Those boomerang kids just keep coming back home!

A generation of kids are returning to nest.

Of course, you love your kids but do you really want them hanging around your house indefinitely?

Figures released last week show that the number of young adults living with their parents has increased by a quarter since 1996.

It’s mainly thanks to rising rents, higher unemployment and the difficulties of getting a mortgage.

Add to this those who come back because of separation, divorce or financial problems and it’s obvious ‘the boomerang generation’ is part of family life in Britain today.

But just how do you cope with grown up sons and daughters taking over the bathroom or the kitchen and making their own rules about what they’ll eat, when they’ll come home etc.

One of my sons left home in his 20s, got married and never lived at home again. The other two sons boomeranged back and forward for years.

We’d see them off and I’d allow myself a few tears when I went in to dust their empty bedrooms.

My daughter decided to flatshare with friends in Glasgow and I took detergent round, killed the ants marching across the kitchen cupboards and worried about her.

But then, one by one, they’d call and say: “OK if I come home?”

The welcome mat was still there. Of course it was. I was thrilled to have them back. Their dad, who has a knack of foreseeing problems, was a little less so. Because make no mistake, it’s tricky having adult children living with you.

You forget how they need showers so often. How the phone never stops ringing. How the food bills double. How much ‘stuff’ they have. How they come home late and you still lie waiting for the sound of the key in the lock.

True, you enjoy the life and bustle they bring back to your house. But sometimes you miss the peace and freedom of your old life. When the house stayed tidy. When your husband wasn’t grumbling because his whisky was depleted and no one had replaced it, or the TV controls had vanished again.

However, the bank of mum and dad and the home of mum and dad will always be open. We wouldn’t want it any other way.

Most of the parents of the ‘boomerang’ generation who are still at home probably feel the same. It’s what ‘family’ is all about.

But sometimes those mums and dads will find themselves thinking: “I wonder what it would be like to get our house back to ourselves and have an ‘empty’ again?”