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!

All we know is that she’s not telling her parents or her flatmates. We can’t categorically say she’s not telling anyone- and she will be on the trips with someone.

As soon as I left home I stopped telling my parents things, it is just far too much hassle and stress. Everything comes with judgement.

I don’t know why people are saying that she isn’t telling anyone just because she doesn’t communicate with her flatmates. She will know other people. When I was in my 20s I had a whole network of others my age- we all looked out for each other, took each other to a&e or hospital appointments when needed. I was once quite unwell in hospital and I didn’t tell my parents until after- the last thing I needed was to manage their anxiety on top of my own illness.

You are sure... Based on what? If she doesn't tell family, flatmates, doesn't have a partner, the only chance are friends, but not everyone shares this level of information with their friends.

Unless she intentionally shares the information with someone noone knows.

I suppose there might be some way for police to ask about her phone/credit card payments, but that would take time

My parents never knew where I was after I left home, I did break my leg snowboarding in France, friends I was with called them and left a message on their answerphone at home (pre mobile days). not long after father passed mum called me on mobile she was a tad surprised I was in Miami for the weekend and hadn't mentioned it.

She'd probably be staying in a hotel or hostel, who would have her details. There would be other people there. She may be doing activities with other people. Even without that, knowing someone is in a certain country is really no help at all if they get into trouble.

i may be mad but I agree that not telling you she’s out of the country is strange. I’d find also have DCs in their 20s - one had pretty much left home and the other is away at uni. We talk weekly and WhatsApp often. I think that’s normal. DD in particular is very independent hence not wanting to live at home.

There are levels though. When I first went away w dh (pre mobiles), he rang his parents from a pay phone and I thought that was so odd. What’s wrong w a postcard? We were away for a week in Spain. Not travelling in the jungle!

With my DC they’d def tell me if travel plans but I wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear from them unless they’re sharing photos. Within my friend group this is normal.

Yes, he has esp as he bikes. However, if he breaks his ankle in the Peak District, where there is very poor signal for phones, he could die of exposure before he can get help. Unless someone knows where he is. That's an elementary rule for hill walking - tell someone where you are going and when you will be back, so emergency services can be alerted if you don't come back. The other elementary rule is that you should be with 3 other people so if one is hurt there is someone to stay with the casaulty and two to get help - in case one of them is injured. (Also, you go at the pace of the slowest.) My DS knows all this. He likes camping in the Peaks, usually with a group of friends, but occasionally on his own. I daresay the neighbour who feeds his cat would raise the alarm?

Once I was completely independent, I didn't tell mine anything much about what I was doing.

Rescue her from a weirdo’s basement? Seriously? You think if she doesn’t come back from a holiday OP’s going to tell the police and because OP can tell them where she went on holiday (rather than them, say, asking her phone provider for details of where her phone has been used) she’s going to get rescued from some weirdo’s basement?

You have been watching too many movies.

This isn’t about the DD’s safety. It’s about OP’s feelings.

Or read to many news stories where people have gone missing and sometimes miraculously are found alive in a basement somewhere.
If you realised you hadn't seen or heard from your adult daughter for several weeks you'd get concerned (I hope). If it gets to the stage where you need to report her missing then where are the police going to look?
Not in Switzerland unless you knew that's where she'd gone.

Unless there is some reason to take urgent action, any missing person action is going to take time. Your mum knowing you’ve gone on holiday and haven’t come back on the day you said is not going to trigger an immediate search by the local police of the place you went to, even if she knows what country/city that was.

The police will ask her phone provider where her phone has been used. They will check on credit card use. Etc. So yes, they will know to ask Swiss police to look for her.

Got some links to all these news reports where mum has managed to get her DD rescued from some weirdo’s basement because she’d been kept informed of the DD’s holiday plans?

Perfectly reasonable to ask / remind.

I was like this in my 20s, I had malaria twice, typhoid, did a bungee jump, knee surgery, stayed with a mate in Val D'Isere, don't think I informed or asked my parents on many of these 😂.

