DD comes home from uni every weekend

[lovemetender]

I have 3 younger children at home, so I don’t mind it— I was t expecting peace and quiet anyway. However 2nd year DD (21) comes home every opportunity possible. Before Christmas she stayed a few weekends, but lives with her two best mates who are now arguing with one another. She says she now prefers her home friends, who mostly have children.

I read about the great time DC seem to have on here and I’m sad for her. DD doesn’t like partying or drinking and is very shy. Lovely to speak to, and says people sit with her in lessons but she can’t make friends.

Is it bad she’s back every weekend? Not sure what is for the best here

By all means encourage her to join some clubs etc but don't make her feel unwelcome or weird for wanting to come home. I was very shy as a teenager, and immature really for my age, so I found uni difficult. In hindsight I should have joined more clubs and been more proactive but I don't particularly regret the choices I made. I was so lonely as most of my friends from my course lived at home so I seldom sociliased with them as they had their own thing going on, I spent a lot of evenings on my own and lived for the holidays when I could go home and hang out with my old friends (I was too far away to go home more often).

If it's any consolation I became a right party animal in my mid 20s, worked for a very so socialble company, very 'work hard, play hard' and had a great time. Uni just wasn't meant to be my peak partying/figuring out who I was time.

This!

No, being an adult involves recognising your own strengths and needs, and having the resources within yourself to meet those needs, which may be quite different to your parents experience. Just because someone wants a different life to you, and is happy with that, doesn’t make it any less of an adult life.

mmmmmmm i'm not about that! We are all different, inc from our parents thankfully!

Just 2 or 3 generations ago, few people left their home area, they still went on to become teachers or nurses or coal miners etc etc they got married, had kids and many lived comparatively good lives & when times were tough, they were still able to emigrate or work abroad for short periods of time.

On Uni, my DD went to a local Uni, lived in 'Halls, then a flat share for two years (during CV) which meant i was nearby if there was an emergency and there was, a student hung himself, she could come home within 40mins, she 19 at the time, still a kid really, i didn't want her living 100s of miles away & with LD she avoided being locked up in her flat and had home tutoring in the countryside with her dog.

She works in the NHS now, highly responsible healthcare job and does national level sport - by your logic she isn't an adult.

She’s not babied at home. I work full time so she generally comes back and takes over running the household: washing, ironing, shopping, etc. Also helps out my sister, who lives a bit away and is disabled.

I do wish she liked uni more. She joined a few societies but didn’t really click with anyone as the main ‘socials’ are drinking based.

I hated uni so much I moved home at the end of the first term and commuted a 4 hour round trip for the next 3 years. It was a very small uni and I simply didn’t fit in with the “tribes”.

At the time it was HARD but actually I kept my part time job at home and made friends who I still see weekly today, they just weren’t “uni friends”. I also landed in less debt because I had less expenses and worked a lot.

I still live locally to my family and friends and have a local job. Still passed my degree and got a good job afterwards.

Ultimately, there is no ‘right’ way to do university, despite the whole ‘uni lifestyle’ being hyped up before you go. If she’s happy and you’re happy then I can’t see there being an issue.

This will be my dd. She is very capable, very clever, lots of common sense, very independent but also very quiet. She enjoys her own space and homelife. The one thing putting her off uni is the expectation to be a party animal. If she does uni it'll be the local one, about 45 minutes away, and she'll travel.

This. Red flag

You sound as if you believe all late teen dc are the same and develop at the same rate and also that all university experiences are exactly the same!

As a pp said, many European students still live at home during university and incur no debt at all for fees or accommodation. Many students have a gap year. Some settle and love the partying and others loathe it. Some happen to click with their flat mates and some don’t. One size doesn’t fit all.

There are many ways of expanding your horizons and it doesn’t all have to be done to a set prescribed method or timeline! The years between school and mid-twenties are defined nowadays by a zig zag profile: students going to uni, returning home, going away again. Each phase is a step towards independence.

