<p>My D will be going to college about 30 minutes from our home and living in the dorms. She's shy, sensitive and very naive. She is the type who will not ask for help until she is falling apart, but at the same time, any time I offer help or to visit, she will accept every time. I'm wondering about the experiences of others in finding the right balance. It would be easy and very acceptable to her to visit her and take her out to lunch every week - but I don't think it would be the right thing. What have your experiences been with a child at a local college? She will not have a car at school.</p>
<p>My son (now a junior) goes to college 10 minutes from our home. I didn’t want to interfere with his adjusting to college, so I treated him as if he was hours away. That means that I never visited him (except on Parents weekend). I never called him with an expectation for him to participate in family activities. I texted him and e-mailed him to be in touch. He had a car, and came home maybe one weekend afternoon a month. It’s worked out really well for both of us. Oh, but I did drop off cupcakes to him for his birthday! I can’t do that with my other son who’s 1,000 miles away.</p>
<p>LaurenTheMom…my D, who is currently a junior at a school about 50 minutes from home who sounds somewhat similar to your D. Mine was very shy, sensitive but maybe not naive. Freshman year she would call and ask me to come down weekly for lunch or dinner…I did not do it. She ended up coming home (she would take the bus)almost every weekend and still does…of course, it does not help that her BF lives and works here in our hometown. I truly believe she never gave college a choice in terms of being social and think she will regret it but at this point there is not much I can do about it.
I would really recommend that you encourage her to stay at school and that you visit her very infrequently especially at the beginning. Let her make her way. Good luck…it is such a time of change for both of you!</p>
<p>Maybe just wait and see how things work out? I’m not sure that there’s any real need to treat your daughter as though she were attending college in a different location from the place where she’s actually going.</p>
<p>My son went to the University of Maryland at College Park, where a large proportion of the students come from either the Washington or Baltimore metropolitan areas and therefore are within about an hour’s drive of their homes. For my son, it was about a 40-minute drive. He did not have a car, but his campus was on my husband’s commuting route to work, so he could get home fairly easily if he wanted to. </p>
<p>The Baltimore- or Washington-area students attending UMCP had many different lifestyles. Some commuted, and some lived in the dorms. Some lived in the dorms but went home every weekend (some even had weekend jobs at home – my son was offered one by the store where he had worked during high school, but he turned it down). Some came home for some weekends and spent other weekends on campus. Some rarely came home, except for scheduled breaks. Some had parents who often came to their campus; others didn’t. Some students would go home for a few days if they were sick, rather than exposing their roommate to their germs and having to drag themselves to the dining hall for meals; others would never have considered doing this. </p>
<p>None of these styles is necessarily better than any other – at least in my opinion. People did what worked for them, and most of them – both parents and students – didn’t worry about it much. Vast numbers of kids from our area attend UMCP. Some come home a lot; some don’t. All of them seem pretty normal. They just happen to choose to live their lives in different ways.</p>
<p>Yes, our family did some things in ways that were different from what we would have done if he had attended college farther away. The most obvious example was moving him in and out of the dorms each year by making two round trips in the car, rather than shipping some of his possessions or making him go without anything that wouldn’t fit in the car on one trip (such as his bicycle and television). My son also continued to see the same doctors and dentist year-round and came home for medical and dental visits, sometimes staying overnight on such occasions. He could not have done this if he attended college far from home, the way his sister does. But does it really matter? </p>
<p>I never felt the need to pretend that my son was farther away than he really was or to treat him the way I would have treated him if he were at college far away. I would have felt silly saying to him, “No, you can’t come home to see your dermatologist during the school year because you wouldn’t be able to do that if you attended college in another state.” We just didn’t do things that way. And it seemed to work out. After college, he moved to the other side of the country, where he seems to be dealing with independence quite well. Yes, his experience of college was significantly different from that of his sister, who attends a college seven hours from home. But it wasn’t necessarily an inferior experience.</p>
<p>I don’t get why people make such a huge deal about stuff like this. If you want to meet her for lunch weekly and she wants to meet you for lunch weekly, what on earth could possibly be wrong about that?</p>
<p>As always, I agree with everything Marian said.</p>
<p>I can’t speak from past experience yet, but my daughter probably will be attending the university right here in town next year. It is a ten minute drive from home! She will be living in a dorm her freshman year. She is already planning on moving to an apartment after freshman year. Unlike your daughter, she is not particularly shy and is ready for more independence, so perhaps that is why I don’t find it troublesome if you visit your daughter for lunch sometimes. </p>