These days I'm very sensible.

As the saying goes you can't put an older person's head on a young person's shoulders.

@RawBloomers there's plenty of "well known" cases of missing people being found in basements.
3 women in Cleveland was one such case. Elizabeth Fritzel in Austria who was held captive by her own disgusting father is another.
I can't think of others of the top of my head right now.
My point is....
If you know your daughter is going to Switzerland for the weekend and due to fly back Monday but doesn't turn up... you'd be looking for her in Switzerland.
If you didn't know she'd gone there and she's missing the time it might take to discover that's where she went so much police time will have been wasted looking in the wrong place.

I used to be like this in my early 20s. I was revelling in my new-found independence and saw no reason why my mum had to know “my every movement” because I wasn’t a child. Now I look back and think “ah… “ I can see now why she wanted to know where I was. I’d say it’s worth having a word with her and saying you’d like to be kept in the loop. Be sure to emphasise that it’s the same for anyone… you’d want to know if your husband suddenly went to Turkey or something, and you’d tell her if you were going away. I’ve known too many people who have had an emergency/mishap abroad and needed help from relatives.. another thing is this scams where they text you pretending to be a relative who’s stuck abroad with no money - you could easily fall pray to that if you don’t know whether she’s abroad or not!

There's another thread running at the moment about a DSD at uni who is also pathologically independent. Doesn't want to see them for months, doesn't want to talk on the phone, won't come home for Christmas.

It's almost comical the extent to which some new adults push their families away. While we all love to flee the nest, this kind of thing is a total over-correction! 🤣 I guess it speaks to the fact that they haven't found a mature balance yet between being an independent adult and not hurting their families by virtually dumping them. I'm sure they'll come back when they're confident in their independence. While I agree with you, OP, it's probably best to just throw up your hands and wait until she matures a bit and realises that doing something as basic as letting your parents know that you're going on holiday doesn't threaten her independence.

A relative of mine had a mental health crisis whilst travelling around Asia and ended up in prison. She (pushing 40 btw) relied on her mum and siblings getting worried when they hadn’t heard from her, making enquiries with the consulate and arranging her release and travel home, all while she was in total denial that there was anything wrong!

She’s a spy OP. That ‘wakeboarding accident’ was a fight with a Russian agent in a casino in Montreaux over plans to sabotage the UK’s undersea fibre optic cables. They only found “Dmitri’s” body in Lake Geneva last month.

I like that theory 🙂

All I would say to her is to make sure she has the absolute best insurance policy that includes getting her home if injured.

Right, do we actually know that she is not telling anybody at all about what she's up, or is that just an assumption that people are making so they can have a go at her? Because I regularly did this sort of thing when I was young, in fact I still do now, but if I was going out into the wilds for a few days I'd never bother telling my parents who are hundreds or thousands of miles away, what's the point? Literally all they can do is worry. I'd tell somebody suitable in a local hostel/shop/bar/hire place and/or leave a note in my windscreen. This is not uncommon.

.. and what's with the idea that if you're not telling your parents/offspring what you're up to every day then you must have a dysfunctional relationship? That's just mad. All my family get along great, but we're independent people with interesting lives to lead so it can be weeks or even months between catching up. It's not wrong it's just different.

I don’t think it would be unreasonable to ask her to make sure “someone” knows where she is going and when she is due back. That’s just normal practise for extreme sports. If she’s off climbing or off piste skiing and no-one is expecting a check in, no-one will raise the alarm
if she is missing.

@Biskieboo yes if she's telling her mates/people she works with/cousin/the postman... then that's fine. She doesn't need to tell her mother (or flatmates).
But if she's not telling ANYONE then I think she's a bit selfish really.

None of the women in those cases were saved because someone reported them missing.

This is something different.

In some mountain hotels (at least in Europe) you can log your plans for the day at the reception, so they will trigger mountain rescue if you don't come back in the evening.

Someone knowing you are due to come back on Sunday won't be of much use if you get stuck somewhere on Thursday.