My husband and I are both 45 now, and we have 3 kids, a daughter, 25, and 2 sons, who’re 22 and 19 respectively. There’s always been a peaceful atmosphere in our house and in our family, we had been getting along perfectly with all of our kids and our life had been full of sweet moments.
My husband and I have always had the plan to work hard while we were younger, and our goal was to retire early. Thankfully, we’ve been lucky in life, and we’re now in a position to do that with all our available savings. The oldest two kids have already moved out now, and it’s just the youngest who still lives at home with us.
We have a four-bedroom house that’s in a rural area, and this is a big empty house for just us and our 19-year-old son. Our plan is to downsize, sell the house and move to some smaller place in the city. We want to travel a lot, so we don’t need a huge place for living. We’ve decided to sell our house in a few months.
Our youngest son isn’t happy about that at all. He became even more furious when he tried but couldn’t convince us to take him with us. He insists that it’s unfair that his siblings got to live at home until after college, and he has to leave now.
Dad and I offered to pay for him the first, last and security payment at any apartment he finds, but he thinks a few months notice wasn’t enough to give him time to move and look for a job. So, he literally blames us for having that plan and leaving him behind, which is not true.
I reminded our son that he was more than lucky to have a decent childhood with plenty of luxury. I told him that even our decision to pay to get him settled is kindness. He went so mad and accused us of prioritizing our retirement over his well-being. He also said that dad and I are lucky to be able to retire at all. He took it even further, and got all his siblings as well as other family members involved.
Our kids supported their younger brother, to my surprise. They totally believe we should either be fair and wait for another couple years, or take the youngest kid with us. When we didn’t back down, our daughter suggested he could fly over to her house to stay there, despite sharing a one bedroom with her partner and our granddaughter. We were totally at a loss with such a disrespectful reaction from our kids.
I think it’s insane that our three kids expect us to put our lives on hold for years just to allow the youngest to live with us. But none of our children have been talking to us much, so I guess they’re simply united against us. Our older son even said that when he buys a place of his own (he lives with some roommates right now) that we won’t be even welcome to stay there when we visit.
Even our parents are against us in this situation. All people are basically saying that we’re acting selfishly and that we deprive our child of home, which is not true, and we’ve suggested him a good start of his independent life. Now both me and my husband are at a loss, we can’t discuss this situation with anyone anymore, because we immediately get judged. What should we do?
