Teen abroad alone for first time - wants to come home

[Cheesecakeistheanswer]

As the title says - DD18 is on an organised volunteer project in SE Asia. She’s meant to be there for 3 weeks. She is a homebody and quite shy, but it was her idea to go.

She arrived yesterday morning. Almost as soon as she got there I started getting a stream of WhatsApps saying she couldn’t do it, wants to come home after a week, worries about every little thing…

I don’t want her to be unhappy but I think she’ll regret it in the long run if she comes home that early. (And would set a bad precedent for future challenges).

I’ve been trying to get her to take it day by day, and to be understanding about her concerns - it is a massive thing for her to do. But I don’t know if it’s time for some tough love - and just how tough to be.

Has anyone been in this position before? How did you deal with it?

Whatever you do, don't send her this video -

Stop looking at WhatsApp. Cut off that portal and she will turn back to the trip instead of turned onto you

No sympathy for voluntourism. Other than glad you have confirmed your DD is safe.

@LlynTegid From what dd posted, why would she not have been safe? She was safe, just not liking what she had booked.

In that case I'd just back off a bit and let her manage. It's perfectly normal to feel anxious in new environments. I'd try not to pathologize it personally. If she hates it, she doesn't have to do it again.

It’s such early days. I’d say that she needs to stick it out for at least a week. DD did a similar thing a few months ago and was quite homesick for the first few days - didn’t really feel that she fitted in with the other girls, was stressed to be on the other side of the world alone etc and broke down in tears on the phone to me.. It was the first time in years that I’d heard her be so anxious and as a parent it was tough to hear.

3 weeks later she was loving life with an amazing new group of friends and didn’t want to come home! Give it time. Right now she’ll be exhausted, jet lagged and potentially culture shocked. She won’t be thinking straight and will probably regret this decision later on

You sound like such a lovely and supportive parent..

Perfectly sensible comment until your final sentence, then, what the actual hell?

I am. You can give "there there there" but restrict it... weaning them off you. The alternative is she caves, pays for them to come home and child grows up believing they can't cope and will always be rescued

You just have to sit on your hands and ignore WhatsApp. Read messages once a day in the evening and respond then.

It’s the best advice.

She can't end off. But by all means speak to the leader.

I thnk that as their "safe space" often we get the exteme version of their feelings and emotions. And the truth is somewhere in the middle between their super casual, "all good here thanks, Mate" to the world and their "I'm dying" to their mothers.

But learning to be honest about what they're feeling and how to manage that is part of the growing process. And you're right - when she gets back you can really encourage her to realise how much she achieved.

It's that classic thing about bravey isn't the absence of fear, it's feeling the fear and doing it anyway!

@Cappuccino5 Parents who care don’t need to be available 24/7. Being discerning and letting an 18 year old with through her issues are also important. She needs to make decisions as she is there. Mum cooing away and agreeing isn’t helpful. It’s being a mate, not a parent.

@WallywobblesI think you’re right. It seemed like a good thing to have WhatsApp, but it makes it so easy to message (and for her to see if I’ve read it!). It feels harsh to cut that off now.

Tough love is often the best in the long run - I had to go to boarding school at 16 due to where we lived....the start of term was only 2 weeks after my Dad died, it was brutal. However, deferring would have made things far more difficult in the long run.

Maybe focus on doing a lovely meal on her return & the sense of achievement she'll get when she gets back

I was 18 in 1976! After A levels I went off to Greece with my friend, returning the day before results came out. Obviously no WhatsApp etc - in fact, we didneven have a landlines at home. I wrote my mum a series of letters, which I found after her death in 2017 that she'd kept. She had no way of contacted at all while I was out there.

OP, she needs tough love responses. It's only 3 weeks!

As someone who had terrible homesickness for the first term of university I bet that by the end of her time there she will be having the time of her life and will have grown so much as a person.

This could be many many year ago when I’d signed up to work at a US summer camp. I was desperately homesick and rang parents begging to bring me home. I knew they couldn’t afford a US/UK plane fare and tried everything to persuade them - my darling dad told me it would be ‘character building’ so it was clear no but thoughtful and caring.

So I stayed and it was.

I’d love to think this will be your DD’s experience - it sounds like she knows she is loved. As was I.

Hope she sticks it out! I went abroad for a year - absolutely miserable for the first few weeks. Not loving it for the first 3 months. Amazing time the rest of the year. It was early mobile phones but there was no signal & data was expensive so it was hard to be in touch at home - while at the time that felt harder I think it definitely made things easier in the long run.

@OneZingyPeachPoster She’s gone for 3 weeks. Not 3 years! She didn’t even manage 3 days without bombarding the op with “pay for me to come home” messages. 3 weeks is absolutely nothing if something isn’t quite what you thought, in this case, not enough travelling time.

@Cheesecakeistheanswer how is she getting on?

This 100%

She needs to buck up and strap her big girl pants on. She’s 18. She chose to go and it’s only been one night. Unless something extremely bad happened I’d tell her that she made the decision and she can stick it out as that’s the consequence of choosing to go across the world without the money to easily return.

WhatsApp (and internet/instant messaging in general) must make all this sort of thing so much harder!

Not quite the same sort of situation but when I was 14 I went to NZ for three weeks with the Girl Guides to represent the UK at an international camp. I don’t know what I was thinking of putting myself forward for it given that homesickness had often been a problem even on Guide camps close to home. But I knew it was a great opportunity and of course I’d had to fundraise so had the support of my family and community behind me and didn’t want to let anyone down. I travelled with two leaders and 5 other Guides who I didn’t know (we did meet in London a month before the trip- but I didn’t know them).

When I arrived at my host family’s home, I realised they lived opposite a small airfield. In my jet-lagged, homesick state I thought ‘I’ll go over there tomorrow and somehow I’ll persuade one of those pilots to fly me home’ 😂 (I was a naïve 14 year-old and didn’t consider that those little prop planes wouldn’t be able to get me to the other side of the world- at least not without multiple stops and great expense!)

Needless to say, a couple of days in, I was having the time of my life. I did have another bout of homesickness midway through the trip, but it passed quickly.

I’m SO glad there was no internet then. I phoned my parents once during my trip from my host family’s home, and I sent postcards and letters. I received a couple of letters from my parents during the trip- and that was it. Had I been able to contact them instantly, I think it would probably have made the homesickness harder to shift.