Allowing college kids to deal with cold showers for 2 days

[Randicrawfordcoaching]

A mom posted in a group that her college kids had to deal with cold showers for two days and she asked if she should go get her and bring her home. Mom lives an hour away. I made a post and said absolutely not! They are in college and can figure it out! Parents came out of the woodwork freaking out on me and said if they could help with something small like this, they absolutely would do it. I’m horrified that we coddle our college kids the way we do. AIBU🤷‍♀️😂

Mine would have the wit not to ask me. They could turn up, go to the gym, use a friends or you know just have a quick cold shower.

I am a supportive parent but if they couldn't self solve basic shit like this I would be despairing.

🤣🤣. Oh come off it! If someone is 18 and old enough to go off to university then they are old enough to work out how to manage without a hot shower for a couple of days without thwir mummy collecting them and bringing them home! At that age I had been living with my boyfriend for a year and we were about to buy our first flat - We often didn’t have hot water for days at a time in our first rented flat, but we managed L. I would have been horrified if my daughter had been that helpless at 18

Dont all unis have sports complex? Go and shower there

My older son said his student house share had freezing showers for a while. The landlord fixed it after students made complaints. I didn’t do anything, never occurred to me to step in.

My properly adult child and partne(r not an 18 year old shower) in their house broke they used our shower until theirs was fixed🤷‍♀️

It would never have occurred to my son to even tell me if the hot water was off when he was at university!

I am the first person he turns to if he needs help (he's autistic), but this would be a non-event to him, as it would be to me. I'm all for parents supporting their children, but sometimes that support can best be given by putting things into perspective.

At that age they really shouldn’t need telling to boil a kettle.

My son only told me because I asked how his new student house was. He said great but boilers not working so no hot water. They sorted it out themselves by contacting the landlord. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to involve myself in it.

Assume this is not in UK. There will be gyms or pools with showers, or neighbouring halls if on campus.

So you have children?

If young people are paying for accommodation then they're entitled to get what they pay for, which would typically include a hot water supply. The fact they're young and it 'won't hurt them' doesn't mean they should be expected to put up with it while those responsible take their sweet time because its just college kids.
Unfortunately this is often the reality when it comes to the treatment of students (in the UK at least) with exploitative landlords fobbing them off with all sorts of inadequate conditions and poor services. And often because they're young and inexperienced, the students lack the confidence to push their rights.

This is where parents may need to step in to support them. So while no, I wouldnt think I needed to fetch my child home, nor would I say 'they're old enough to get on with it, it won't hurt them' either. I'd be supporting them to get the problem fixed.

This has reminded me of my friend who works at a uni and the crazed requests they get from parents. The kinds of questions and demands you might expect to be made of primary staff on a child’s first residential.

One of my children made a fact file at the weekend about a 14 year old who joined the army in the First World War. He listed some of his deprivations and experiences and said he felt a bit inept to be approaching his age and knowing he couldn’t think of doing similar. I reminded him that the concept of teen years being part of childhood is fairly modern. That children regularly left school to work and were expected to be adult in their behaviours. That wasn’t ideal but these extended childhoods into people’s twenties is also not ideal. While some of this is down to social and economic changes the cultural element seems to increasingly push the same agenda telling us don’t expect too much, they are still developing…If we had higher expectations we would have happier and more capable teens/twenties.

Also when friends have had no hot water ive invited them to use our shower because it's unpleasant having a cold shower and nice to help.

That’s different. I’m never going to say to my kids they can’t come over no matter what the reason. But that doesn’t mean I’d make the offer to go get them and bring them back to have a shower. I went over to my son’s a couple of times in his first year when he felt really unwell. I got him some meds and did some shopping for him.

If I wasn't doing anything else and she wanted to come home anyway then I might drive an hour there and back, I do sometimes because it's a nice drive and I take the dogs and some food and have a bit of a day out, but I doubt between work and everything else I'd actually be able to, and although an hour's drive it's about 3 hours buses and trains each way so unless she was coming home anyway I'd expect she wouldn't bother just for a shower.
In fact I doubt she'd even tell me except to have a moan that she'd been without hot water a couple of days and had to go to the gym or swimming baths or boil kettles and use bowls of warm water. I don't think it would enter her head to phone me with this problem and expect me to fix it.

Two days isn't long at all. I'd expect them to boil a kettle and use a bucket or go to the gym and shower. Which is exactly how I would (and have) handled it myself.
I'd be mortified if my DC expected me to solve a minor, temporary issue like this. Good grief.
Sometimes boilers break down. The fact that you're paying for accommodation, doesn't change that and sometimes parts and repairs take a few days. Landlords aren't obliged to provide an immediate repair/alternative where it isn't realistically possible.

Don't go on WIWIKAU it is wild on there.

Why are you getting so horrified? If it's only an hour away then I personally go and get them. Just because your kid turns 18 it no longer means you can just abandon them or no longer care for them.

Yeah, I’d expect them to sort themselves out (would potentially help if they needed to contact the landlord and we’re having issues). There’s bound to be a college gym where they could shower, or they can boil a kettle and use a sink! If they wanted to get a bus home to shower, they’d be welcome, but I wouldn’t go and get them.

An hour away means 2x 2hr trips. I think most people would say 4hrs drive is actually quite far.

Mother of god it’s two days not two weeks or two months. A kettle of hot water and they can wash at the sink for goodness sake. These things happen and people have to improvise during for example home renovations where the actual bath or shower might not be available or in rare cases frozen pipes during bad winters or electricity outages or whatever. I lived in a bedsit during my late teens with no shower at all and I was working full time and perfectly clean. It’s not two days without actual water it’s just hot water they don’t have. If the water supply was going for two days then I could understand going to collect them as that’s a whole different story.

So how would you figure it out @Randicrawfordcoaching?

Confused about posters on a British site saying "college" when they probably mean "university"

2 days!
My dcs at Uni would probably not have told me and would have sorted it out with the other people in the house.
Id have learnt about it when they were back home, either moaning about the landlord or praising them (depending on which dc. One has a less than helpful landlord. The other one has a landlord who gets the EA to sort everything out. It’s fine quickly, well and for almost any issue they’ve had).

Heating would have been much more of an issue tbh

Do you value independence over community? I certainly don’t.

I would go out of my way to help a stranger, and be the first to offer a friend help, so why would I expect my own child to figure it out alone? I want to be a person that can be called for help, and have people I can call on too.

I’m very independent, I moved out as a teenager due to abuse at home and had to learn to survive on my own. As a result I can do all sorts of things from plumbing, diy and tinkering on cars to making do with little food, no hot water, or heating all winter. You don’t have to get your life skills from being thrown in at the deep end, and its certainty not the best way.

The family I have now doesn’t work like that, we are a support system first and foremost and it’s wonderful. Skills are passed down, responsibility falls to everyone to be there to help (no matter how small the issue), and the young ones are given unlimited amount of support- meaning they grow into supportive people with the tools to help others.

Having a village, to me at least, is much more important than being self sufficient young.