<p>I would not establish a regular schedule, and I would make sure it was by explicit invitation from her, though. I also would do my best to treat any lunches or other outings as visits between friends, not as a mother holding a hand or dispensing advice. (Disclaimer: I often fail at the latter. I’m working on it.)</p>
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<p>My daughter wants to go as far away as possible, because she fears we may want to meet her for lunch a little too often. I think there is a fine line between parents and students, when it comes to the amount of contact wanted by each party. It’s not usually an issue when the student is attending a school that is further away.</p>
<p>My D is a freshman at a university about 30 minutes from our home. The town is considered our hometown, and she was pretty familiar with campus and the surrounding area. Many parents here share your same concern, but each family has had to decide what works best for that family and student. Being close to home naturally was a concern initially. </p>
<p>The one thing I did do was insist she not come home the first month. I did take her out to lunch during her second week or so, and I think we picked her up for dinner one evening. We’ve tried to treat her as if she is far away by not pressuring her to come home. There was one Sunday morning she called and asked to come home for the day. She really just wanted a quiet place to study and realized she could get a lot of studying done in her bedroom. </p>
<p>During the first couple of weeks I was concerned she might be too reliant upon me being close by as she asked me several times to drop off forgotten items, etc. I finally realized the only difference was I could drop things off at her dorm instead of shipping items. I also did pick her up for a previously scheduled dentist appointment. It was better than trying to get it in over the breaks. </p>
<p>Some neat things about her being close: she was able to meet her roommate over the summer and have lunch with her since the roommate was here for a summer program; D and roommate had a pizza party at our house for their close in date birthdays. They didn’t want to invite the whole floor, but didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by excluding them from the floor lounge. We never worry about travel arrangements for breaks or what would happen if she became sick. </p>
<p>Every family has to create what will work best for them. It’s a balance, but it can be done.</p>
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<p>Not pressuring kids at nearby colleges to have more contact with their families than they want seems to be one of the keys to success in this situation. My husband and I didn’t pressure our son to come home, either, but we also didn’t insist on him staying away. He made the choices, and he mostly chose to stay on campus.</p>
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<p>It’s just that I don’t get why anyone would consider mutually acceptable contact as wrong. </p>
<p>I can understand if (say) the kid prefers not having that amount of contact, or vice versa. Then it’s not mutually acceptable, and you compromise to something in between.</p>
<p>But if both kid and parent want to do it, why would it not be the “right thing” to do? Does it violate some social rule I’m not aware of?</p>
<p>I agree with Jbusc…do what feels right within the context of your relationship with her. Why not have lunch occasionally since she’s right nearby? I think kids have a built in instinct for independence, I don’t think it needs to be forced on them. If she wanted to get away from you I imagine she could have found a more distant college. So, you have a nice relationship and you might as well continue to enjoy it. (You’ll still be seeing her about 1% as often as you did before.) If a problem develops you’ll both deal with it…and I suspect that if she doesn’t want you around so much she’ll make it clear. Kids seem to be pretty good at that!</p>
<p>I’m currently a senior in high school and my sibling attends a university about 10 minutes away from home also. Not that its a bad thing, its all due to preference… but sibling comes home usually every weekend. For my sibling living close to home its a diffinate advantage, and if sibling decides not to visit and only call that would also be a option. Oh yeah, my sibling doesn’t have a car either. Sibling will not know the real experience of living away from home in college.</p>
<p>I think there are a couple of ground rules that will make the situation a win/win.</p>
<p>First- an on-campus job. Good for time-management, and good to help her feel part of the campus community even before she has friends.</p>
<p>Second- agree to how involved she is to be in family life. Grandma’s 90th birthday lunch? Your 11 year old nephews poetry reading? Baby-sitting for a young cousin because his regular sitter has mono and his parents have a reservation at a nice restaurant? Decide on what you both feel comfortable with- but it’s not fair to treat her like a backup child care resource just because she’s close to home and may not have plans for the evening that a family member needs her.</p>
<p>Third-no providing services for her that she could do herself. She needs her own ATM card and will bounce a couple of checks before she gets the hang of money management. So no fair you handing her $40 every time she comes home. She needs to do her own laundry in the dorm machines. She will learn that single serve snacks from a convenience store cost more per serving than bags from the grocery store. But only if you let her learn this stuff.</p>
