Amber Hollingsworth addresses parents wondering whether to allow an addicted adult son or daughter to live at home. She emphasizes avoiding emotionally driven decisions and offers an objective decision-making framework. Key considerations: detailed safety analysis (financial, physical, emotional); effects on other household members (spouse, children); the adult child's general energy, contribution, employment status and impact on self-esteem; the child's insight/willingness to change; and whether the parent can maintain healthy boundaries or will become overwhelmed. She advises using scales (1–10) and journaling, reassessing periodically, using phased and strategic exit plans if removal is needed, and consulting a family recovery specialist (Campbell) or other counselor for help.
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Am I being a bad parent if I let my addicted son or daughter live in my house? I mean, it's just hard. I feel guilty for letting them stay there. I feel like maybe I'm enabling them, but I also feel guilty if I make them leave. I've got a ton of mixed feelings about it. I feel resentful for having to make this choice. I feel resentful for the chaos that they're bringing into the house. But I also feel really scared about what will happen if I don't let them stay here. If you're relating to any of that, then this video is definitely for you. Now, obviously, there's no black or white yes or no answer to the question of whether or not it's okay to let your addicted son or daughter live in your house. I can't tell you exactly what to do, but I can help give you a way to think through the situation objectively. Because it's very, very important that you not make this decision in an emotional state. Like, for example, let's say your addicted son or daughter comes home and they do something that makes you mad, and then you just yell and scream and throw them out in the heat of the moment. That's a bad. The reason that's a bad plan is because you made the decision based on a temporary emotion. And when that emotion goes away, you're gonna take the decision back, which then makes you seem wishy washy and you destroy your own credibility. Basically, it makes it where they don't take anything you say seriously, and I know you don't want that. So let's figure out a way to think through the situation. Give ourselves a little flavor formula or decision making model so that we feel solid about the decision we're making and we can stick to it. Now, the first category of things you need to think through have to do with safety, because safety always comes first. But safety is a broad category. I want you to break down safety into three categories, really. Financial safety, physical safety, and emotional safety. Things that go under financial safety would be things like, does your son or daughter have a pattern of stealing from you? Are they taking things from the house? Are they pawning things? Are you putting yourself in a bad financial situation by paying for tons of treatment and counseling and lawyers? How is letting them stay in the house affecting you financially? Now, under the physical category, obviously if your son or daughter is physically abusive, that's a pretty clear, big giant sign, right? But there are other ways that they can be physically threatening. Like, for example, are they bringing really bad Characters in and out of your house all the time? Do they drive with you or other members of the family in an intoxicated and unsafe state? Now, under the emotional safety category, that one's probably got the longest list. Do they yell, scream, threaten? Do they start fights all the time? Do they constantly try to blame you for everything or make you feel terrible? Do they like to guilt you into things? Do they emotionally blackmail you about things? How emotionally safe is it for you to have your son or daughter living in your house? Now, safety is probably the biggest, most important thing I want you to think through. So really go through each one of those categories and spend some time, and it might even help you to do a little journaling about each of these categories and to write some things out, because a lot of times when we write things down, it gives us clarity. Now, the next category of things I want you to think about is how does having them live in the house affect the other people in the house? Like, if you are married and you have a spouse, is your spouse on board with that? It is important to take the other people's feelings into consideration. Are you putting your marriage in jeopardy by making this decision? Are you having a lot of fights with your spouse about it? If you have other children who live in the house, how do they feel about it? Is it causing a lot of chaos for them? Is it emotionally safe for them? Is it physically and financially safe for them? Now, the next category I want you to think through is what kind of general energy do they bring to the house? It could be positive or negative. For example, do they help out and contribute in any kind of way? Are they respectful? Are they kind? Are they considerate? Or do they bring a very negative down, depressing or aggressive energy to the house? Do they help out at all with any of the household chores? Are they so emotionally inconsistent that it's like an emotional rollercoaster? One minute they're great, and the next minute they're terrible, and the whole household revolves around their emotions. Now, I probably should have said this at the beginning, but obviously, as we're going through this, I'm talking about having an adult child living in your house, like somebody 18 or over, because if they're under 18, you don't really have a lot of option about it. So because we're talking about an adult, it's really important that they're working. If they're living in your house and they haven't been working and they don't seem to be trying to get work, that is a major, major Problem, because that kind of goes into the next question I want you to think about, which is, am I making it too easy letting them stay here? Now, you guys know that I say all the time, people do not have to hit bottom in order to get better, but it does have to get more uncomfortable than comfortable. So if you're letting live in the house, you're paying all the bills, you're buying their food, they're not working and they're actively using, that's not a great combo. And another thing that kind of goes along with that is I want you to think about what is it doing to their self esteem to be an adult and living at home? You know, Campbell, our parent counselor, she talks about that serotonin all the time. Are you robbing them of the chance to get the serotonin which would actually help them get better? Now, another category of things I want you to think about, that kind of play into the decision here is what amount of insight, humility and willingness do they have about the problem? Like do they think they have zero problem at all and you should just get off their back and it's just you and you're making a big deal about it? Or do they realize they have a problem on some level? Are they willing to take some steps to get it better? Are they trying to cut it back or control it or get a job or fix some of the issues? Are they trying at all? Now, obviously these aren't really yes or no questions. They're more like on a scale questions. All of these questions you want to think about on a scale of 1 to 10, where are we at with each of these things? Now, another category that's very important that I need you to really think about and be super honest with yourself about is can you let them live in your house and stay sane? Or is letting them live in your house gonna make you a crazy, raving, screaming, controlling, nagging, threatening, spying lunatic? Can you stay on your side of the street if they're in your house? Or is your fear and anxiety gonna cause you to constantly be crossing their boundaries? Now, I'm not really judging you for that because that having an addicted loved one, especially an addicted child, will bring that out of you. Doesn't matter who you are. What I'm saying is, is it so far gone that you cannot contain it if you find that having them in the house is literally too much for you because it's having that front row seat and it's making you crazy and it's making you be a person that you don't want to be. I need you to really factor that into the equation because that's not fair to you or. Or them or anyone else in the house. You see, this is a big decision. It's not just about them. It's not just about you. There's so many factors for consideration. Now, I named the big categories of things you need to think through, but obviously each one of those categories could have a whole bunch of subcategories underneath on the decision. And obviously this is something that you're going to need to reevaluate periodically because a lot of these factors can change. It's not. I'm making a once and for all decisions. Now. If you do decide that you have an addictive child living at home and it's time for them to go, then you need to develop a smart strategic plan about that. Like I said before, don't make that decision when you're emotional and just threaten them and throw all their stuff out on the lawn. That's not going to work. And that's just not the right way to handle it. Honestly, a lot of the parents we see their kids are fully, completely, 100% dependent on the parents to do everything. If you're in a situation where. Where your kid is, like, dependent on you for most everything, then you probably kind of need to taper them off and get a plan, like, with phases involved from getting them from your house to out of your house. Unless they're a major safety problem in which you might want to speed up those phases and plan. If you need some help thinking through this or how to do this, then I'm going to suggest you consider talking to a family recovery specialist. Now, if you have a counselor or an Al Anon sponsor or a recovery coach of your own, they would be a great person to talk about this with. If you don't and you need someone, then I'm going to suggest that you consider talking to Campbell. She's our parent specialist. She's been through this with two of her sons, so she understands it personally and professionally. And helping young adults become independent is one of her specialties. She's really good at this, and she can help you come up with a plan from how to get from where you are to where you want to be. A reasonable plan that's doable.
