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Higher education

Talk to other parents whose children are preparing for university on our Higher Education forum.

Original poster

How often do you visit / plan to visit your child at uni?

108 replies

Whatsinaname321 · 12/04/2022 08:01

My child is off to uni this year. The uni he plans to go to is a 4 hour drive away. It would be difficult to visit and drive back home in the same day, the train is horrendously expensive and staying over will obviously be expensive.
His terms are long to be 8 weeks long so he will have a lot of opportunity to come home and with a student railcard it will be cheaper for him to come and visit us rather than us go and visit him (because we are more than one person travelling and we don’t have a student railcard).
We will have to really limit the visits to him.
Does anybody else hardly/ never visit their child at uni?

OP posts:
KnottyKnitting · 12/04/2022 08:34

Oh and by being clever with the train I mean there are ways to "break" the journey and buy two or even three tickets for the same trip- you don't need to get off- it's much much cheaper especially if you buy a way in advance and travel at off peak times. DH went up once when I was already up there by car. Without breaking the journey the ticket was £80. Less than half that with buying more than one ticket for along the way.

Lulu1919 · 12/04/2022 08:34

We always picked up and returned them at beginning / end of terms as they had so much stuff....but it was around 2.5 hours so doable for a day .
We visited maybe once a term ...but spoke / messaged most days

SilkenBunny · 12/04/2022 08:34

Dd1 is trying to decide between two Unis atm. One is four hours away, the other 45 minutes! If she goes to the former we won't be visiting. We'll be dropping off at the start of the year and picking up at the end. We'll probably make a weekend of it each time as I like the city she's going to (was a student there myself once!) She can take the train or coach home for all other journeys.

If she goes to the local Uni I expect we'll see her more often as it's our local city and I go in quite a lot anyway.

AntarcticTern · 12/04/2022 08:35

My DC aren't quite there yet, but when I was at uni I only remember my parents visiting once or twice during the whole four years. They did take me and collect me though. I never came home in term time either.

MajorCarolDanvers · 12/04/2022 08:36

My parents never visited me at uni - would have been weird tbh

I went home about twice a term.

ShanghaiDiva · 12/04/2022 08:37

My ds was at university in the uk and we lived overseas so we never visited him; he flew home at the end of each term.
One of the students on his corridor had parents who visited each week, cleaned his room, brought meals for the week, took away washing, changed the sheets etc...but this was not the norm.

Sarahlou252 · 12/04/2022 08:38

Ds is at Uni 2 hours away. His Gf is at Uni 2 hours in the opposite direction. Both come home to see each other as its cheaper on the train to do that rather than travel to each others Uni! So we see them regularly, and visit only really when he needs to fetch stuff back.
When Dd was at Uni we visited every few weeks (also 2 hours) but ad hoc, not really planned. She came home much less.
I've never really given visits much thought as we're on a group chat every day. As long as the contact and support is there I wouldn't get too hung up on how often you visit, it'll be different for everyone.

BlessedBeTheFruitCake · 12/04/2022 08:39

Dd comes back in the holidays but other than dropping her off we haven’t been to see her. It’s over 300 miles away so not a trip we can manage in a day.

lightisnotwhite · 12/04/2022 08:42

Mine never visited and I went home for Christmas.
I can’t imagine DS will be any different.

ImplementingTheDennisSystem · 12/04/2022 08:42

My parents didn't once visit me during my 4 years at Uni. And I knew loads of people who were the same and would just go home at the end of terms.

ApolloandDaphne · 12/04/2022 08:43

My DD2 went to a uni 350 miles away. We visited her once. DD1 was only 50 miles away so we probably went there once a term.

DoctorDoctor · 12/04/2022 08:43

both of them get at least monthly visits from their parents.

This isn't what everyone does. It's very much at the more frequent end of the scale. And students going home for visits is far more common than parents coming to them.

withiceplease · 12/04/2022 08:44

End of second term and not visited. She comes home though and sees local friends, has home cooked food, brings washing (I ask her to bring washing as I loathed washing in halls when I was there)
I went to same university so may go at some point to have a trip down memory lane but I'll stay in a hotel and that with taxis, meals out etc will make it significantly more costly than her coming home

Oblomov22 · 12/04/2022 08:50

Things have changed. 30 Years ago no ones parents visited, ever. I went home at the end of every term. We were all happy with this, having such a good time we barely missed our parents.

I might visit Ds1 early in that first term. I doubt I'll go again.

misskatamari · 12/04/2022 08:50

Didn't occur to me that parental visits to uni are even a thing really. I was at uni in the early 2000s and I don't think my mum ever visited (dropped me off and picked me up but that's it). A couple of flat mates parents visited maybe once or twice a year. I know DHs parents never visited him either and they were a four hour drive away. It certainly wasn't something that happened very often. I guess things were maybe more distant then anyway, we didn't have the internet etc, just about had mobile phones. Most of us went ages between even speaking to our parents!

deplorabelle · 12/04/2022 08:54

8 week terms are very short and busy so he won't be up for a lot of parent visits. Bear in mind also that because the term is so intense he may want to do an extra week at the beginning or end of term so don't assume it will only be 8 weeks.

