Sometimes a very long time and absolute proof you are an adult.
Brainiac4’s Dad took until Brainiac was in his late 30s. Sometime after his son had a successful marriage (my in laws are divorced), been a successful parent for a few years (my father in law is not the world’s best parent), and a successful career (Brainiac4 started out-earning his father - who was a successful illustrator, but that isn’t a well paying job). Then he spent several years not knowing how to talk to his son.
Distance can also create a delay in seeing the maturity and responsibility develop, and then there is a delay in parental adjustment - even with normal parents willing to let go. However, reasonable parents do back off for the most part as you show competence - it doesn’t sound like you are showing competence yet though - their plans for you are as good as your lack of plans for yourself - you can’t really blame them for trying to fill the void - that’s what parents do for children until the children either are competent, or need to be cut loose regardless.
Have you countered their suggestions with your own ideas and plans?
I definitely understanding how irritating it is to be nagged to death. But I guess as I get older (and I’m not that much older than you), I can kind of see the perspective of the nagging parent. They’ve invested a lot in you. Not only in college tuition, but all the energy and time in your upbringing. You are at the precipitace of leaving their nest, and they just want to make sure you fly in the right direction.
If you aren’t giving them any indication that this is going to happen, then of course they’re going to worry. Not only about you, but also about themselves. It’s no fun paying living expenses for a post-graduate, no matter how lovable she is.
A plan could be as simple as: “I’m going to graduate school to study blank, so I can get into blank career. I’ll be taking out loans, but I’m hoping to get a part-time job doing blank so I could build my resume.” Two short sentences that exhibit your intentions, goals, and most importantly, your desire to be independent. If they continue to badger you, then you can say, “That’s not in my plan, sorry. But thanks for the suggestion!”
If your plan isn’t so ambitious, don’t worry. The important thing is to make sure you’re independent. Honestly, I think that’s all parents really care about.
That’s the thing - they’ve said that they’re more than willing to do that. I haven’t gone home over the summer for the past two years - though I have spent our ridiculously long winter break at home - and I get the impression that they almost want me to move back home. We also have a long-standing agreement that if I need them to (which is likely) they’ll handle the repayment on two of my undergrad loans which are technically in their names. It’s like they feel that if I must grow up and move out, they expect me to continue to do exactly what they want.
I have discussed my plans with them. “Well, right now I’m not totally decided, but I’m going to apply for a field internship with This Charity for after I graduate, and I’m also going to apply to These grad schools, studying This, with the intent of doing This for my career.” “Well, have you thought any more about Peace Corps?” They don’t listen.
I’m not showing competence? How, exactly? I moved out here without them. I’ll be the first to admit I made a bit of a mess of my first three semesters, then I took a year off, spending most of it working in Europe. With the exception of needing one small loan, which was repaid on-schedule, to pay rent shortly after I got to London, I was absolutely independent of them and, since I had a great time, didn’t endure any major catastrophes, didn’t get arrested, got re-accepted to school and have been doing just fine since, I’m not sure where you’re getting that I’m incompetent.
Ignoring what I’m assuming was your sarcasm, they are. Mom and Dad were 38 and 36, respectively, when I was born.
I feel your pain. Parents can latch on to the most random stuff. My parents are obsessed with the idea that I should be…a junior college professor. This has been a theme for years. I can’t figure out where they got that idea or why it won’t go away. I don’t even bother to discuss this stuff anymore, because I know all I’m going to get out of it is “Well, what you really should do is teach junior college.”
And yeah, it does get worse when they start wanting grandchildren. Oh my god does the “well meaning advice” get worse- and more insistent!
The good news is that all you have to do is a get a life, and then you really don’t have to listen to them any more. My last “where is your life headed” talk was me saying “So. I’m moving to China next summer.” That felt really good.
I’m required to plug the Peace Corps. It’s more than farming and teaching- I worked with a group producing videos about AIDS prevention in local languages. My friends did such varied stuff as help handicraft producers market their goods overseas, help people get fair-trade certification, run Internet cafes, open libraries, run United Nations Development Program field offices, assist local banks in implementing micro finance programs, etc. Really there is a lot of room for doing whatever interests you. It is great networking (more future lawyers and MBAs than hippies join nowadays) and a good career boost- I went from “fresh college grad” to “College teacher who speaks three languages and has years of international teaching experience and connections all over the world” in two short years. And there is the amazing though difficult experience of living in another culture. Anyway, I refused to join fresh out of school for basically the same reasons, and it was a stupid thing. Don’t blame your mom too much. The Peace Corps Kool-Aid is pretty strong and we get a big evangelical.
Maybe your mother is just trying to connect with you about a time in her life that was significant and meaningful to her? I mean, you’re the same age as she was when she went into the Peace Corps - is it wrong for her to want to give you something she valued?
