AIBU to spend winters abroad once my daughter starts university?

[Heymommy]

I have a daughter getting ready to go to uni in September. I'm from a different country but myself and my husband had her here and we all go home during Christmas to see family. Our hope was that when she goes to uni in September, we'd go to our home country (8hr flight away) in October ending and return around Easter. That way, we'll be around for the first few weeks in case of her nerves, she will come to us over Christmas and we'll be back by Easter. We will also return in case of emergency and she can fly home to us when she needs to.

In my experience with students, many of them don't even come home that often. They gain new lives, have their friends and parents are usually just hanging around waiting by the phone. Life isn't easy for us here in the UK with high costs, health and preparing to retire. I suffer with the cold and dark winters but I remained to give my child a stable life. Child is an adult now. I work for an international company where I can work remotely from any part of the world. My husband is recently retired.

My daughter is very upset that we're still intending to do this. She says what happens if she wants to pop home some random weekend? She wants me to be there all the time. I understand this but can I sit here week after week, depressed, waiting for her to pop home? I love her more than anything but is it wrong for her to start to grow up on her own? I'm on the phone when she needs, we'll come home often etc
Please tell me what you'll do as a mother. Thank you.

YABU Even if she doesn’t need/ want to come home, knowing that she could is likely to make all the difference to her wellbeing. This is really important for young undergrads.

Let her settle and see how she gets on - if she not there yet she probably worried and nervous about it all.

My DC haven't been back much at all - their accomodation is all year - they phone and whats app. They come home much less than DH and I did as we had term time accomodation only. They know we are here and can come home - though it gets expensive for them to do so.

I'd see how she gets on - she probably wanting the safety net - you could do a month or two in another country after christams if she doing well - slowly build it all up.

Has she any other family or support in the UK? You said your husband would be around at home on and off. Can he be there more to be the support? As long as one of you is there for the first year, why does it have to be you. If you struggle in the winter more than him, it makes sense for you to be the less geographically available parent. You're not wrong to want her to be able to manage without you, especially with your own background of being away from parents from a young age, but if your daughter has not had that independence yet it will be a big change for her and probably quite stressful.

As a cautionary tale - when my youngest started uni I went off on a 5 week trip (once she was actually there). She dropped out after 3 weeks, came home and tried another uni closer to home and dropped out of that too, took the rest of the year to work and tried uni again the following year. It was a bad time to be away but at least she knew I’d be back soon.

Things don’t always go completely to plan!

You've been told multiple times already that it’s a good idea to be around for the first year so I won’t bang on about that but just wanted to add this other possibility that you might not have considered.

I don't think that this is completely unreasonable, maybe a shorter time could be a compromise.

As a millennial I only went home about once term and could have managed without it. Yes there were times where I felt homesick but at 18 this is the sort of thing that you need to learn to cope with. I don't remember needing to go home constantly for support, I emailed my parents and kept myself busy with uni activities. When I was sick I took over the counter medicine. There are also mental health services for the students.

I don't think competent 18 year olds need to lean so heavily on their parents at this time and it's a good experience learning to cope by yourself.

This really.

And certainly don’t do it in her first year.

What if there’s an emergency too? Who would be on hand for that?

It’s one thing students being alone in a foreign country when they’ve chosen to study abroad, another for the whole family to up and leave them as soon as they set foot at Uni.

As a previous poster said, you will get a range of views and it really depends on your DD.
In my experience, my daughter started last September. She was so excited, looking forward to her new life, making new friends. Even commented on how she'd see us at Christmas.
That didn't turn out to be the case. I had late night phonecalls when she was upset. She had a horrible set of flatmates (think stealing food, ignoring her, not pulling their weight, noisy all hours etc). She is very outgoing yet struggled to make friends and became quite low and depressed.
In the end she decided to come home every other weekend and try and stick it out. This way she had something to look forward to and be able to come home and see friends here. She felt incredibly isolated. We definitely needed to be here for her and I definitely didn't foresee this.
If I was in your shoes last year, I would have gone at the time. She is incredibly confident and I just didn't see it panning out the way it did!
So my answer would be don't go. You just don't know what's going to happen.
My DD is more settled now, met a great group of friends and is looking forward to living with them next year. So it all worked out in the end. But this first year has been really difficult and upsetting for all of us.

