A quick trip home first semester:pros and cons

Parents Forum
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<p>A follow-up to a discussion on another thread about kids having a hard time with homesickness first semester: kids (mostly Ds, it seems) who are making friends, joined ECs, seem happy on Facebook but are still crying and saying how homesick they are on the phone. My D decided to fly home over parent's weekend, a six hour flight, for various reasons, and after multiple (and I mean multiple) discussions. She left this morning and I'm here to report.</p>

<p>Cons:
six hour flight turned into 15 hours of travelling because of delays. NEVER again will we agree to anything but a non-stop flight. </p>

<p>Sick in the days before leaving, so already tired when she left.</p>

<p>Realized she was missing a "great party" while gone. </p>

<p>Sense of dislocation to suddenly be back home.</p>

<p>No friends here- all away at their colleges. </p>

<p>Pros:</p>

<p>Flight back only had a short delay.</p>

<p>New friends texted from campus, saying they missed her. </p>

<p>A sense, I think, of reassurance that we are still here, that home is still here. </p>

<p>Wasn't as reluctant to leave and go back as she'd (and we) feared. </p>

<p>A new feeling of independence that she can travel from college to home and back by herself, on her dime, if she wants to. </p>

<p>Pros for mom- I got to see her, of course. Cons: so, so, tired. Missing her all over again, but not as bad this time. </p>

<p>Overall? I'm glad we made the call to have her come home, even though CW says to have them stick it out until the end of the semester.</p>

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<p>I’m inclined to agree, although I do believe we are in the minority here.</p>

<p>Living within a few hours of college, S has made a couple trips home. Each visit seems to make the return trip easier rather than more difficult. The reality of HS days and friends may not match what often becomes a more romanticized version away at school. They gloss over things–and people–that annoyed and disappointed, even discouraged them. A quick visit home can be an excellent reminder of earlier I-can’t-wait-to-go-to-college feelings.</p>

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<p>My D is in her third year, and this is the first time she has not made a “breather” trip home as of this point in the term. She is an only child who really likes her own company and solitude at times, and really needed to take a step back from the frenetic pace of school work and her daily life there. A big change for her this year, though, is that she is living in a house rather than a dorm and it is a much quieter and calmer pace. So that may contribute to her ability to find the peace that she sometimes needs. But when she did come home for a break, it was not because she was homesick, though she did miss us. It was because she needed to step back, catch her breath, and get refreshed. So I totally support coming home for a weekend, if it’s not too arduous a journey. Of course, it totally depends on so many individual things that I don’t think one can really generalize.</p>

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<p>“A sense, I think, of reassurance that we are still here, that home is still here.”</p>

<p>Priceless!</p>

<p>And I’m storing away your experience with changing flights. D’s current #1 is two flights and an hour drive away, or a 3.5 hour flight and 2.5 hour drive. Last time we visited, both flights were delayed because of weather. NOT fun.</p>

<p>Thanks for sharing, and I hope your d settles back quickly.</p>

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<p>Oceans-- I have really no hard and fast opinion about what people should or shouldn’t do with these kinds of things since kids are so different, anyway. But, I’m really happy to hear that your D got texts from her new friends at school and got the sense of her having a “life” to go back to at school. Change takes time, more for some than others, but I dont think an easy entry necessarily denotes real adjustment. It does sound, though, that your D is on the way to accepting that she is in college. Acceptance…for us, for them! Who knew?</p>

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<p>No one I know has a child quite that far away (a six hour flight – Wow!). But kids around here seem to come home for weekends other than breaks at least once a semester. No one seems any the less happy at school for it.</p>

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<p>Oceansaway, I live in Europe, so 2 trips a year are already a hefty addition to a hefty bill. D has never come back mid semester. On a more positive note, and I don’t know why, the first semester seems endless for me, whereas the Spring one just flies by. Hope it will be the same for you.</p>

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<p>

How funny, franglish! My D is in her third year as well, and this is the first time she will be making a “breather” trip home! Mine is also an only child who likes her own company and solitude. For her, though, junior year is much harder academically as she gets into the depths of her majors, and much more distracting. Add onto it the planning for next semester abroad, and she now finds that she misses the quiet of her own room in her own home. (We’re a 6 hour drive, and she has her car.)</p>

<p>Every child is different.</p>

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<p>S jokes that he knows as soon as we hang up the phone or he walks out the door that we all freeze in place until he makes contact with us again. He’s made the transition to college and loves his school, but I think it’s totally normal to feel a bit of anxiety that life at home is going on without you and it will never be ‘home’ in quite the same way again.</p>

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<p>My D is across the country - 3 hour time difference and a 5 1/2 hour flight, so weekends home are pretty much out of the question (though we do have one planned for November, since she will be elsewhere for Thanksgiving). One thing that has really helped us and her is SKYPE. We can see her and she can see us, and sometimes we take a laptop and walk her around the house to see what’s going on. Plus, she loves to see our dog :)</p>

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<p>My D is across the country as well. Our S, a junior, is 2,000 miles away and never had a problem with it, (or at least he never said so!) so we were taken aback a bit by her own anxiety.
Skype helped some, but it wasn’t doing the trick. I don’t think it was so much about missing family- calls and skype and texting help with that. It really seems to have come down to knowing that she <em>could</em> come home if she really, really wanted to. I had even offered to vist for parent’s weekend, though we couldn’t really afford it, but she preferred to come home. So she dealt with the long flights, little sleep, used money from her savings, and made it happen. It seems to have given her a new sense of choice about her college and her life rather than feeling kicked out of the nest when she wasn’t quite ready. She called just a while ago to share about her first day back. She’s much more relaxed and happy- I can hear it in her voice.
We’ve still made it clear that we can’t fly her home more than twice a year, something we said up front with both our kids when they chose to attend colleges thousands of miles away. But right now, I honestly don’t see her needing to make a mid-semester trip home again. Fingers crossed!</p>

