AIBU to spend winters abroad once my daughter starts university?

Exactly this. My daughters would not have been happy at all, but by the second year it would have been less of an issue. “Adulting” does not come easily to some young people and reassurance and support is needed regularly.

I think at least wait till 2nd year at uni and see how see copes with the first year. 18 is still v young. In your updates it comes across that ‘you’ are depressed, ‘you’ can’t cope with winter etc all you, but what about dd? You brought her up here, and now she probably feels u are wanting to run off as soon as she turns 18

Assuming you are going somewhere where you have WiFi and can FaceTime her - then go for it.

why should you sit at home on the off chance that something might happen or she might want to come home?

if she is mature enough to go to uni then she is mature enough to understand that your life is not on hold waiting for her.

you can call her everyday or she call you if she wants - if she needed advice you can help her on the phone or sign post her to correct service - hell you could even do a Tesco shop and send it to her if she was starving a as nd you were feeling generous. The world is so small given everything can be done online.

as long as you stay in contact she will cope.

how are they ever going to become adults if you don’t give them a chance to try and god forbid - fail or get it wrong?

sometimes by having to stand on your own feet rather than letting mummy solve every problem is actually pretty empowering - yes if the water leaks everywhere - it will feel like the end of the world but having to use her university level brain to solve the problem by calling the land lord or the plumber will enable her to realise - I am an adult - I’ve got this.

don’t feel bad - stay in touch with her but let her start her new life as you start yours

My DDs were 1 and 2 hours away. The eldest we saw roughly every 6 weeks, we visited her in October, February and May. She came home for Xmas, Easter and summer. Youngest came home at least one weekend a month.
i think your compromise of going Dec-March is great as you are around those first few months incase she needs you plus she will be with you for several weeks over Xmas. Then you can reevaluate for the following year.

As a previous poster said, you will get a range of views and it really depends on your DD.
In my experience, my daughter started last September. She was so excited, looking forward to her new life, making new friends. Even commented on how she'd see us at Christmas.
That didn't turn out to be the case. I had late night phonecalls when she was upset. She had a horrible set of flatmates (think stealing food, ignoring her, not pulling their weight, noisy all hours etc). She is very outgoing yet struggled to make friends and became quite low and depressed.
In the end she decided to come home every other weekend and try and stick it out. This way she had something to look forward to and be able to come home and see friends here. She felt incredibly isolated. We definitely needed to be here for her and I definitely didn't foresee this.
If I was in your shoes last year, I would have gone at the time. She is incredibly confident and I just didn't see it panning out the way it did!
So my answer would be don't go. You just don't know what's going to happen.
My DD is more settled now, met a great group of friends and is looking forward to living with them next year. So it all worked out in the end. But this first year has been really difficult and upsetting for all of us.

This really.

And certainly don’t do it in her first year.

What if there’s an emergency too? Who would be on hand for that?

It’s one thing students being alone in a foreign country when they’ve chosen to study abroad, another for the whole family to up and leave them as soon as they set foot at Uni.

I don't think that this is completely unreasonable, maybe a shorter time could be a compromise.

As a millennial I only went home about once term and could have managed without it. Yes there were times where I felt homesick but at 18 this is the sort of thing that you need to learn to cope with. I don't remember needing to go home constantly for support, I emailed my parents and kept myself busy with uni activities. When I was sick I took over the counter medicine. There are also mental health services for the students.

I don't think competent 18 year olds need to lean so heavily on their parents at this time and it's a good experience learning to cope by yourself.

As a cautionary tale - when my youngest started uni I went off on a 5 week trip (once she was actually there). She dropped out after 3 weeks, came home and tried another uni closer to home and dropped out of that too, took the rest of the year to work and tried uni again the following year. It was a bad time to be away but at least she knew I’d be back soon.

Things don’t always go completely to plan!

You've been told multiple times already that it’s a good idea to be around for the first year so I won’t bang on about that but just wanted to add this other possibility that you might not have considered.

Has she any other family or support in the UK? You said your husband would be around at home on and off. Can he be there more to be the support? As long as one of you is there for the first year, why does it have to be you. If you struggle in the winter more than him, it makes sense for you to be the less geographically available parent. You're not wrong to want her to be able to manage without you, especially with your own background of being away from parents from a young age, but if your daughter has not had that independence yet it will be a big change for her and probably quite stressful.

Let her settle and see how she gets on - if she not there yet she probably worried and nervous about it all.

