Don't want my college kid to move back home

Dear Lindsay,
My daughter is part way through a four year college degree. This last year she’s been expressing interest in taking a year off and moving back home.  She makes it sound like a given that of course we’d take her back to live with us.  But honestly, I don’t want to.  I’m really enjoying my life on the other side of intense motherhood and I don’t want a kid in the house, even if she’s technically an adult.  It is ok to tell my kid that she can’t come live with me?
Sincerely,
Unwelcoming Mother

Dear Unwelcoming Mother,
You ask: Is it ok to tell your kid she can’t come live with you?
Personally, I think yes; it’s ok.
I think it’s not ok to say so unkindly, or to abandon her completely and let her flounder in the world.  But it is ok to tell her she can’t live with you right now.

It sounds like even though she is in your words a “technical adult” you don’t think that you’d be able to relate to her as one.  You think you’d still be slated back into the full mother role like you knew it before, if she lived at home again.  You’re likely right.  It tends to be very hard to change dynamics in relationships while in the same scenarios.  Especially the deeply entrenched ones like mother/daughter.

It sounds honestly exciting to me that you’re enjoying your life on the others die of “intensive motherhood” as you call it.  It sounds like that was quite a consuming role for a while and that now you’re exploring who you are beyond that.  So cool.  Keep going.

I believe for your relationship with you daughter to remain healthy and relevant in this next chapter you are both going to need to adjust.  I don’t mean stop being her mom. I would wish a caring mother upon anyone and everyone.  So please keep being her mom.
But what it means to be a mom to your daughter as she becomes an adult will be different.
Please don’t go fully for the “we’re friends now”. Please don’t try and be her peer.  You’re not.  You’re her mom.
But still, she’s becoming an adult (hopefully she’s actually maturing as she gets older!) and that changes things.

So I think it’s very fair, and even kind, to say “Hey Honey, I’m adjusting to life with you as an adult, and I think if you moved back home I’d just keep treating you as a kid, and I don’t want to do that”.  Or something of the sort.

Try and gage how floundering she actually is.  I’d say if, heaven forbid, she was in a big health crisis, my answer would be different.  But if she’s a healthy, able bodied, relatively mentally stable person, then let her find her own solution apart from your spare bedroom.

If you have the financial means to help launch her into the world, I think that would be an amazing thing to do.  Not saying you have to, just saying I’m envious of the people who have had parents do that for them.  Maybe that involves a rent subsidy, buying her her first car, paying for some schooling.  Maybe you already have, I don’t know.  But the big adult world is a hard place to be, and I some financial help in getting adjusted to it can go a long way.
That said, I’ve also watched some of my peers be coddled too much by their parents and I don’t envy what it’s done to their careers and love life and happiness.

I suggest you practice being honest with the your daughter.  Find your ground and stand on it kindly.  You’ll be modelling what it’s like to be a healthy adult in the world.
You don’t need to get it perfect this summer.  There will be other chances to try other versions of your new dynamic with her.  Some you will try and feel great about, some you will try and dislike.  That’s ok, this is new territory.  You haven’t been her yet.  Keep your shoelaces tied and pack good snacks.

If it feels suitable, help her find a place to rent nearby.  You could even try doing a kid swap with one of your friends where their returning child stays with you and yours stays with them.  It would break up the parent/child dynamic and be a soft entry into being a roommate/tenant.

Then invite your daughter over for dinner often.  And when she opens the fridge, let her take whatever she wants.  Let her grab food to take home.  Don’t mention it.

She doesn’t need to live rent free in your house forever, but she might always need to know there’s a fridge she can raid to find her favourite orange juice and strawberry yogurt.  Keep stalking the fridge with those.  Let her be a little bit presumptuous.  It will go farther than you know in helping her feel safe to explore the world.

I’ve chosen other people to fill the parental roles in my life that my parents couldn’t for their own reason fill in my adult life.  And though I’m by all measures and adult myself, I still get a deep heart warmth and safety from staying in my bonus mom’s guest room from time to time. And when I walk in late at night and she’s asleep already, I raid the cupbord and get myself a bowl of cereal.  And in the morning, she insists on sending my off with leftover homemade pizza, and I feel like I can face the world again.  My advice is to send you daughter off with that feeling.

I wish you clarity, kindness, and a good pizza dough recipe.

I hope this helps.
Lindsay