My DDs were 1 and 2 hours away. The eldest we saw roughly every 6 weeks, we visited her in October, February and May. She came home for Xmas, Easter and summer. Youngest came home at least one weekend a month.
i think your compromise of going Dec-March is great as you are around those first few months incase she needs you plus she will be with you for several weeks over Xmas. Then you can reevaluate for the following year.

Assuming you are going somewhere where you have WiFi and can FaceTime her - then go for it.

why should you sit at home on the off chance that something might happen or she might want to come home?

if she is mature enough to go to uni then she is mature enough to understand that your life is not on hold waiting for her.

you can call her everyday or she call you if she wants - if she needed advice you can help her on the phone or sign post her to correct service - hell you could even do a Tesco shop and send it to her if she was starving a as nd you were feeling generous. The world is so small given everything can be done online.

as long as you stay in contact she will cope.

how are they ever going to become adults if you don’t give them a chance to try and god forbid - fail or get it wrong?

sometimes by having to stand on your own feet rather than letting mummy solve every problem is actually pretty empowering - yes if the water leaks everywhere - it will feel like the end of the world but having to use her university level brain to solve the problem by calling the land lord or the plumber will enable her to realise - I am an adult - I’ve got this.

don’t feel bad - stay in touch with her but let her start her new life as you start yours

I think at least wait till 2nd year at uni and see how see copes with the first year. 18 is still v young. In your updates it comes across that ‘you’ are depressed, ‘you’ can’t cope with winter etc all you, but what about dd? You brought her up here, and now she probably feels u are wanting to run off as soon as she turns 18

Exactly this. My daughters would not have been happy at all, but by the second year it would have been less of an issue. “Adulting” does not come easily to some young people and reassurance and support is needed regularly.

As a parent of a DC the exact same age, I think YABVU and, in effect, chucking her out of home as soon as she goes to uni. When we have DC we had a duty of care to them. If you want to take that duty very literally then sure, it ends at the age of 18 or when they leave school. You've raised them to adulthood and after that you're not legally responsible for them any more. But I can't understand the mindset of any adult who would just bugger off an 8-hour flight away for six months of the year at that point.

I understand SAD - I have it myself - and I've often thought how amazing it would be to avoid the English winter. In fact, once DH and I are retired and the DC are proper adults who won't 'need' us any more I plan to spend a chunk of each miserable English winter somewhere where the sun shines. But I would no sooner do this the coming winter than I would stick pins in my eyes. 18-year-olds need to have a home to come to, they need to know their parents are there if they need them, that there is a warm bed and a hot meal waiting for them if they can't cope and need or just want to come home for a weekend or for the holidays. But you're essentially saying to her 'Nope, not doing that any more. You want to see us, you'll have to jump on a plane and fly for 8 hours, the home will be closed up and cold and no one is going to be there', which is horrible IMO and you sound very selfish to think that this is okay and she's just being a bit wet. Would it kill you to wait a bit longer?

Could you get an air BnB for a month in November somewhere a shorter flight away but still warm and then take her to your country for Christmas them stay there until March? I was determined to go away to Uni but had a terrible first year in an awful house share and ended up home every weekend before dropping out. DS is going to uni close to home but still living out but I've told him not to make a habit of coming home all the time, but reading all these, I'll make sure he knows he's welcome home too! It is a difficult one. My parents did the same as you when we were much older ( I had small children ) and I can't say I didn't resent a bit that they never had Christmas with their GC until they got too ill to travel. I would spend every Christmas with my PIL. NOW Id love to bugger off to my parents home country for 3 months over winter!

I wouldn’t consider it in her first year. I think I went home for Christmas in my first year, but was never welcome home after that, never had the option to just go home and be looked after a bit, and it drove a massive wedge between me and the rest of my family.

you sound as though you feel your life is on hold until she goes, then you can live how you want to. That must be awful for her to know (how ever well you think you are hiding it)

I wouldn’t do it in her first year of uni, and I’d maybe plan on coming back for at least a week half way through your time away each year too. 18 is still very young to have your parents an eight hour flight away, and going off to uni can be unsettling for many and doesn’t always work out. She may feel abandoned and if something bad happens to her you’re miles away. I wouldn’t have liked my DM to do this and I don’t think I could do it to my DC. Don’t do it in her first year and maybe consider holding off until her twenties.

