Live with young adults

Gouri Dange

Here’s the thing about making “new” rules to living with young adults: The rules are not new at all. Prophets and philosophers have been talking about them for centuries. It’s not a question of deciding yourself whether you’re going to be a “strict” or “lenient” parent now. Today’s 15 to 22-year-olds are not standing around hoping their parents will understand. They take it for granted, they insist on it, and if it is not forthcoming, they’ll let you know, for sure. In ways that you don’t really want to deal with. So, why not gracefully put into action these golden rules of parenting? No one is going to write them for you on a tablet of stone. You’re going to have to write them yourself, preferably with the help and involvement of your resident young adult.

Negative drivers are a no-no: Maybe many of us grew up on a diet of “Keep getting grades like this, and you’ll definitely get a job sweeping the streets”, and variations on this theme. It didn’t really work then and it definitely does not work now. Earlier, children accepted this kind of talk from parents, keeping their hurt pride and bruised egos to themselves. Today, kids will rebel and make you eat your words or, perhaps, completely close down communication. So, we just have to drop the “awfulizing” and the grim predictions. Not only do they not work, they rob young people of the will to dream.

Watch those presumptions: It is pointless to box your teenager in with your perceptions of his or her potential. A parent who kept telling her 18-year-old daughter not to waste time visiting art shows since, “your drawings were never good and all this art business is not for us middle-class people” is, six years later, proudly talking about her daughter Kavya’s fast-rising career with an art auction house. Beyond a point, we know little about what our kid is capable of, in which direction he or she would want to go, what avenues will open up for him, and which doors she will confidently knock on later.

Chuck the guilt-tripping: Again, it may have been one of those much-used screwdrivers from the parenting toolkit of yesteryears, but it’s of no use today. One could go as far as to say that guilt is perhaps the single most mentally crippling emotion in a parent-child relationship. We may, on the face of it, get our teenagers to fall in line by whining on about how we have sacrificed our own career/social life/needs for his future. But guilt is a cruel and perverse taskmaster, invisibly eating away from your kid’s psyche while visibly getting her to “do the right thing”.