When I was a student a million years ago we would make guest rooms for people's friends and family by bunking in together and lending out the spare room to the visitor. Not sure if you can still get away with that in this security conscious age, but it's worth bearing in mind you wouldn't necessarily have to pay for an overnight.

He should do the decent thing and host you a couple of times during his university career, particularly if he's somewhere lovely and exciting like oxford or Cambridge (which he is by the sound of things). Make him take you punting once he's learnt how 🙂

Carriemac · 12/04/2022 08:56

Our daughter had 8 week terms - I used to go up every 2 weeks and take her out to lunch. She struggled with settling in and homesickness in the first term . We then used to go to see her play her sport some Sunday's. Attended a few college dinners with her and went to parents day in the college etc. Her brothers had longer terms and we also visited to se them compete , take them out to lunch etc

Carriemac · 12/04/2022 08:57

Staying overnight in the college guest rooms was cheap , and coach trips are usually much cheaper than train

Lifeistooshorttocleanfloors · 12/04/2022 08:57

XH does the start of term drop-off as my car is too small. I have visited a couple of times over the years, but not specifically to see the DC - have been doing other things in the place where they are at university so have also seen them. I don't imagine they are sitting in their rooms wishing that Mummy would come to visit! My parents didn't visit me at university - it would have been regarded as a bit weird to have your parents hanging around, even if they were as lovely as mine are. This was years pre-mobile phones, too, so I used to ring them very occasionally from a phone box.

BungleandGeorge · 12/04/2022 09:01

I knew people whose parents visited every week and some who never visited. It’s more common for the student to go home (and see friends at the same time!)

bigbluebus · 12/04/2022 09:05

We used to visit for DS's birthday in November. Other than that we saw him when he travelled home at Christmas, Easter and Summer. DH would take him at the start of the Uni year and collect him at the end when he had lots of stuff to carry. (Although between Yrs 2 and 3 and 3 and 4 he rented the same house on a 50 week let and the agent allowed them to leave their stuff in the house.)
It was a 3hr drive each way (on a good day) and 4 hours one way on the train for DS with a railcard if he timed the journey/connections right. Could often get very cheap tickets through split ticketing too - which with his railcard was much cheaper than the petrol costs to drive.

JaninaDuszejko · 12/04/2022 09:10

I grew up in the far north of Scotland so didn't go home during term time because it was too far. I would visit an aunty who lived nearby about once a term instead. My parents would take me out for dinner if they were south for business but didn't make a special trip to see me. If anything I saw my parents more than average. I'm old though.

There's someone I follow on instagram who lives about 2h from where her eldest is a university and they seem to travel backwards and forwards all the time.

SierpinskiSquare · 12/04/2022 09:14

Is the term '8 week terms' Mumsnet code for Oxford and Cambridge 😅 If so, It's very restrained of posters to use it rather than trying to cram in the fact that they or their offspring went to Oxbridge 😂😂😂.

My four kids went to Unis with longer than 8 week terms 😬 and we visited on a completely adhoc basis but generally only when picking up or collecting or when helping with house/flat moves. One of my DC struggled a bit and I visited them more often.

Generally I was surprised at how I didn't miss my kids. I think it was because I knew they were happy. Obviously when one of my kids was struggling then I thought of them a lot more.

Ruibies · 12/04/2022 09:25

I can only remember my parents coming to visit me specifically once, in my final year, otherwise I got dropped off at the start of the year and I came home by coach or train through the year as I wanted (London - Newcastle, so long by coach/car but expensive by train) and got picked up again at the end of the year. I was at uni in the late 2000s.

My mum wrote to me though, which I loved. Postcards or just little notelets, nothing wildly interesting in them but it was nice to get post even if we'd spoken by phone and I'd heard it all anyway.

drivinmecrazy · 12/04/2022 09:30

I'm actually quite envious of parents saying their children come home for the holidays.
DD1 is in final year so first year she was 'forced' home due to lockdown. Since then we see her very seldom (always in contact though that's getting rarer!).
She's gracing us with her presence for four days this Easter and that's a long stay!!
It'll only be a few short months before she is home on a more permanent basis through necessity rather than choice on her part.
We miss her incredibly but I see it as part of a right of passage for her. It's given her a chance to really find her own self and discover many things about herself apart from us.
When we drop them off on the first day of the first term they are our babies. When we pick them up on their final day they are their own people and we will be forever more just a staging post and a safety net.
Makes me sad but that's the way it should be!