<p>I have a neighbor who does a weekly Costco run for her daughter who lives 30 miles away in a nice dorm room with a full meal plan. She has a key to her daughter’s suite so she can put away the snacks and the boxes of soy milk, check to see if they’re out of shampoo for next week, clean the hair out of the drain in the bathroom if it’s clogged with so many 19 year old girls washing their hair every day. She runs a quick swiffer over the floor of the common living room before she lives and talks non-stop about her college experiences now that she’s on campus so much. She is-- quite literally- available 24/7 whenever her D gets a C on a paper or overslept and missed her chem lab. I fear for the mental health of both of them.</p>
<p>So just set some limits ahead of time and you’ll both be fine. No dropping in, no shopping and putting her stuff away, no laundry. No problem.</p>
<p>When I was in college a local aunt and uncle used to take me out for dinner two or three times a semester. It was lovely and would have been just as nice if it had been my parents. I think as long as you let her college life be separate from home life you should be fine. So stay out of her room, but once a week, once a month, whatever seems good to both of you for a lunch or dinner could be nice for everyone. I’d be inclined to go to a restaurant for those meals - at least at first.</p>
<p>I’d invite her to family events, but would try to avoid using her as the backup babysitter and things like that.</p>
<p>It sounds to be like the OP thinks once a week is too much and is thinking it might be good for her D to spread her wings. I think if I were the OP after I dropped the D off I might tell her I’d call in a week and see if she wanted to meet for lunch and go from there. Mentally I’d probably be thinking take her to lunch after the first week, then in 2 weeks, then once a month or for parent weekend and then go from there. Conversely, if I thought my D really was struggling and negatively impacted I would probably go once a week through a transition period. I was only a couple hours from home and my dad had business in that town frequently, I remember about once every 4 or 5 weeks he would stop and buy me dinner on his way home from his appointments and I rarely went home except at the “normal” breaks. I think the OP is going to have to take a wait and play it by ear but I don’t disagree with the OP’s gut check about trying to disengage alittle bit.</p>
<p>I have a daughter that goes to college within 2 hours of home. I’ve treated her as if she went far away(without the hassle of flying). My husband and I rarely meet her for lunch/dinner. We kept close contact by phone once a week and email . She came home during the usual college breaks: Xmas and spring break, and summer. This arrangement seems to work out ok for us.</p>
<p>S may end up going to a college about a half hour away. I can see stopping by now and then to grab a snack with him or something. </p>
<p>I actually thought about taking a continuing education class there, not to bug him but I’ve been meaning to finish up my degree. I wouldn’t expect to meet with him every week, but he’d know I’d be there if he wanted/needed something.</p>
<p>I think you guys will just have to feel it out and see what both of you have time for. I go to school 20-30 minutes away. I happen to see my mom once a month for sure because she doesn’t like the pharmacy I have access to and brings me meds, and it would not be unusual to end up seeing her twice a month for miscellaneous reasons. She drops off a few grocery items occasionally, her mother still comes to our house every week with random groceries too, it’s just what we do. 
I wouldn’t have time to see her every week unless I wasn’t doing something else I should be (homework, spending limited free time with friends, club meetings, etc.) I don’t go home at all unless it’s a break, or sometimes for the afternoon if I have an appointment at home. So all in all I probably see her 1 or two times a month, three max. Works for us. I probably see my mom about as much as I have time for, I’d like it if she came every other week or every third week just to hang out with me but there isn’t time in either of our schedules for that. </p>
<p>My roommate lives 45 minutes from home and her parents pick her up every weekend for the entire weekend-- she doesn’t even come back until monday morning before class. Lo and behold she has no friends and isn’t involved on campus at all. She is starting to stay more and branch out a bit but she had kind of a miserable first semester living that way, the transition back and forth is not easy emotionally the first semester, I don’t know how she could stand it.</p>
<p>We kind of follow the kids’ lead. I agree with what someone said, that there is a built in drive for independence. I don’t really worry about the pace of that drive. It seems to be very different for each child. I do know that in 10 years, none of our 3 will be living with us (but I may be living with them, who knows!). However they get to that point is fine with me, with certain limits that I have not, so far, had to think about.</p>
<p>TxK, I was very much like your roommate when I went to college. I commuted the first semester, then lived off campus but went home every weekend. I never really connected with anyone or felt part of the school - I ended up dropping out.</p>
<p>The school S wants to go to is a couple of hours away, but if he ends up going to the nearby school, I definitely want him to live there and have the whole college experience (it’s what he wants too!)</p>