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!

I think it's selfish not to tell her mother.

My friends ex had a mental health crisis, he told his family/ friends in the UK he was going abroad to do his adventure sport as planned and told his friends abroad who were meant to be moving on with him to a very remote location that he'd sacked it off, it was weeks before anyone realised he was missing and started the search for his body.

Neither your anecdote or mine are relevent to OP DD who is living her life independently in her 20s in a way that displeases her anxious mother, who will be anxious whether or not her DD tells her her travel plan, up until the point that she switches snowboarding for knitting.

I believe they were reported missing but I don't know the exact details without Googling.

Exactly.
I also think it's very odd behaviour.
A simple text is so easy. She doesn't have to actually speak to her mum.

It would be odd with my kids not to let me know they were on a trip abroad but she obviously values her freedom and good for her. Just ask her to let somebody know where she is if she is travelling alone for safety. If she doesn't want to do that your going to have to let go and let her get on with it I do admire her spirit your only young once.

The Cleveland women were rescued because one of them escaped and told the authorities. Fritzl was released by her father after one of her children became so ill they needed hospital treatment. She told authorities what had happened after she was arrested for abusing the hospitalized child.

Nothing at all to do with being reported missing.

Blimey this thread has taken a turn

@RawBloomers ok they were just a couple of cases I thought off from the top of my head. Maybe not the best examples.
My point is - that you don't seem to be getting - is that so much time could be wasted looking for someone missing if you are looking in completely THE WRONG PLACE.
Why don't you understand that?

My mind does frequently go to extreme "what if" examples.
But if people can't even be arsed to send their own mother a couple of sentences by text what can sometimes be a simple situation can turn into an extreme situation.

I was countering your insistence that this was about the DD’s safety. It’s not. She will not be any safer if she tells her mum where and when she’s going on holiday. This is about OP’s anxiety.

Also, it really doesn’t save huge amounts of time and effort. People rarely go missing on holiday and when they do police will be checking multiple resources to find out where they have been. They do not simply rely on the person reporting knowing the missing person’s movements.

@RawBloomers I agree it doesn't make it safer.
I don't think I ever said it would.
It could just make life easier if something did happen.

I’d made the point that the idea telling your mum where you’d gone on holiday could save you from some weirdo’s basement was a movie plot, not real life and you came in with the claim it was based on reading news reports. If that wasn’t some sort of claim that it would help keep the SS safe I’m not sure why you posted at all.

There are all sorts of things people could do that would make some other people’s lives an bit easier if some very unlikely event happened. This is probably not up there in the top thousand.

You are focusing on some imaginary scenario here.

If there is some immediate danger, the only one to help are witnesses on the spot or some intentional safety mechanism (mountain cottage registration which kicks in automatically). Anyone who would think "she just fall asleep and will write me in the tomorrow" won't be relevant.

The "didn't come back to home as expected" allert is too late for anything else than unconscious at hospital, body discovery or your hypothetical basement scenario. *
Once the police starts looking, they can get phone and credit card data, so I'm not sure how much time is wasted compared to "she is missing and she is somewhere in Zurich area" scenario.

*injured but conscious person can communicate and ransom-motivated kidnappers would make sure to reach you as well

@RawBloomers my point was basically "but what if...".
That's it really. Anyone who travels presumably thinks that when they purchase their travel insurance. I mean that's why you have insurance isn't it?
Sometimes my brain does go to the extreme. Going by this thread maybe I do need to tell my brain to chill a bit 😂
But like so many threads on here - a simple issue can be prevented turning into a big issue if people just communicated with each other.
🙂

I think it's odd, too. I loved my late parents and kept in close touch with them, which didn't threaten my independence nor stop me from emigrating to the US twenty years ago, while my parents were still alive and healthy. So I can't understand people who push loving families so far away. But I know a lot of people like that. I hope they don't regret it when their parents are gone. I think it's a shoddy way to treat the people who love you and raised you. It's understandable when there's dysfunction or abuse, but that doesn't seem to be the case in this OP, nor the other current thread with the DSD who wants almost nothing to with her family after going to uni.

I think it's so sad. I'd give anything for one more dinner with my parents, and people are out here treating loving parents as if they're almost strangers. Life is short, people are precious. I was 24 when my mum was first diagnosed with cancer, so perhaps that made me grow up a bit.

@BauhausOfEliott "I don’t really understand why you need to know. I mean… what difference would it actually have made to know she’d cracked her ribs in Switzerland? She didn’t need anything from you, and it’s not like you being aware of it would have made her ribs heal any faster."

That's all fine. As long as she doesn't want mummy and daddy's help at any time. Independence seems to be a one way street these days. Parents are just there to bank roll or sort out the latest mess but at the same time shut the fuck up.

Absolutely. Some young people push perfectly loving parents away, but you can guess they'd be right back at home wanting meals brought to them etc if they break their leg or something.

Sometimes it's better not to tell your parents because of the grief they give you.
Back in the day I worked for a company that had a substantial presence in Northern Ireland. My role required me to go there 3 or 4 times a year.

I would tell my mother, in our weekly phone call, where I had been. I never ever told her I was due to go.

I think that's more understandable, when you're going to a small place with a large active terrorist presence. And you were in touch with her otherwise.

But that's different because your employer knew where you were.
The OP was concerned that her daughter wasn't telling anyone (and is self employed).

I find it astonishing how many people here don't seem to care where their kids are because they are adult children . my son is away at the moment travelling but he regularly texts to let me know he is OK, ask how I am and generally just sort of check in He also sends pictures in videos. he doesn't have to go there But it only takes a minute And he knows I worry about him being thousands of miles away. I really don't think the OP is being unreasonable especially after a daughter's already had an accident. I imagine if she messaged asking for advice about somebody being airlifted home and said she didn't know where her daughter had been who she went with and when she went there'd be a whole lot of piling on taking place.

Yeah I agree, though I might substitute 'daft' for 'selfish'. My point is that nobody, apparently not even the OP, knows whether or not she isn't telling anyone at all, so why are people just assuming she isn't and jumping straight to psycho's-cabin-in-the-woods scenarios? As to the original question, given the OP is worrying about her daughter not telling her, it's a safe assumption that she'd worry if she did tell her, so I'm very much on the fence.

It won’t stop it turning into a big issue. If the DD goes missing or something happens to her it will be a big issue. Her having told her mum will not make everything easy and negate all harm. The point is that OP’s worry is all about OP and the way she feels, it is nothing to do with the DD keeping her informed of her holiday plans really. The worrying won’t stop when DD tells her she’s off skiing for a week in Switzerland or kite boarding in Egypt. It will just give OP something more concrete to worry about.

(And to reiterate something I said earlier - I’m not surprised OP is worrying. Her DD does extremes sports and got injured, that’s going to bring the risks home and would be surprising if it didn’t worry a parent. She just needs to try and get back to her former equanimity. It’s a risk that DD chooses and OP can’t manage it.)

As a teen my mum was pretty chilled but the deal was she knew where I was going and when I would be back. It was always expressed as a safety thing that if anything were to happen she would know where to start looking and she would only start to worry if I was overdue returning. If plans changed I was expected to call and say so. This carried on into adulthood and I've done the same with my own dd. I've expressed to her that it's useful for me to know how to contact her should I need to if her dad or grandparents become unwell for example.

I think it is considerate to think that other people might need to contact you and that for your own safety it's sensible to let someone know where you are and for roughly how long.

@RawBloomers I don't think it's about preventing harm.
I just think it's generally nice to know what country your own child is actually in 🤷