AIBU to spend winters abroad once my daughter starts university?

I’m clearly an outlier here, boarded for the last four years of school, loved the freedom of the years at uni and never considered seeing my parents other than in the holidays.

I had lots of adventures, safe in the knowledge that my parents would never find out and their retribution would never catch up with me.

no question but that I loved them and they loved me. Only in the last yew years of my mother’s life did she ever tell me how she missed me but knew that I would only be in touch occasionally. As soon as I could afford it , I’d phone my mother a lot, by which I mean weekly or even fortnightly.

im afraid I just can’t imagine expecting my parents to stay in England on stand by incase I happened to want them.

Hope you find what works for your family OP

@Heymommy
I think people on this site have such hugely different attitudes to 18 year olds.
But I do feel as a society we are not building resilience in our young people.
Unless you are going to drop a massive drip feed about your DD having ASD or mental health issues or something of that ilk, chances are she will be just fine.
Yes its a transition, yes she will have teething problems but thats ok, its just working out life, and she will be with lots of others doing the same. Its totally normal in life to have to navigate new situations and I don't think its in our young people's best interests for parents to swoop in and sort stuff out, or for them to have that expectation.
Uni is actually a very good place to start growing up, there are support services. She isn't on her own.
I'd plan to go at Christmas and stay till Easter. And dont feel guilty

I don't think this sounds so awful. But my PIL did this to DH and his brother and their relationship is fine! I hardly visited home once I left for university.

Your DD sounds like she might struggle with that so dialling back the time sounds like a fair compromise but I don't think it's at all reasonable for your DD to suggest that you need to be available to her at all times - of course you will make plans, even if you are in the country, you might be away or busy at a "random weekend". Of course you would be there in an emergency but that's not the same thing as expecting you to put your life on hold just in case she feels like visiting

I was a boarder too, and I do think it warps your expectations a bit. I also think it is very individual to the young person/adult.

My eldest is a first year who drew a line 2.5 hours from home and didn't contemplate any uni further from home than this. She's a couple of hours away and most people she knows are closer to home than this. She has one friend who's 4 hours away but she's zipping to and fro regularly at weekends as she has a girlfriend back home. DC like this I think would struggle with parents going out of the country for so much of the first year. There are a few who are more "distance no object", prepared to commit more to a further away uni and expecting to come home a lot less. They'll be much less impacted.

Trouble is you don't like how tough they will find it. Choosing not to come home because they are successfully integrating is night and day different to not being able to come home when you are struggling because there's no one there.

However even if things are going badly, I would think you could afford to take a good 2-3 weeks extra at either end of her 3 week holiday without putting much pressure on her at all. Just be aware she will probably have her first set of uni exams in one of those periods. A lot of unis do them in Jan. Some start quite soon after Christmas.

Can you postpone the plans to see how she settles in? She might be fine & never come home or she might struggle & want to come a lot. At the moment it’s an unknown quantity. She may be an adult but only just. Personally I would stay put.

So, are you going to wait for reading week to jet off, or are you going before that? Personally, I think it sounds like a miserable thing to do to her.

@Pickledonions12

yep! That’s why women were put on this earth afterall… to constantly help others and disregard their own wants and needs. Pfft 😬

OP if you choose to stay in UK over winter make sure you treat yourself to lots of holidays abroad, join a gym with a nice sauna etc etc to make it a bit more bearable

I know! The infantilising of children who are then not actually prepared for the adult world. I think they're doing their kids a huge disservice.

I thought the cost of flights might be an issue.

I think your revised proposal sounds more realistic.

I wouldn’t personally. DC had mental health issues their second year and we were far away, but at least we could have made it there the same day in case we had to. Especially since she’s upset by this. Can’t you wait just four more years?

Worst case scenario you can fly home?

I think you should go as you planned. I left home at 18, didn't call much and barely went home. When I did go home I saw my friends. I think it will make your dd more resilient and independent. I don't think you should sit around at home waiting to see if she needs you.

All these posters babying adults, no wonder I have such useless graduates on my hands!

OP the thing is just because someone turns 18 and are an adult it doesn't mean they automatically mature and stop needing their parents. Looking back my DS still seemed pretty young at that age.

I don't think you are unreasonable to want to leave the UK for the reasons you've mentioned but I think in October is too soon.

Some young people start uni and leave very quickly. This happened to one of my cousins. Your DD doesn't know how she will feel until she goes. She may not want to come back before Christmas but psychologically I think it would feel very strange to her that she knows you are an 8 hour flight away so soon after she leaves home.

I say this as a former uni student who absolutely loved uni from the start and only came home in the holidays. I think I would have felt abandoned if my parents had done this in my first term. I can't imagine having done it to my son either when he first went away.