And geez, The Second Stone - I’m just 28 and my parents were way too old in 1969 to be living in VW buses. My dad was almost 40. (He wanted me to go to business school, even when I was in library school. Because who doesn’t want to be a library administrator?)
Older people know more are are smarter. Just do what your parents want you to and everybody will be happy. Some countries venerate their oldsters. We should here. Appreciate their wisdom and follow their suggestions.
Exactly. Become a Peace Corps librarian who lives in a VW van in your parents’ driveway.
And no, my parents still nag me, even though I haven’t taken their money for a decade or more, they haven’t supported me for another decade beyond that, and I don’t come home for a visit longer than 8 hours, although it’s no longer the what are you going to do with your life lecture, or when are you going to have babies lecture, it’s random things like, you know you’re going to die in your home because you have gas heating, and you should have outdoor lighting, and why do you drink coffee, and you should take more time off, and you should be moving forward in your career, and convertibles aren’t practical, etc., etc.
In sum, NinjaChick, the lectures will never, ever stop. The only thing you can do is learn to smile, nod, and ignore.
One important point: all that stuff your first semester in college happened a lot more recently for them than it did for you: you are a totally different person now. They are not. They have this distinct memory of the last big transition in your life, and it didn’t go well. I suspect that when you were in Europe not crashing and burning, they were home worrying that you might. Not because of money, but because they love you and want you to be happy and were hoping like hell that this wasn’t the beginning of a lifetime of mental illness and unhappiness for you (because that does happen). Hell, you started St. Johns (maybe a year off) with a young man that crashed and burned more or less exactly how you did and he still hasn’t gotten his life together and I suspect won’t (pm me if you want a name. He was a former student). They are worried that if this next transition doesn’t go smoothly, all that pain and uncertainty will start again. Old people do not bounce back from that sort of thing like twenty-somethings. You always knew what was going on with you. They had to sit home and wonder.
This could actually work for a while. It took my father about 40 years to figure out that it really means “I’m saying this so you will leave me the fuck ALONE about this for a while.”; I should add, however, that it really hasn’t stopped him from doing it. Now he just lets me know that he knows I’m not going to do it, and I smile, he shakes his head, and life goes on. And yes, we live 1,200 miles away, so, it’s also long distance.
But not this. I get that with age comes experince and knowledge, but being older does not automatically make your brain move faster beyond a certian age (which I’m pretty sure Ninja Chick has passed).
Listen to your dad and go to library school. Library school fucking ROCKS!
OK, library school is boring and pointless and scores of librarians have told me how boring and pointless it is and how everybody hates it. But being a librarian? That ROCKS!
I really hate this attitude. I’ve known a few people who “bummed around for a bit” as burned out hippies in the back of a van and all of them look back at it as a huge mistake.
This is a very, very good point. I had a bad patch with depression my senior year of college (almost flunked out) and my parents are still… delicate about it.
No, they’re probably a little worried that they’ll be supporting her in a few years if she hasn’t figured out what she wants to do. Or that she’ll be miserable if she chooses wrong, and they’re trying to help solve that problem before it happens.
They mean well.
I have overly suggestive parents. And I have to take a deep breath from time to time and realize that they’re annoying me out of genuine love for me and concern for my well being. And that there are people whose parents never gave a rat’s ass about them or stopped once they turned 18 and I’m pretty lucky, even if I do get tired of saying “thank you for the suggestion, mom. I’ll consider that.”
I was being sarcastic, but I also got too far into it. I apologize. Peace Corps is not a career. Library Science is, but all the jobs are taken and will be in the future. I’m now in my mid-40s and realize I am far too old to have children of my own. These are obviously nice and caring people, but constantly badgering with unhelpful advice is maddening. My 78 year old mother is constantly telling me to do things, the least annoying of which is to get a manual bolt for the front door. Of course, that is how my roommate accesses the house. How is that going to be useful if it has to remain unlocked for him to get into the house?
That’s what I was going to say. NinjaChick’s parents sound like they’re about my parents’ age (maybe a bit younger - my parents turned 30 in '74), and I think I’m about twice NinjaChick’s age (based on her past posts). I think this is a baby-boomer thing, because my mom still pops off with this stuff every once in a while - mostly about getting a better job. So it doesn’t stop when you get older. Sorry Mom, sorry Dad. I know I don’t make much money, but I enjoy what I do and I happily live simply and within my means. I’m single and have no children to support, so what I make supports me just fine.
My mother died about 4 years ago at 83. I believe her last words were bitching about something. Ignore it and do what you think is right. One life per person you know.
That’s actually not true. Now is a great time to get into library science because all of the old librarians are retiring left and right. This is doubly true because many of the students currently in library school are on the downside of 50 and will only be librarians for a few years before retirement.