🧐

She misses her mummy and living with that lot isn't helping her rest, give her a big hug and say you'll be there for her.

At the same time, you need to recharge every now and then to be a goog mum to her

@cassiatwenty

“She misses her mummy and living with that lot isn't helping her rest, give her a big hug and say you'll be there for her.“

Eh? why does she need rest particularly??

I would respect and admire her for choosing what she wants to do, and not being railroaded into partying

If she's happy doing it her way then let her be.

Not everyone loves the party lifestyle expected by so many at uni. I certainly didn't when I was a student. I don't think it will make her any less independent as she finishes growing up. She already spends five days a week away from home, albeit with housemates who don't seem to get along.

She needs rest because she's never by herself with her flatmates yet always alone.

Probably low-key burnt out

I can't imagine a happy 21 year old choosing to spend her money traveling home every weekend to do the washing and cleaning. Sorry.

Does she have any interests/hobbies/plans to travel?

Not everyone is outgoing and like to socialise. She has an introvert personality. She's doing fine at uni and loves her family and the security it gives her. Please don't be conned into the belief students are out drinking and shagging every night.

I went home a lot from uni. I didn't mind going out for a drink and dance but the binge drinking culture is/was horrific - it was uni that showed me the true meaning of "shit-faced". Trying to watch over a bunch of 18 year olds so off their face they couldn't walk, slurred their words and puked everywhere wasn't my idea of a good time. And no, I didn't HAVE to watch over them but as the most sober one it invariably fell to me to get everyone home safely and I hated it. The clubs / societies were the same - all geared around drinking, except the Christian society and I am not religious! I don't think it was a red flag or held me back in any way. I ended up finding a solid group of friends in my final year and none of them went to my uni (met through a hobby in the holidays) and I spent every weekend travelling to their various unis to visit. I then did a pgce (I did a house share for that too) and moved in with my boyfriend after that. We are now married with 3 dc. I actually wished I'd just lived at home for uni - I'd have saved a ton of money and been much happier I think.

Your poor daughter. Maybe it would help if she got a job at uni, in a coffee shop or something, where there would be different kinds of people. What's she studying?

I used to come home every weekend from uni to see my boyfriend at the time, even though we didn’t last after uni I don’t regret it. The odd weekends I did stay at uni were pretty boring. Most of the partying went on during the weeknights. Also getting a bit of distance from my housemates was good I think, they all used to fall out with each other and have issues all the time living together 24/7 whereas I remained neutral and didn’t get as involved in the drama because I was able to get my space from them all.

I wouldn't worry tbh. I came home from uni a lot at weekends.

I had friends at uni and course mates that I still keep in contact with now. But weekends where I was at uni weren't big nights out at all - the weekdays were the fun days. I wanted to see my home friends (lots remained at home) and they were and remain my closest friends decades later so it was worth maintaining those relationships.

Tbh, if given my time again I don't know if I'd bother going away for uni. I had fun and made friends but it didn't live up to the hype of being the liberal time of your life that everyone kept banging on about!

My DS is younger, in year 1. He comes home probably every 3 weeks, and would possibly come home more frequently but we discourage it.

He hasn't gone too far, just under an hour away, and most of his at his home mates haven't gone to Uni so there's a definite pull there. At the beginning he was coming back for random reasons "so and so is having mates round Friday eve", we encouraged him to come back for special occasions instead, so to build the relationships with the friends he's made at Uni.

I just don't think it's very healthy for him to be coming home that frequently, he needs to let himself settle into his new life at Uni - us and his mates aren't going anywhere!

We’re not all the same.

I would just allow her to be her natural self.
So much emphasis on how a young person should be living these days.
Being quiet and enjoying your own company is not celebrated in the UK yet it is quite a mature trait. Enjoying yourself without having to get stoned or wasted is something lot of people struggle with. It's a total embarrasment to see how young British folk behave abroad compared to other cultures, yet here it seems to be applauded.