Was I too harsh on my daughter?

[feedmefudge]

19 year old daughter, on her way home for Christmas this evening from uni. She stays in Halls a few hours away.
I am happy and excited to see her but am also taking a deep breath at the thought! She’s amazing and I love her to bits, but she’s not what you’d call the most positive person.
So here I am today, on a rare day off (I’m working 7 days at the moment, to make ends meet), cleaning her room, changing the bedding, getting all the stuff she likes to eat, buying some extra little treats like new pyjamas for coming home, laying everything out for her. Oh, and buying all her Christmas presents of course.
So it’s a bit of a kick in the teeth to get this text, literally from her train home!

Sometimes it actually upsets me that everyone moved on from me moving out so quickly and just went on with their lives not being remotely sad? And my room was casually stolen?

To explain, her younger sister does sleep in her room while she’s at uni, because her room is huge whereas little sister’s is much smaller. However she will have it back for the holidays, hence the fresh bedding etc!
It just feels that nothing I do is good enough and that she doesn’t really live in the real world.
I am a loving, supportive and emotionally intelligent mum … but I’m afraid in this case I told her to get a grip.
AIBU?

No the room belongs to OP and it is up to her who sleeps in there without negotiation. Older DD gets to have the room when home so what on earth is the issue?

You sound like a lovely kind caring Mum OP but teenagers can be tricky, I have one who has just graduated and one in Uni so I am well versed in kids of this age.

We are even worse.
DD who We are beyond proud of left for university 5 years ago.
We are the worst parents because we redecorated a week after she left. We also had the audacity to move her king sized bed to the centre of the room and put a headboard on it. It's much warmer now that it isn't pushed against the radiator.
On top of the room repainting, we replaced the folding door in her ensuite shower room.
She's coming back on Xmas eve.
Would that be a good time to introduce the idea if our planned lodger!

She is v lucky you didn't give the larger room to her sister once she moved in (and that she had the larger room in the first place). Stop spoiling her and then she will stop behaving in a spoilt manner. But yes i agree with pp - tell her you were upset but didn't want to burden her with it. And stop feeling sorry for yourself! It's not the end of the world that she is feeling a bit low.

In what way might you have been harsh?! She cant expect to reserve the best bedroom when she is not even there! I think you are being quite soft on her actually, letting her have the bedroom back! - never mind all the fripperies.

So - not you at fault. Definitely not.

But maybe a sign that she is struggling a bit with being away from home.

We took it in turns to have the bigger room - and when i left it had been mine. My sibling moved in the day i moved out. Of course the sibling living there should have the best/better room.

you were not too harsh at all. But she should get the smaller room.

I'd barely left the premises when DSiS took over my room (she'd set out her argument with my mother and moved in by the end of my first week at uni!).

Tell your DD that this has been part of life forever (well, the last 40 I'd years anyway) and of course you love her.

It is only fair really.

I’m a big believer that you haven’t moved out when you go to uni. So I would ignore the other posters suggesting you swap their rooms. I would let them negotiate it between themselves. I think it’s very unsettling to go to uni and find you’ve been usurped from your room. I’d reassure her and try not to take the drama personally. Fine to be firm but be reassuring too as she’s obviously got some big feelings and you don’t want this to be on the list of what she talks to her therapist about in 10 years lol

This.

I was eldest of 3 and we all had our own rooms. Mine was much bigger than youngests and when I went I told my parents to swap me and my brother.

As it was (eventually!) they moved sister and brother up one room and me into the box.

Nog sure why it took so long 🤷‍♀️ but I saw it as I’d benefitted from my own room until my brother was born (I was 7) and my sister moved into my bedroom and the biggest room once we moved (I was 11).

Does she always expect the world to evolve around her?

the kid that lives there most should have the better room. Uni is a staging post for moving out, and even if she does come back, why the fuck should an accident of birth get you the best room For Ever?

The house that my DCs grew up in is amazing - the biggest bedroom is ours, and the other 2 bedrooms are exactly the same (but mirror image)

Of course you have, uni is the beginning of moving on and it's not usurping anything at all. It's giving more space to the remaining family members.

