DD never tells us when she is going on holiday

[mamsyto]

My DD is 24, she works freelance and condenses her days to about 4 days a week to maximise her time off. Shes a massive extreme sport fan, wakeboarding, snowboarding, cliff diving, rock climbing, surfing, I’m sure you get the idea.

Earlier this year she broke 2 ribs while wakeboarding. She hadn’t told anyone she was going out to Switzerland to do this, she just disappeared off, we only found out when we called her and she told us she was still in Switzerland as she’d been told to wait a week before flying back!

Obviously many of these sports come with decent risk of injury, more so than if she was renting a tennis court in the south of France for a few days or playing beach volleyball with friends! We find it deeply concerning she doesn’t inform anyone she is going on these trips. She also doesn’t use social media very much, she will only post once she is back from a place which I do understand but it’s a tad useless in ensuring she’s safe.

Anyway I tried to call her tonight and got a message, with a pic of her out somewhere snowboarding, simply quoted “getting some early season slope time I’ll call when I’m home”. No mention of where she was, how long she would be there or if she was with anyone. Now she’s not replying to tell us where she is, she is a chronic bad replier so we will be lucky if she tells us before she is home. I’d maybe feel better if she was inclined to play it safe while doing these sports, but If she isn’t practicing tricks that make your stomach a bit weak, she’s going off piste which is obviously naturally riskier.

Prior to her injury earlier this year I was very much in the team if she’s an adult, she doesn’t owe us a pre-warning of where she is going or how long she will be there. However since the injury I’ve been pretty paranoid, I know that broken ribs can be fragile if not healed fully and the risk of an injury to the lungs with broken ribs is there, if something awful happened we would have no idea unless someone contacted us as she is notoriously awful at replying and doesn’t tell anyone where she is!

AIBU to be very worried? Would it be fair for me to ask her to please just drop a message saying where she is going and for how long, I wouldn’t harass her while she is there and I respect her right to privacy and independence but just because she’s an adult doesn’t mean I can stop worrying!

No. Teenager. But I’m one of a large family of adult children, several with their own adult children, married to a man with seven siblings, all with adult children, and most of my friends, in several countries, have twentysomething children. I can assure you that in my circles, adult children living independently don’t routinely inform their parents before they leave the country, whether by themselves or with other people. When they have ordinarily loving parent-child relationships. The only sibling of mine who always does tell my parents is because they feed her pets. I’m not assuming it’s universal, as this thread testifies, but I think it’s lunatic to think it’s ‘unfilial’ or ‘disrespectful’ not to tell your parents you’re off on a trip.

Whether she tells you or not, you're going to worry. You're her mother. You'll know soon enough if something bad happens, I'm sure. I think that you should at least ask who she has put down as "first contact" in the event of emergency/accident. If she hasn't put you or her father down, and has no significant other or sibling, then she's basically saying that you keep your distance. She seems thoughtless, but not a lot you can do about it, I'm afraid.