Moms, Dads, your grown kids are home for the holidays. Some of them are gainfully employed, making tons of money. They’re beautifully groomed, happy, healthy, generous, and kind to small animals. They’ve not only met your expectations, they’ve exceeded them.

Others have returned home, not for the holidays, but for the duration. As kind, good, well groomed, respectful and generous they may (or may not) have been in the past, what’s been leeching out lately hasn’t been so pleasant. They’re touchy, defensive, withdrawn, depressed and you’re at a loss to know what to do or how to react.

Your beloved grown children are out of work. Scared. Alone. And they want to be under your roof with you. And your cooking. Cleaning. Car. And hopefully, charge card. That’s not quite what you had in mind when you thought you launched them several years ago.

What’s a well- meaning parent to do?

“Why can I do? I can’t close my door to them. I feel stuck. I want to help, but don’t know how or if I should. None of my friends’ children have done this so I’m a little embarrassed to talk about it. Help!”

There’s no shame for them or for you that your children have come home. These are tough times. Life is expensive. It takes two salaries to do what one salary did and when one salary is the only salary and it goes away, the person impacted needs time to regroup and rethink. It’s natural to want to go home, literally and figuratively, to the emotional support and hot meals of memory. It’s natural for parents to want to embrace that need or feel that they should. It’s unnatural to expect parents to embrace the memory of piles of dirty clothes, dirty dishes, and a disrupted life.

There are mixed emotions on both sides of the equation. Grown children don’t want to live at their parents’ home. They see their return as a public admission of failure and a private act of defeat.  They want to retain the independence that time and effort have earned them They don’t want to return to a time and place where they were children, and they don’t want to compare notes with childhood friends who are now successful.  They don’t know what else to do.

How can adult children and their parents weather this unexpected and unplanned passage with maturity, grace and humor? By setting boundaries, clarifying expectations, establishing agreements, and demonstrating respect for each other.

For parents, setting boundaries can include hours for coming and going, and meal times  Clarifying expectations can range from charging room and board to bartering food and lodging for lawn and home care and maintenance, cooking and cleaning, etc. Establishing agreements requires open and honest communication and keeps flawed assumptions from derailing family relationships.

If you’re at a loss as to how to approach these vexing problems, what would you do if you were renting a room to someone you didn’t know.

Returning grown-kids need to set expectations and boundaries for their parents as well as well as understand the ones they’ll need to heed.  Before moving in, establish financial obligations: how much is room? and if board is included, what are the hours? If there’s no charge, barter your services in exchange for what you are so graciously offered. And keep your word.

Advise your parents on the best way to discuss your unemployment. Say with you and with others. Sound tough? It’s the best bargain you can get while protecting your relationship with the people you always want to be there, in word and deed.