Oh bless her. She's 19 and being dramatic, not really out of the ordinary! I remember being 19 and everything was the biggest deal in the world (and being a bit sad to see my room taken over by my little brother even though I knew it made sense!)

Just give her a big cuddle and tell her you miss her like mad but didn't want her to feel guilty for spreading her wings.

I found the transition to uni hard, I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere any more.

Just tell her you're sorry she feels that way and that you love her.

She just wants a bit of reassurance.

Your daughter is coming across as spoiled. What does she expect - the whole family to go into mourning and for her room to be preserved as a shrine until she comes home?

Don't pander to this - it's time she learned she's not the centre of the universe.

God she’s not dead 😂 how dramatic of her!

Of course we had that discussion. It goes without saying, really!

This is when I’m relieved I have boys, two have moved out, did their uni years, no dramas! I suspect neither of them would have noticed if we’d moved house 😂

Well, no! Her reaction suggests she doesn’t recall that convo!
She says her room was ‘casually stolen’!!!

She needs to grow up and get over herself. YANBU and don't pander to it I had the biggest room and my sibling was in it newly decorated within a week of me going to uni. I wouldn't have expected my family to keep it as a shrine when I visited I rightly stayed in box room!

When I left home for uni, my sister had my bigger room. It didn’t even occur to me to make a fuss because how could I claim the best room when I didn’t even live there anymore?! It’s quite selfish to want to keep the biggest bedroom in a house you don’t live in for over half the year. I’d reassure her but I wouldn’t pander to her dramatics.

Thanks all so much for the replies!
A couple of answers to your questions:— younger sister will get the big bedroom after the long Christmas holiday (big sis is home for nearly 2 months). Big sis will then have a tiny bedroom but with its own en-suite, so not all bad.
-the first year of uni could best be described as up and down. She enjoys the course and has made friends, but they’re not really close and she feels like she hasn’t really found her people. She’s an anxious girl and is worried about who she’ll share a flat with next year. She feels that everyone else has teamed up already.
She formed a close bond with one of her flatmates initially, but then she got a boyfriend. He’s a twat and will do things like knock on my daughter’s door when he comes in, sometimes even waking her. I think it’s to intimidate. She doesn’t have the back-up of her flatmate, as she won’t say anything to him.
So I’m trying to help her navigate her through all of this, obviously providing love and reassurance. And God love her, despite her anxiety, she never stops trying. It goes without saying that I regularly tell her how proud I am!
I’m afraid she does sometimes think the world revolves around her. She can have a fixed mindset and struggles to see when she is in the wrong. I’m a single mum but she has been spoilt by her (wealthy) dad, and private school hadn’t given her the most balanced view of life.
I do my best to counter that.

And yes, she can be very dramatic 😆

Ha ha, she would say that though!
It really wasn’t. And I wouldn’t be much of a mum if I allowed her room to be taken over without prior discussion.

This!

I'm quite a sarcastic person though so would've probably replied 'Sorry, do I know you?' 😂

I disagree with most on here. At uni doesn't mean permanently moved out. Uni and student accommodation is temporary. The family home is still her permanent base even though she is spending weeks at a time away from it.

Two of my three DDs went to uni. They came back every holiday and after graduation until they started properly working. I wouldn't have dreamed of messing around with their rooms beyond just fresh bedding ready for their return. Nor would I have allowed their siblings to move into their rooms.

I'm 59. I went to uni at 18. I haven't really lived at my parents' house since then beyond about 8 weeks after graduation while I was waiting to start my job. My bedroom in their house is still the same one it was when I was growing up there. It hasn't changed and I still sleep in it now all these years later when I go to visit my now very elderly mother.

I didn't find settling at uni to be a simple matter and would have been devastated if my den back at home had been whipped away from underneath me.

So I am team DD here. I think you are too harsh and I would stop allowing her younger sibling to use the room when she is away. It's one thing to perhaps use it for a guest for a couple of days, but another to almost behave as though she doesn't live there at all.