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</p>

<p>This is not a con; it’s a pro. It helps her to understand the reality of what life would be like if she were at home during the semester.</p>

<p>My daughter’s college has a four-day Fall Break in October. Most freshmen – except for those who have to fly huge distances – go home. It doesn’t seem to damage anybody.</p>

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<p>Just took my freshman back from her 3rd trip home! First one was a great antidote for homesickness and ended the daily tears. Second was a 4 day weekend with an opportunity to catch a charter bus the college arranged. This weekend she had plotted with my sister to throw an early surprise birthday party for me. </p>

<p>I honestly think the “no visits home” thing is overrated. She’s been happy to come home and happy to go back, with lots of messaging with friends back at school. The only downside is that the 3 hour drives cut into her regular study times. And I have to remember to leave her alone to study during the day but then we shop, visit, or she goes out with friends who are home. She works very hard at school and says these weekends help keep the stress level manageable. If she’s having a bad day, she counts the number of days til she’ll be home again and says it makes her feel better. I don’t see a problem with that!</p>

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<p>"No friends here- all away at their colleges. " </p>

<p>“This is not a con; it’s a pro. It helps her to understand the reality of what life would be like if she were at home during the semester.”</p>

<p>Marian- I totally agree. It helped give her a reality check that life has moved on for everyone, not just for her.</p>

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<p>My D, while home for the summer, had few friends around - some were traveling, some were staying at their schools for the summer. She was constantly texting and skyping with her school friends, but enjoyed her time here with us and had a great time at her summer job, as well as knocking out a math class at the local CC. She realized how much her school is “home” at this point in her life, and we noticed so much maturation and self-confidence that we believe came from not coming home frequently, but learning to be resilient and deal with ups and downs and bad days without thinking she could come home to feel better. If she were closer by I’m sure we’d see more of her, but for us, this works best, and she’s very happy.</p>

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<p>My daughter is a 14-hour train ride away (flying will be a luxury for her because of the cost…tuition is bad enough!) and the plan all along has always been no trips home at all during the quarter.</p>

<p>Yes…quarter. Her school has 10-week quarters, and after the first one ends they are actually on their long ‘break’ for the holidays. She’ll be home the week before Thanksgiving and remain home until January 2…winter quarter begins on the 4th with one week in March for break and then the spring quarter.</p>

<p>This calendar has actually been fantastic in terms of battling any thoughts of homesickness. When we dropped her off, we reminded her…“You can do ANYTHING for 10 weeks”. She knew that all she needed to do was make it through that time period and she’d be on her way home for a nice long visit.</p>

<p>Text messaging and Skype has been fantastic not just for keeping in touch, but ‘seeing’ each other and for me to really gauge whether she is adjusting. Happily, she is…and she’s not mentioned once that she really wishes she was home or that she is unhappy in any way. She’s busy with work and new friends and getting around just fine.</p>

<p>About the only thing she says she misses is home cooking…she’ll get plenty of that during her break!</p>

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<p>So glad about this thread. This is a major hangup with us in choosing schools. We are in the deep south, and son wants to go to school in the midwest. There are no direct flights to his top choice. When we did a visit, we missed a connection and were delayed a whole day to return, resulting in missing an important swim meet. Now we worry he’ll not be able to come home for emergencies, much less a homesick visit. As his major choice necessitates him going to school far away, should we focus on a more “flyable” choice? He says he won’t miss us, but I know he’ll miss his cats.</p>

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<p>Everyone’s mileage varies on that Montegut. My son is across the country. He will likely be alone in his studio apartment over Thanksgiving. He has a choice to go to relatives or friends but probably won’t get that motivated. He has never had a homesick visit (don’t think he has needed one) and thankfully no emergencies. For two years he roomed with someone fairly close by and the parents got to know our son. I could have called them or relatives close by in any major emergency. There is also a cc thread for parents who live near colleges and are willing to assist in an emergency.<br>
Our younger D is at a school 4.5 hours drive away. She knew she did want to come home for Thanksgiving and long weekends. Knew that she would want us to come there for parents weekend.
As far as direct flights, you will find that if he is in the midwest you will book returns a day early so that if there are delays classes are not missed.</p>

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<p>Montegut, we live in the Cleveland Ohio area and our daughter is at UT in Austin Texas. The whole time we were looking at UT there were direct flights from Cleveland to Austin, which I thought was great. These direct flights were eliminated in early September of her freshman year. :o It has been all right. When she is arranging trips, I wish we were in the same time zone - the way it is, she loses an hour heading back to Texas so sometimes her trips back to school make for long days.</p>

<p>We wouldn’t change a thing, though. The college is very strong in her relatively unusual major and a great fit for her. <a href=“Maybe%20too%20good%20of%20a%20fit?%20The%20last%20time%20I%20visited,%20we%20went%20shopping%20together%20and%20she%20bought%20cowboy%20boots.”>i</a>*</p>

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<p>Both my kids flew home for fall break their freshman year. Both are about 6-7 hours away from home by car. Both were able to use free tickets I had on Southwest. S’s flight was a direct one, D had to take a shuttle 1 1/2 hours to airport and then had to change planes. Both were THRILLED to get to come home to see friends and family. I think it made a huge difference for both of them and they both were ready to return to campus. S is a senior and hasn’t been back for fall break since. I don’t even know when his fall break was this year. D is a freshman and I’m not sure if she’ll want to come home in future years but I know she is really glad that she did this year. She was happy the whole time she was home (should have sent her away from home for a couple of months at a time a long time ago!). H didn’t want to let them come home but I’m glad I booked their flights. Made a HUGE difference in their mood and really helped them deal with homesickness.</p>