My DC haven't been back much at all - their accomodation is all year - they phone and whats app. They come home much less than DH and I did as we had term time accomodation only. They know we are here and can come home - though it gets expensive for them to do so.

I'd see how she gets on - she probably wanting the safety net - you could do a month or two in another country after christams if she doing well - slowly build it all up.

YABU Even if she doesn’t need/ want to come home, knowing that she could is likely to make all the difference to her wellbeing. This is really important for young undergrads.

I think a compromise sounds fine. For the first term I would do middle of December, (maybe fly back with her actually), then back 1st March. Or is she a competent traveller? There might be some complicated back and forth - uni/home/airport/ that might be tricky for her to navigate?

The only thing I would make sure is - can they leave their stuff in halls? It's always much nicer to have a parent help move stuff!

If you still have your house here (even if you aren't there) that is some comfort (if uni gets a bit much or she wants a change of scene).

Could she not study in your home country? (Then you could do term times there like her?!)

(As a caveat to this, it also depends on the young person. I could have done this easily with one of mine, another one, not so much. So I guess only you - and her - can gauge this. But from an outside perspective, it is not unthinkable).

@Pendapala Sure, I don't disagree with your perspective. Just giving mine.

This exactly
I think I would at least see the first year thru and see how she gets on.
university is a huge step and this may be adding to her anxiety levels not having coming home as an option.

@RasaSayangEh I also spent a year abroad when at uni and then went to Tanzania for two years VSO in my early twenties. But part of the reason I was able confidently to choose to have those adventures was knowing that my parents were there at home for me if I needed them. I made an active and positive choice to be apart from my family. This is a completely different situation to a parent choosing to leave their child at this time.

YABVU
I wouldn’t do it. She needs you here.
Wait until she starts her second year.

@Heymommy I'm probably coming at it from a different viewpoint to the majority of horrified posters on this thread. I arrived in the UK as an international student, it cost everything my family had to pay for my studies and travel/living expenses. Other side of the world. There was no popping home, nor could my parents have popped over to see me.

Was I homesick, did I have many difficult times? Hell yes. We didn't even have a cheap easy means of getting in contact. My parents invested in a computer, modem and that newfangled email stuff - but that was the limit of our "high speed" comms.

Now I'm old and wrinkled and I've been working at various universities for most of my career and I meet fresh new students from far away lands all the time. Do they feel homesick, do they have difficult times? Hell yes. They can't pop home or have mum pop over either. At least they have the ability to video call, in the pockets, all the time.

I'm not doing a Four Yorkshiremen thing, just putting in perspective that young people have coped (and still do cope!) with starting university, without necessarily needing attentive scaffolding. Also in context, we are talking about a young person starting university in the country and culture they've grown up in, where everything is familiar; also that you're only considering spending a few months of each year away, not clearing off to Outer Mongolia to live in a yurt with no contact for eternity.

Only you and your DD can know whether this plan will work for your family.

Yes. My parents didn’t move anywhere, but my sisters moved into my room and any belongings I didn’t bring with me to university or get rid of were boxed in the attic, and I was on the sofa if I visited in the vac. (Tiny, overcrowded house, many younger siblings). I’d absolutely moved out and was a visitor if I came back for any reason.

She’s probably nervous about going to uni and having you so far away as well. Interestingly DS didn’t come home in his first term (although I went to see him once he had settled in) but came home more often in subsequent terms

@Heymommy I am guessing that from an eight hour flight and £1500 airfare with sunshine in December you are from somewhere in southern Africa? I really do understand that it is a special type of suffering for people raised in Africa forced to endure endless English winters. My South African mother-in-law and Zimbabwean and brother-in-law both really suffer with this and my mother-in-law is now committed to spending winters in South Africa, which does her the world of good.

However, whatever your own needs, that does not detract from the fact that you are choosing to leave your youngster on a different continent at a time of great change and transition. I think what posters (and possibly you) have struggled to differentiate is the difference between a young person leaving a safe, stable and secure base to explore the world, having wonderful adventures and choosing to be independent, and a young person seeing their parents choose to leave them, effectively removing their safe base at a time when they might really need it. From a psychological perspective, that is a very different thing in terms of their sense of security and belonging.

Presumably she could still go home and see friends? The house isn’t being sold.

All very well in theory, but what if she’s unhappy for whatever reason, and wants to come home just for the weekend? Or just wants to attend some do with friends from home?