My son wants to go to open days alone/with friends

[Mathsmother]

My son in year 12 wants to go to uni open days alone and not with me or my husband. He may go with friends to a couple where they also interested in applying.

We are totally fine about it and rather admire his initiative but when I posted such on Facebook I was told that most students take parents along with them to open days and I really should go. I just wondered why? Surely it is the student’s choice not the parent’s and it is much cheaper for one train ticket (on a young person’s railcard) than two or three tix? The only downside I can see of my son travelling alone at age 17 is that he won’t be able to book a hotel room for the one far-flung uni he had on his list (Edinburgh). Thoughts and experiences welcome xx

@Validus Is your dc incapable of asking the questions you want answered? Do they have no initiative at all? Or thoughts of their own? This is very sad.

Many don’t care about exact contact time. It’s not school and they understand individual study. Lecturers don’t know about details of accommodation. . It’s on the website. You can read it. Who is actually making the decision here? You have to send dc off with the questions you want answered and then test them when they get home??! Gawd help us! Are dc utterly incapable of asking about and taking on board what they want to know or are they always controlled like this?

Balanced and informative posts by @WombatChocolate

Doesn't it make sense for kids to go to the majority of open days themselves/with friends, and then if they struggle to make a decision once offers are made, then the parents can help further, perhaps with attending 'offer holder days'?

My parents didn't come to any open days with me back in the 90s! It was up to me...

@cloudsblue as many others have said it is quite different now, so would be in the minority if go without parents. Not sure the whole family gathering together with dog is a great idea unless you are making a weekend of it or are a single parent and can’t leave anyone at home

Why are people suggesting that 16/17 year olds must make a £50,000+ decision, on something they have very little knowledge or experience of, by themselves? Of course parents should guide them.

@crumblingschools - my dd is looking at universities at the moment. I actually went to one open day with her a few weeks ago, because none of her mates were interested in that particular uni and it also happened to be the first one. The rest she's booked to go to with friends.

I was really surprised at the sheer number of parents and siblings there tbh (obviously I was part of the problem ) and thought it seemed a little odd - I can't help but think these kids are all so much more helicoptered these days.

@Ginko -Yes, choosing a uni is a big decision, but it is THEIR decision ultimately. They are young people and should be able to get themselves there/ask questions in a lecture/check out accommodation themselves, shouldn't they? Of course parents should 'guide' them, but more and more parents seem to want to oversee their kids' every move.

I've just read the first page of this thread -so many smug and judgemental comments. Each to their own - if young people want to be taken, take them, if they want to go alone, let them go alone.

I do wonder about the idea of going with friends though - unless they either have no idea what they want to study, or else know they are applying to the same course at the same uni. Our open day visits are focussing on departmental talks and tours, so unless the friend was doing the same course they wouldn't be doing that together.

Fwiw, we were selling our house a few years ago, and I noticed that several young couples came for their viewings with parents in tow. It is clear that those parents were financially invested, just as parents usually are for university.

You're not going to win this one. There's an element to MN where certain posters just want to come across as the best and coolest parents with their oh so independent sprog! it's not enough that they do their parenting differently, their parenting has to be the right sort of parenting, you can tell by the fake naivety, 'oh i can't imagine what parents would go to do there', and the sneering jibs.

They're the same parents that chip in when a worried parent asks about degree courses, which one? and the cool parents responds, 'I couldn't tell you what ds is studying, as it was totally HIS choice! or 'I didn't even know DD was at uni until she invited us to her graduation", you can almost hear them preening.
Just read and laugh.

@LadeOde

Just read and laugh.

Ironic as your entire post smacks of someone trying to be cool. "I'm so unbothered I just read and laugh."

I'm from Scotland and, as other posters from Scotland have said, this isn't our experience of university open days. Prospective students visit universities alone or with friends. Someone has asked how they can do that if they're going to be studying different subjects. What a strange question. I visited Glasgow and Edinburgh universities with a group of about ten friends. We went our separate ways and met up again at various points in the day.

So yes, I genuinely don't know why a parent would go. I'm sure others have had the same reaction to the OP: "but why would you consider going at all?" And that's why they've responded. Funny isn't it, how people have different perspectives on things.

But I've seen this time and time again where there's a culture clash between England and Scotland. It's a cultural norm here for children to play out. There was a thread a few weeks back where a poster wouldn't let their 9 year old out to play on their own and poster after poster from Scotland couldn't understand it.

I imagine free university makes the difference. My parents paid nothing towards my university education and their interest in it only extended to asking if I was enjoying myself and general chat about the course and university life. Despite neither of them having been to university themselves, they wouldn't dream of being so gauche as to attend student talks at open days and ask questions as some posters have said on this thread.

as other posters from Scotland have said, this isn't our experience of university open days

No, as I pointed out when I dropped my DD off at her local open day, and attended one elsewhere, most of the teenagers had parents with them - in Scotland. But I guess if you didn’t go to any….

