Re: My daughter - Depression - Return home

WHAT DO I DO? Kick her out?
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Sorry to be so blunt, but, yes, it's time to kick her out! She's 22---you are not obligated to support her now that she's an adult.

Give her a deadline (one, month, two months---whatever you decide) and tell her that if she hasn't at least found a job by then, she needs to leave. Stick to your guns.

After she gets a job, tell her that she can stay rent-free for two months while she saves up money for a down payment on her own apartment. Once she has the down payment saved up, you can even help her find a place.

She has some nerve expecting you to pay her way at this point in her life!

Is it easy to take the tough love approach? No, it's not but sometimes it has to be done.

I speak from experience. We sent our daughter off to college halfway across the country. During her second semester, she decided to party instead of going to class. We were unaware of this until we got a letter from the college telling us that she flunked all her courses. Still unaware of what actually happened, we gave her a chance to go to summer school. She refused. Long story short---we found out about the partying, confronted her and told her that since she refused to get her act together and go back to school, she was now on her own. She wasn't going to get one more cent from us. We let her know that she could keep the Cell Phone until the contract was up but after that, we were cutting it off. We kept our word---she didn't get any more money from us and the phone got cut off when the contract was up.

She put us through some more grief but eventually got her act together. She never did go back to school and she knows that at this point if she wants to continue her education, it will be on her own dime.

So...it's long past tough love for your daughter. You are doing her no favors by allowing her to sponge off you.

Good luck and get going! Tweet