Which Table Will Your “Kids” Sit at for Thanksgiving?

November 02, 2010

Looking at my family Thanksgivings back in the day, there were usually 2 tables – you sat at the kid’s table until you graduated from high school, then you got bumped up to the adult’s table.  It was considered a rite of passage and a privilege to finally be considered an adult. 

But now, I am hearing more and more the term “adult child.”  With the new health care reform, your kid is still considered a child up to age 26 if they don’t have access to their own health insurance so that the parents can continue to foot the bill for healthcare.  Many of my friends still have their 20-something kids on their family cellphone plans and their auto insurance policies.  If we are blurring the lines between becoming an adult and still being a child, how will our kids learn to survive financially on their own?

As your own family gets divided between the kid’s table and the adult’s table this year, look around and make the honest assessment of whether keeping your kids as “children” well into adulthood is truly giving them a “thanks-giving” or is it creating a lifetime of expected entitlement with a false sense of security which will end up hurting their ability to be self-sufficient and never be able to sit at the adult’s table.