Straight to personal insults and negging I see.

My child achieves best when things are modelled, rather than chucking them in at the deep end and shrugging. But thanks for your concern.

I think some of the Scottish stuff is because most of the uni towns are in or close to the central belt. One of the DC’s friends had a look at Aberdeen and went with a parent then but for the rest went with friends. Most of the kids are going to the same places because the fees situation (plus Highers potentially making 6th year a skive) means they are more likely to go to a Scottish uni, friends are looking at the same unis and as a high % of the population lives in the central belt, it’s not that far to most of the unis and they may know the towns and cities they are going to look at a bit already.

Well it's not my experience or anyone's I know of. If things are changing I would argue that's not for the better and is a sign of the times where young adults are being treated like children, and children are not being afforded opportunities for independence at appropriate ages.

That's a perfectly valid point to make and another thread about changes to childhood and young adulthood would probably have posters agreeing. There was another thread a few months back about children walking to and from primary school themselves. Again, there was an immediately apparent Scottish/English divide with many Scottish posters utterly perplexed as to why you wouldn't let a primary 5 child walk home by themselves.

I personally don't think it's healthy for parents to tag along to things like this with their children. PP said that anyone questioning this is just trying to appear cool and it's faux naivety to ask why a parent would go along. I disagree. Many posters have very clearly and reasonably argued why they don't agree with parents going to university open days.

There is perhaps a reason fewer Scottish teens take their parents; it is much much more common for them to stay at home and commute to their local university, so parents would already be familiar with the city and perhaps the university as well. English children may or may not play out as much but they certainly are much more likely to attend a university several hours away from home and that requires much more independence than living at home or being able to pop home for the day. They have less of a safety net when they get there.

Well that's not my experience

But you say you don’t have any…

I don’t think this is an English/Scottish divide particularly. If my DC had gone to look at a London uni I might have gone too but I didn’t accompany on the trip to St Andrews. Likewise, someone from London might not go with their parent to look at a London uni but they might to visit St Andrews.

IME Is far more a west coast of Scotland thing to stay at home for uni. Most of the kids I know in Edinburgh are going to Glasgow in order to live away from home but most of the kids I know from Glasgow/surrounding areas are staying at home. I was having a chat with someone at the weekend who had been told by her DC that they had no intention of moving out and it seemed to be influenced by the fact most of her DC’s friends were also planning to stay at home. She was really disappointed!

i think the walking to school thing in Scotland may be to do with clear cut school catchments. I live 2 minutes from my DCs primary school so they walked alone for the latter years of primary school. I wouldn’t have done that if we’d lived further away.

What?

@Validus

Your child needs to learn how to do things for themselves. How long are you going to model things? At what point does your dc grow into an adult who thinks for themselves? You clearly want the best for your dc, we all do for dc, but I’m querying why your dc cannot work out what he or she wants to ask and you have to model it? I’ve honestly never heard of anyone being so prescriptive and asking dc questions like a test when they get home.

@Yourethebeerthief do you have DC at university?

No.

I have a large group of friends who went to various universities and their parents did not attend open days.

I have friends, colleagues and family members with children who are either at starting university, currently at university, or have left university in fairly recent years and their parents did not attend open days.

I have a group of friends who have children my age. They range in ages from 27 to 43. Their parents did not attend open days when they went to university.

This thread interested me and I've been asking around. I did the same after another couple of threads on Mumsnet as it interests me when apparent cultural differences crop up.

Scottish/English divide? Working/middle class divide? (My working class parents just wouldn't have thought to come to an open day. I was the first in the family to go to university and they left me to it) Free universities compared to universities paid for by parents? Smaller country compared with a larger country? I'm sure lots of factors are at play.

Regardless, I still think it's good for 17 and 18 year olds to do things like this by themselves. And the response from anyone I've asked has been the same as mine: a baffled, "why would you ever have your mum and dad along?"

It's a legitimate response to the OP and an opinion shared by many on this thread. So I took issue with a poster disparaging it as just trying to appear cool.

I think whether parents went to university is a good point. Mine didn’t and I don’t think it would have occurred to them to come as they wouldn’t have considered themselves as having anything relevant to ask. I didn’t actually go to any open days either though, I just went to the uni my DB went to as he seems happy enough. No idea how typicall that is.

Do you remember when you had a newborn and all the non-parents would tell you how you should parent and what you were doing wrong?

Me? No I don't recall anyone doing that.

As it stands now I do have a child, and if he goes to university I'll encourage him to go to open days alone. Hopefully his experience will mirror mine and everyone else I know, and he will simply go to them without even thinking to ask a parent along. If he desperately wants one of us to come we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

That wouldn't change my opinion that on a wider scale it's better for most young people to go to university open days alone. Like the OP's son wants to do.

We have also carefully chosen to live somewhere safe where primary aged children play out and walk to school as I remember doing, because it matters to us that we can encourage independence.