Passport out of datw

[Bossie21]

Help, I’ve screwed up
Booked a holiday for 4 nights flying out tomorrow for me, DS and DH. It was a treat for DS but just done check in and DS passport out of date. I know I should have checked but now feel like the worst mum in the world. Do we go without him?**

My passport was my responsibility the moment I got one as a teen. I booked a college summer holiday abroad with friends at 17, 18 and then lived abroad until I was 20.
My son reapplied for his as a teen too for ID. Lots of teenagers understand how passports work and look after them themselves.

Mother’s guilt op. Hope you are having a wonderful holiday!

Hopefully you have gone as there is no point losing the money.

You have made a plan to make it up to him.

Now you need to enjoy your time away and try not to let it cast a shadow over things.

Yes really. At 17, he's likely to have needed to use his passport for ID for education/work purposes at least.

Or to have applied for a driving licence. Many 17 YOs own and run cars, so need to keep up with insurance, tax, MOT etc and a passport is similar so yes, he should be aware of it's validity and the consequences of letting it expire.

He should be well on the way to becoming an independent functioning adult, not a manchild who's life is facilitated by his DM, with all boring life admin happening by magic, with no thought or input from him.

It’s a mistake, your son sounds lovely and wants you to go, he will be fine with his brothers, my sons would be exactly the same OP. Go and enjoy the break with your DH and bring him something lovely home.

It sounds you've done a good job with your sons as they are being mature telling you to go and not making a big fuss out of it, we'll done!

Going anyway would be honouring a sunk cost fallacy if you plan to take him away again.

People saying you might as well go if you’ve paid aren’t considering that you’ve not paid for any of your spending money whist there and that you’ll have to do it all over again with him. It would be cheaper to not go. But if money isn’t an issue then it doesn’t matter.

Your DS sounds like a lovely young man, OP.

So I can't react how I feel to her but have to put up with you insulting me. Bit of an oxymoron don't you think 🙄

I did. Thank you for asking.

Your son sounds lovely.

Take him at his word and do the holidays the other way round.

Leave your kids the money for a Dominoes and go and enjoy your holiday.

Dh and I go on holiday without our dc every year (we do also have multiple holidays a year with them don’t feel too sorry for them!) and I never feel guilt about it.
However I’d also be feeling pretty shitty about booking one as a treat for one of them and then having to tell them they couldn’t come for the treat holiday. Just a bit crap. An oversight for sure, not intentional I get that. I don’t think dh and I would have gone without them, think we’d have felt too wretched to enjoy it!!

Anyway, if you went without him I do hope you managed to have a good time and that you’ve sent the passport off now for an adult 10 year one. I loathe passport admin, just our youngest is now on a 5 year one.

So we did go and we did enjoy it, a few tears from me. My DH felt equally as bad as me.
my 2 older sons treated him to take outs and a friend took him out for the day with them.
My DS has sorted his passport out whilst we away and together we have booked another holiday for August.
Big lesson on life admin for me and my DH and I am sure we will laugh about it in a few year. I did learn my 3 sons are all the decent men I hoped they would be and handled the situation with maturity. Proud of them all.
My first post on MN and probably my last looking at some responses but thank you to those who offered their opinion and kind words.