lizards, and amphibians, and is associated with large litters and a massive death rate among them. It's not modern, it's a feature of creatures that are lower than mammals. What's triggering is the fact that you've decided to brag about your superior parenting in public, and claim the evidence of that is that you have told your children that you're done with them. Nobody asked you, and you're aware that normal people don't do that to people that they are close to (hence the need to lecture.) Everybody raises their children to have the ability to be completely independent and self-sufficient. You just think you're uniquely successful at that, and that it somehow would be the child's fault if you've failed. Your kids didn't ask to be born, and if you don't rescue them from their failure (at least initially), it will be a reflection on you. If we are in the same social circles, and I know about this, I will judge you. Even hearing you explain it, and your feigned confusion (I guarantee you have this conversation all the time), would make me wary of hiring you into a management position. I'm not a lizard. I want everybody I care about to be self-sufficient, and I also don't want them to try to be unless they actually have to be. They have resources available to them that are not always being fully utilized, and when those resources can give them an advantage in any context, I would be angry if they weren't used. There are always limits to self-sufficiency, because there are massive advantages to abandoning it: that's what we call civilization. | | |
| ▲ | diskzero an hour ago | parent [-] | | Very good points. Thanks for the insight and critique. There is a reason I don't wade into social topics and usually only comment on technical things I have worked on and this is helping me understand why! |
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| ▲ | 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | mindslight 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Honestly telling your kid going off to college (or elsewhere) "you have to take everything from you care about, the rest is going to go away" seems like a good way to stunt their independence. The natural reaction would be to take as much as they can of their current life, which is then going to be a burden preventing them from growing into a new life. | | |
| ▲ | diskzero an hour ago | parent [-] | | When you put it this way, it is very anxiety inducing and I understand that. What this is helping me realize is that my childhood, and our lives of our children were different than many of the commenters, not necessarily better or worse. As children, my siblings and I didn't have a lot of stuff, and our family didn't have a lot of stuff either. It certainly wasn't our intent to traumatize and stunt our children and this doesn't seem to be the case. I will certainly ask them. |
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| ▲ | dyauspitr 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | What stuff do you have that is worth keeping that wouldn’t fit in one or two storage totes. I would think anything of sentimental value like pictures, art, trophies, books, paperwork etc would be quite small. | | |
| ▲ | recursivecaveat 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | When I was moving into a dorm, a few totes would have been a lot of my available space. I'm pretty glad my parents would let me pick and choose before clearing stuff out. Saving my childhood stuffed animals or favorite books so I can share them with my own kids someday is pretty meaningful to me, same thing I remember my parents doing. I don't know if I would have had the correct perspective to make those choices as a university freshman. Unless you immediately downsize after becoming an empty nester you're going to have way more storage space than you need anyways. |
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| ▲ | QuadmasterXLII 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Growing up, actual peak existence was visiting Grandma's house and playing with my mom's old toys. The seemingly unlimited, completely novel hoard from another time. My son feels similarly about visiting my parents' house and playing with my old toys. This may or may not be sustainable but it seems like it is well on its way with four generations involved- from where I stand, keeping a good pile of consumerism around to pay it forward in 20 years doesn't seem out of proportion with the joy I've received. It's definitely a culture thing- nobody in my family tree seems to move much, and has decent taste in throwing out the actual trash and keeping stuff stored nicely over the long time gaps, then not being fussy about the next generation being pretty hard on stuff (within reason, as appropriate for their age) | |
| ▲ | rcxdude 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You're right that this is a generational thing, but the expectation for your kids to move out like this is also relatively recent: historically it was a lot more common for your children to continue to live with you, or if not, to live very nearby. Arguably one of the biggest reasons for the modern birthrate dropping is that lack of local family ties to help with childcare. (And yeah, for college this just isn't practical: college accommodation is temporary, tiny, and students have practically no money. Taking all your stuff with you to college is a lot of effort for very little gain). | |
| ▲ | toast0 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > My kids took “their” things with them when they became autonomous adults. College students both are and are not autonomous adults. It's not really practical to bring all your stuff to college housing, and you don't always graduate into a good job market where you can go directly to the workforce and a nice place where all your stuff fits. Not everyone can afford to, and that's fine, but if you can give your kids an easier transition to full autonomy, it seems reasonable. If moving while the kids are in college, it's nice to keep their stuff somewhere. | |
| ▲ | BeetleB 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > My kids took “their” things with them when they became autonomous adults No room for that in college dorms. I would wait until they graduate and have jobs. | |
| ▲ | 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | umeshunni 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > If my parents had done that I would have been pissed. I was pretty pissed when I went off to college and my parents threw away my 80s computer that would now be considered a classic. | |
| ▲ | neutronicus 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They gave away my Charizard ;_; |
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