Your daughter has let you know how upset she is and so i would wait to see how she is in the first term and then reassess. Probably leaving it to her 2nd year would be the best solution and the time will soon fly anyway.

I cannot BELIEVE that you would consider this

If you'll be "twiddling your thumbs" do some fucking charity work. Help others. Jesus 😳

We did something similar: ds went to university in the uk when we were still living in China. He came home for Christmas and Easter break, but not during term time and we didn’t visit him. He tended to mix with other students from outside the UK so going home for Xmas, but not for the occasional weekend was normal for them too.

I'd tell her you're coming back 1st March, things are ok in the UK by then. If nearer the time she's very settled, which I think she's likely to be, then you can extend.

I think part of her upset is because at the moment it's a big, scary thing looming in the future. Once she's actually there and settled she's likely to realise that she doesn't care where you are anymore! I think you'll get further with telling her you'll stay until December to put her mind at ease and then discuss return dates nearer the time.

I think the compromise of going around Christmas/December is a good one.

She is an adult at 18. You have to have a life.

I could barely remember to phone my poor mum first year of uni as I was so busy and self-absorbed. I know teens these days are less independent, but you can’t put your whole life on hold for her. Hopefully after her first term she’ll be settled and forget all about coming home for weekends.

Is there anyone like an auntie who will be in the UK for weekends visits etc for her if needed?

I’m a millennial and when I went to uni I very rarely went home. The freedom was like nothing I’d ever experienced.

But these are different times and kids these days need extra support for the most part, especially financial due to lack of jobs, CoL and rents.

@Heymommy

Im a bit on the fence with this. My son has just finished his degree. In his first term we texted every day for the first two weeks and then it dropped off. Over the 3 years he has very rarely come home, mostly because he is just busy with life and he had a weekend job which made it difficult..
He had a few teething problems in his first half term which he sorted out himself before I even knew about it.
At the moment your DD is upset about a hypothetical plan, an unknown situation at uni when she doesnt actually know how much she will want you around.
She may be one of those students who settle in straight away. Who knows.
Is there a compromise? If you are going for Christmas anyway can you delay your move until then.
What I would say is that maybe there are things you can be doing now to boost her confidence.
I won't go into details of our story but I adopted my son at age 7 when he was in special school. A lot of people wrote him off at 7.
My son has achieved so much over the 14 years we have been a family - because I encouraged him to believe in himself and that he could do whatever he wanted to do.
He has ASD, he is still an anxious young man, but he knows he can do stuff and work things out for himself.
Build your DDs confidence about being away from home. When she has her accommodation organised go and visit in the summer, check out the local area, where are the shops, have a walk round campus, check out how she will get from her accommodation to her lectures.
Find out whats really worrying her and how those things can be managed.

Maybe compromise for the first term, leave in early December, she flies over for Christmas and come back for her spring break. It is only really a few weeks then when we can’t pop home to see you.

I want to university in Scotland from NI when I was 18 and there was no question of coming home mid term and only contact was via pay phone and letter. Granted this was a long time ago but universities today have international students and people from far away in the UK who don’t go home outside of official breaks. Plus she can video call anytime.

She is understandably nervous about the change and probably feels she is losing her home/safety net.

As an international family, what you are proposing is very reasonable and it probably just needs a period of adjustment with time for her to settle into her new life/routine.

If she was totally fine with it, then it’d be different - perhaps that is the case with all your friends/family examples?

Look at it from her (potential) perspective: she’s an inconvenience to have been keeping you here, so much so that as soon as she’s out the door you’re off; as soon as school’s finished you can get on with your ‘real life’ instead of having to hang around looking after her - she’s obviously a burden. (This may or may not have any truth in it, but it may be how she feels, subconsciously.)

The fact she’s upset about it suggests that she’s shocked - so that’s a good thing: she had felt very secure in believing you’d be there (nearby) for her for longer. To be brutally honest, some of the damage here is already done. She will have this message now - that you couldn’t wait to be far away and you didn’t really think about how she’d feel about it or care that she might need you as she goes off into the next stage. You don’t have to live your life around her needs forever, but I think seeing her settled on the next stage first would have been kinder. Let her know that you misjudged how she’d feel and that you’d never have suggested it if you’d realised that she needed you to be closer for a little longer.

(Also, now is a particularly fragile time for A Level students - perhaps this would have been a better conversation to have had in a months time.)

It's not just a UK thing. It's a know your kids thing. Your daughter got upset when you broached the idea to her. That means she's not ready to take on full time adulting without parental backup easily available. I'm in the US, but my kids weren't ready to go off to college with no parent available. My husband died during the eldest's college time and I don't know about the UK, but universities here are not what I would call supportive.

You went to school and that broke your reliance on your parents at an early age. Your daughter hasn't had that.