...to have told DD to find her own way home?

[jessjessjess]

DD is in her first year at university, about 120 miles from home. She's in halls and has to move out in the holidays.

DW said she would collect her at the start of the Easter holiday and confirmed this twice but forgot and went to France instead. DD would have made alternative arrangements had she known about this in advance.

So DD called to ask if her mum was coming. I said no, she was in France. DD said she'd had to leave her room and was sitting in a doorway with her stuff - too much to carry onto a train by herself. I said: "What do you expect me to do about it?" and put the phone down. Was I BU?

Obviously this is a reverse AIBU. I've been working with some first-year uni students recently and have been struck by the fact that really they're just kids. I don't often talk to people about my toxic family but I told a friend this story and she said I was making a big deal out of nothing and I shouldn't have expected my parents to ferry me around.

I think she's missed the point but it's really thrown me. I have a hard time working out what's normal and what's not because nobody tells you at the time. I guess I just wondered how you would feel if your DD made a call like this and your DH hung up on her. That's not normal, is it? Or AIBU?

Like some others on this thread, I would be expecting a child of uni age to do this themselves - can't believe so many on here do it! I always did this myself throughout uni - I was an adult and didnt expect to be looked after by my parents - who loved me very much (much longed for only child etc), but who had done their job in terms of day to day care by the age of 18 - in my view and theirs. So I always knew if anything went drastically wrong, they would drop everything and help, but I didn't expect to be ferried anywhere (bearing in mind that I couldn't drive and didnt have a car, and went to a uni at least 7/8 hours drive away from my parents) - just had to make my own arrangements.

Having said all that, if those arrangements had been made by the parent, then it is unfair to forget or break them with no warning and hence no ability to make new arrangements. That is wrong and I feel sorry for you being left in the lurch like that OP.

I always found packing up my room at uni quite stressful, making sure everything was properly packed and labelled so that if I couldn't get it home it could go into the hall's (limited) storage facility.

To have to start trying to do all that once I'd actually moved out of my room and was sitting on the door step with my stuff would have been a nightmare and I would have felt hugely betrayed by the people who had let me down. It wouldn't matter if it was a parent, sibling, friend or someone else.

Awful thing to do.

I always ask myself, "what would a good friend do for another friend in this situation?" Then apply the fact that a parent should do at least that and more.

I always did a lot for my DC, whils, hopefully, teaching them some responsibility too.

Recently I had a burst tyre on my way home from work. I rang DS1 who was home for a visit. He was there within 20 minutes, changed the tyre, followed me home and made me a cup of tea.

This is how families should behave towards one another.

Sorry your parents behaved like this OP.

I think at 18/19 kids are still very young and needing some support still. It's such a big jump, being in accommodation away from home and dealing with new challenges. Also, a promise had been made and and the kid let down, so I side with the student.

It's really wrong. Fine if the family as a whole has different expectations or has made different plans but not fine to leave anyone, let alone your own child, stranded a long way from home and presumably without much money.

I am 30 and went to university 100 miles from home. I never had any expectation that my parents would pick me up and drop me off, but they regularly offered and let me know in good time if they couldn't so I could make arrangements for storage or pack accordingly. When I was due to leave at the end of my final year, the day before my father was due to pick me up, he was unexpectedly offered tickets to a match that day. So he paid me back for the additional costs of having to store my stuff until the weekend and buy a train ticket at short notice. I think that's just what decent people who love you do if you're stuck and you don't have much money.

formica, I agree they are very young - I saw my cousins yesterday who are this age and it really shone through despite their "I'm soooo independent" bravado. It's not as if on the day of your 18th birthday you suddenly acquire all the emotional maturity and understanding for adult life, it's just a legal line which is fairly arbitrary.

Yes, some people are hugely mature at that point, but lot's aren't. From my own observations, proper adult maturity is usually developed by having to engage with other adults of different ages as equals, and if you have been in full time education until you are 18 and maybe haven't been able to get a PT job, there won't have been much scope for that.

Regardless of how self-sufficient we think teenage children should be, the OP describes an previously arranged pick up that was completely ignored. This is completely unreasonable.

Op, it was a good risk.

When I read the title, I thought "of course not, she's a grownup"
but then, when I read the AIBU, and found that an agreement had been made and broken, then of course it's YABU to your mum (and dad for not stepping up and fetching you)

I know 120 miles is a lot, but when I was at uni, I would regularly get a bus (72 miles) home to take stuff or just to visit. But we're talking a big bag or holdall, not all of my stuff!
My mum and dad always fetched me at the end of the year, and the car was always full to bursting. there is no way in the world that I would have been able to take all that on the train.

But if you'd known in advance that you wouldn't be picked up, you would have made alternative arrangements, as you say - either taken a few weeks beforehand to take all your stuff home, or arranged a lift with someone. It's the fact that you were let down at the last minute that sucks :(

'I will NOT be repeating their mistakes.'

And that's the best thing to come out of this.
You will make new mistakes of your own....

I'm sure some people just read the title then post. Op you have shit parents (but you know that already). You owe them nothing. Well done for having the confidence to go to uni though regardless of your upbringing.
I am sure you have carved a good life for yourself in spite of your parents.

OP how awful to have parents who were so selfish. I would hate my DDs to look back and see I had ever behaved so uncaringly.

Like 3littlefrogs' family we look after each other. My parents took me to uni and picked me up. DH and I will do the same for the DDs. No question.

