At 17, I got sent by my parents to the city to study in a prestigious university. That marked the last time I lived in my house (which I now refer to as My Parent’s House). Was it hard to live alone during college? No, because my parents still sent me money to pay for my expenses and dormitory lease. After college when my parents did not support me financially anymore, was it hard living alone? Hell, yeah.

I chose not return to my hometown to live with my parents again and help out in our family business (as opposed to building a career of my own) because of several reasons:

1. I couldn’t bear to live each day in “Nag-land” with my mom doing most of the nagging. (25%)
2. I wanted to buy things without having to beg for the money that I will use. (15%)
3. I wanted to earn my parents’ respect. (50%)
4. I wanted my siblings to follow me in my path of severing the ties of childhood as soon as possible (10%)

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Our relationship with our parents changes as soon as we get to the point where we are able to take care of ourselves, but choose not to because we still love the free-loading we’ve always enjoyed in our parents’ homes. They turn from doting parents to exasperated older people who complain about our jobs, our chores around the house and our general future.

They still love us, we know that deep inside, though we sometimes feel that they don’t. However, a child’s reluctance to leave the nest and embrace the hardships of starting from scratch pains them in the sense that they start doubting how they raised us. Did they spoil us too much? Were they lousy examples of hardwork?

They want to tell us “you’re old enough to go at it alone, but I don’t want you to think I’m driving you away”, but sometimes this sentiment comes out the wrong way. Some resort to guilt-trips, nagging and even threats.

If we want our parents to treat us like adults, we should start acting like adults. Only when they’ve seen our efforts to be independent will they start being supportive.

Instead of complaining how our parents are not supportive of our careers, let’s give them something to be supportive about first.

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