Could you stick it out this winter for one more year just until she's done her first year at uni?
I don't think you'd be unreasonable to go but I personally wouldn't want to. My niece moved away to uni last september, 2.5 hours from home. She has been home a lot more than I expected, reading week etc and I think so much is on line now they seem to not be there that much. I would at least wait until DD at least starts uni to see how she'll settle in

Sorry just read all your updates, could you even wait until mid december and you all fly over together? I know she's 18 but travelling that far on her own might also be a bit of a worry for her? Then she could come back in January for uni and you could stay until march

I don’t think your plan is unreasonable at all, but it does very much depend on your daughter, her character, her abilities, her needs. When I went to university (long before mobile phones or laptops) I was very independent, rarely called home and certainly never visited at weekends (I was about 4 hours away). My parents could have gone to the moon and I wouldn’t have cared, not because we weren’t on good terms, but because I didn’t need them at that time. When my own son went to university, he was similar, though we had more phone contact. My daughter is going this September and she is a different kettle of fish altogether and I know she will need more contact and support, possibly visits. Only you and her father really know what your child is like and what she needs.

Gosh how difficult that must have been for you all. I'm glad she found her feet in the end.
Please did you read my response when I said I'll leave in December (so any issues with room mates, settling etc would have shown itself probably?) so would be here through the settling, meeting or hating room mates, checking happiness with her course etc? I'm also on the phone for nightly phone calls and morning chats, etc

Does this make a difference?
(thanks for sharing your story)

Exactly this.
I'd really love her to grow up mature and independent.

At 16, I was in Uni already, far away from home on my own, home 2ce a year maximum. At 18, I felt so very capable and strong. What I'm reading here is really shocking and scary, that my 18 year old despite being upset at the thought, would not cope in reality with being in uni in a country she's grown up in. In my day, there were no phones, FaceTime etc.
Now, she'll have all including being able to come home whenever she liked.

Yes, I did see you had said that.
For us, personally, we've had these issues upto her coming home a week ago.
The only silver lining is she met a great group of friends about two months ago and she will be sharing a house with them from September.
I'm sure if you have honest conversations with your daughter, the fact you're planning on staying until December, then only away for a couple of months - I think works well.
Ours was not a situation we anticipated and I'm sure we are in the minority.
I think you should also be able to have a new life outside of parenting now and I'm sure she'll understand that too.
I think between September and December you'll get a good feeling for how she's settling in.
I just wanted to give you our story, as things don't always pan out the way you expect.
Best of luck with whatever you decide.

You're speaking with such extremes. '6 months' when I'm saying 3, 'chucking her out' when She is leaving for Uni and I'm waiting for her to settle... You speak of 18 year olds like 10 year olds, wanting a warm home, warm food, warm mummy WHENEVER they feel like it etc. What about if you were ill and in hospital? What about if you went away for work the exact day she wanted to come home? Could your DC not cope AT ALL? I think you might have underestimated them, thinking they need all that all the time. But of course you know your child better.

I personally would be disappointed in myself if I raised a child that was still so very needy to that point. My child is not. She was upset because it's a change, but is not feeling that incapable. I hope my child will also see herself as growing up and separating from mom who also has her life and cares for herself.

SAD for me might be different for you. I am from a different country that I know I will be a bit more 'well' if I went home for a while. You are talking about visiting another place on holiday.

Anyway, thanks for your contribution. Please note my statements above are not judging you, it's just saying we are different and see things differently and our children's needs are obviously different. I have clarified a lot in my replies above that you may have missed.

@AllGoodNamesRGone similar Dd to yours and yes mine struggled too! Not to that extent but her first semester wasn’t great, I also got the 2am calls as well. It settled down but she spent whole Easter break home then went for a week, went back for a week then came back again as she found it easier to study at home, it’s certainly not what I imagined. We all expect our children to have an amazing time and not want to come home but sadly sometimes once children fly the nest they feel quite vulnerable. I hope she’s ok now x

Well I'm doing one better! I don't need an air bnb because I'll be right here in November, I'll leave in December, she'll join me in 2 weeks and I'll remain till March. She travels well internationally on her own.

@Heymommy one piece of advice I would give is get her Menigitis jabs done before uni. You will need to pay for them privately but it’s a worry you can do without. I got my daughter vaccinated when there was the scare earlier this year ( she’s had both shots) so in a way that’s one worry off my mind ( though I know it’s not 100% that’s she’s safe from that deadly disease).