While fostering independance is a good thing I believe in some quarters there is an errounous belief that this is best acheived with a cut off date and a complete rejection of a young persons's capsities in favpur of prioritising parental desire to be "retired from duty of care".

I live in Italy where the apron strings are far too tightly tied, for far too long, conversely I find Brotihs attidudes often too qucik to take shears for a rapid snip to them ...far too early.

I see fostering indepcendance as process of slowly handing over responsibility and being prepared to backtrack if it seems too much too soon or if an emergency creates onerous circumstances where anybody, yound adult or fully grown adult, could do with a hand when their coping skills are not up to dealing with an event.

Roots and wings, a hard balance to strike, but some people don't even seem to try and aim for a balance because their own need to stifle with cottonwool or utterly free themselves from responisbility overtakes the desire to prioritise what their child needs from them.

Is there anybody on staff that can help ? Maybe with short term on site storage in the interim ?

Breaking a promise like that is really unreasonable, the other parent hanging up is just as bad.

Take a piece of advice from someone who had a parent who doesn't know the meaning of the word (wrt me at least), they don't change - let go of that hope now or it will continue to be toxic to you.

I've been in a similar situation in so much as I had a lift arranged when I was at boarding school and the arrangement broke down, but my father called me and explained what had happened. He said that my mother would collect me instead, he had made the arrangements to ensure it. She didn't come for me, she just called the school and gave consent for me to leave alone - I was 13 and 80 miles away from home.

She. Hasn't. Changed.

Poor DD ! my DP's would pick me up and drop me off with all of my stuff every term. Same sort of distance. DW should not have forgotten. DH certainly shouldn't have put phone down after DD's sos call. Really out of order.

Am assuming OP that you are DD. I went to uni 20 years ago, but most of my friends got dropped off and picked up, or they owned a car so they could do it themselves.

So what did you do with all your stuff DD ?

We still have a bit of a laugh about DH who went to Cambridge but sent a 'trunk' down on the train to arrive ahead of his arrival (sounds like something from Brideshead Revisited, but was in fact 1974 and he was a grammar school boy).
He then arrived in Cambridge with a large rucksack and always used the trains back and forward from home just with the rucksack. Have never discovered if the trunk had a journey home.
I left home to train as a health care professional and got the coach with a large suitcase. I then always used the train / coach to go the 65 miles back and forwards.
Now to our 2 DS's. We have ferried them back and forth from London to Nottingham over the last 7 years (think DS1 once came home by train for Christmas) and have been happy to help them out in this way. They had to clear their rooms in halls at the end of every term in the first year and I suppose this set the precedent.
It meant we got to meet their friends in their shared houses and to actually see where they were living (don't think my mum ever saw the student houses I lived in).
I'm glad we did this and saw many other parents doing the same thing over the last 7 years.
About to do the final journey in 2 weeks time!
I'm sorry about your experience OP with all your 'stuff' gathered around you.It did sound unreasonable.

Andro I'm so sorry - that's really hurtful and you were only 13, that's really shitty.

trackies I sat there with my stuff until the lift I was able to arrange could get there (about 3 hours later). Everyone else had gone by this point.

Either it didn't occur to me to ask another family for a lift, or I would have felt too awkward putting them on the spot like that (or just too humiliated to be able to tell anyone I was stranded).

Take a piece of advice from someone who had a parent who doesn't know the meaning of the word (wrt me at least), they don't change - let go of that hope now or it will continue to be toxic to you. That is excellent advice Andro. I grew up with a toxic mother, she in turn had grown up in a toxic home. My one huge, unfailing success is, that as adults, both my kids now say they did not grow up in a toxic home. They feel happy, loved and secure and they know they can come to me no matter what. I am proud to say that the toxicity stopped with me.

It was wrong of them to let you down at the last minute.

But I do think university students should make their own travel arrangements in general. If there's too much stuff to manage then there are options of paying for luggage items to be sent separately and collected at the other end or delivered to the home address. Going to uni is surely supposed to be part of learning independence and I think travelling independently is part of that.

But I do think university students should make their own travel arrangements in general.

Travel arrangements were made. The mother said she would pick her up which meant the DD did not make other arrangements, which she was capable of doing.

agree with SoupDragon. Arrangements had been made. OP only found out at last minute, when she had packed all stuff and was waiting to be picked up that no one was coming. How do you then make travel arrangements ? hire a cab ? used to take us about 1-2 hours to strategically pack my uni stuff into car, with mum, dad and self doing it. And car was rammed with it.

jessjessjess oh that's so awful. Makes me feel very sad. WHO did you arrange lift with in the end ? did your M have a go at your F ? Did anyone say sorry to you ?

I made travel arrangements to go to a conference last year. I arranged to go in a colleague's car. I'm in my late 40s. And I would still have been mightily pissed off he hadn't turned up when he's promised because he'd forgotten. Just as I would be mightily pissed off if the coach/train/plane hadn't turned up because they'd forgotten about it. I'd expect a decent apology from an airline so why on earth not from the OP's own parents?

trackies I got a lift from the guy I was sort of seeing at the time, who was about two hours away. Unfortunately this set him up very nicely as rescuer when he was a FW.

Nobody said sorry, no.

Soupdragon, when I said students should make their own travel arrangements, I meant they should arrange to travel by bus or coach or train or other means that don't involve their parents at all. Because they are adults.

I appreciate that in OP's case her parents made an arrangement and then let her down.

When I went to uni back in the Dark Ages, most students just got on a train or coach with their luggage. Now it seems like most parents drive to pick up their children.