I would vote for a very calm Option 3. “We will support you only after you go to counseling. Counseling will help you get through the first semester and help you cope. Lets talk again about this in a few months”. Also, its pretty important to share with her the financial ramification of all this. What happens when the athletic scholarship is gone? Also, is her plan (in her head right now) to go to CC or does she want to go to a local university? How far away is she, @tedss ?
Over thirty years ago, I was in a remarkably similar position as your daughter, and it has become one of the defining moments in my life.
Knowing that, I think your Option 3 is an excellent idea. If she is as I imagine, and you describe, then talking about her situation is critical, and her friends (new or old) will get tired of hearing about it which will make her social life even tougher. I would suggest you put effort, and perhaps money, into finding a quality counselor.
OP, I feel for you. I think you’re on the right track-and suggest a revisit when it’s closer to the end of the semester. You may or may not get the result you hope for, but at least you’ll have tried. And maybe they’ll break up. The “love of her life” broke up with my older D by October, but prior to that she called every other day crying about how much she missed him and wanted to come home. She did stick out the year in the end though.
I want to caution you about the hard-ball game of telling a still-developing brain kid that if they don’t tow the line they will be on the street sleeping on couches or wherever. A really stubborn kid might take that to heart and actually go sleep on the streets. It was for different reasons and a different situation, but that’s exactly what happened with my son when he was younger and his dad, who was the parent he lived with at the time. It ruined their relationship and caused everyone a lot of heartache. What lesson exactly, does “it’s my money so do as I say or you’re on your own” teach" other than might makes right, and that kids’ lives can end up in danger but they can’t come home? We were lucky that my son moved in with me and we got him back on the right path and he is doing fine now. He and his dad took years to even speak, but they’re civil to each other now.
Good luck.
Agree with doschicos. Revisit situation in a few months. Take one semester at a time. Recognize going to college is stressful for D. Thanks for acknowledging BF may not be persuading her to quit and come home. You may not need to play hardball here in August. But if you do, glad to hear you and wife are united.
Hope it is helpful getting advice from strangers. I think that not knowing us personally helps you in getting objective help. No other agendas.
OP- hugs. This must be very stressful and challenging for you.
Step back from the brink for a second- and realize that you don’t want to present any options to your D which present an adverse incentive, i.e. encourages her to do something which while it may be satisfying in the near term, is a bad idea in the long term.
Presumably your long term goal is for her to complete her college education, be in a healthy long term relationship with an SO (whomever that may be), have friends and activities which bring her joy and satisfaction, etc.
So tread carefully. Presenting an option which includes her couch-surfing because she has no roof over her head, promotes financial instability thereby putting MORE pressure on her to depend on the BF, or encourages her to drop out of college entirely rather than looking at other alternatives (different college, online option, leave of absence vs. dropping out, ) and potentially further marginalizing her friends- Bad idea for the long haul.
No need to map out her entire four year college career right now. She’s agreed to go- take it one day at a time.
I’d like @blossom’s post 10 times if I could. A stubborn kid might just say, “Fine. I’ll go live with X,” drop out, and end up hoping they have enough to pay for their next meal. This can lead to life-long issues. Seattle, where I live, is filled with homeless teens who were issued similar edicts.
If she is planning to transfer as of January, she will need to get transfer applications done NOW…unless she plans to enroll at the local community college where there is usually open enrollment.
I’m assuming this is a fall sport she is playing. Even so, you need to find out the provisions of the scholarship.
If her boyfriend is budget conscious, maybe you all should sit down with a pencil and paper and write down all the options and how much each costs, and how much she’d be giving up to transfer to the community college. He may become an ally. Not now, but sometime during the fall, maybe after she’s played the sport and experienced the college. It may be that she really doesn’t like it for a lot of reasons, but I think she’s going to have much stronger feelings about the whole situation in October or November than she has now after a week or two. I think she’ll either be more determined to leave or realize that long distance dating isn’t so bad and the benefits of school are a good match for her.
Really, the two weeks she’s been at school are not enough to base anything on.
A teammate of my daughter’s did transfer after one year (spring sport) to be with her boyfriend at another school. I don’t think she’s eligible to play (and don’t think she’d get a scholarship as it’s a move from D2 to D1, and she’s okay but not that good). I don’t know all the factors that went into it, but I’m sure financially it wasn’t a good move. Maybe finances didn’t have to be a factor.
Hopefully, this question has already been asked and answered, since she could have a career-ending injury at any time.
I think it’s time to tread very carefully here… She is a new freshman, likely feeling a little out of it and lonely…Here comes high school bf and home and it just feels good… I would support her, tell her you know it’s tough and then encourage her to try some clubs, teams-anything to pass the time. Don’t talk about meeting new boys-she will think you want her to break up (and you probably do!!!) Then I’d even go as far as to encourage her bf to visit! I know it seems crazy, but maybe if he comes to see her, she will see that he doesn’t fit in and start to see the culture at school as one she prefers…
I’d also hold to the one year thing. Then put the entire transfer on her-from sending transcripts, to writing applications and finding funds.
I’m so sorry~it’s tough, but it can work out!
My heart goes out to the OP. Watching young people make life altering mistakes is difficult. Is this your daughters first boyfriend, why did boyfriend drop out of school so fast. Be firm but fair. You do not want a situation in which the harder you push the more she rebels. I pray that as the semester goes by her common sense overtakes her emotional pull. I truly wish you the best because this is a difficult thing to go thru.
This is always the argument against athletic scholarships, and they really don’t (always) work that way. Many coaches honor their commitments and allow student to retain the scholarship even if there is an injury. An injury may happen, but it often isn’t ‘career ending’ (and guess what, most of these students aren’t going to be career athletes). My daughter has a few players on her team who have injuries and they still are on the team, have reduced work out schedules, may pick up other duties such as team manager, but retain their scholarships. A hockey player at a top program found out he had a heart condition about 2 weeks into his freshman year. Coach honored the scholarship for all 4 years and he is now a graduate assistant coach. It’s a different story if the athlete quits.
To me, it is really no different than asking “what if the student doesn’t keep a merit scholarship because of a low gpa?” or “what if the student loses a scholarship because of a change of major?” Not everyone has a backup plan for every contingency, and you deal with those situations as they arise. If the student loses an athletic scholarship, she may have to transfer, or the school may have financial aid available (that wasn’t available because of the athletic scholarship), or there may be more loans involved. If my daughter loses her athletic scholarship, she’d likely not be able to continue at her school, but the same is true if she loses her merit scholarship. We have a lot of blocks holding up the Jenga tower, and pulling out any one could bring the whole thing crashing down.
Your post was very enlightening, @twoinanddone. Thank you.
I think that the OP should consider an option 4:
Tell your DD that she has to stick it out the whole school year. AND go to counseling. AND stick to her commitment to the athletic team for the whole school year. If she chooses to quit school after the first semester is done, then she needs to find other living & financial arrangements.
^I’m not a pushover parent but that’s a hardball I wouldn’t choose to play with my own kids but to each their own.
When my son was 4 years old, we were in a supermarket together, and a woman there threatened to leave her child behind if the child didn’t stop misbehaving.
My son turned to me and said, in a voice filled with utter certainty, “She’s not going to do that.” And of course, he was right.
From that moment on, I never threatened my kids with anything I wasn’t actually willing to do. I realized that I couldn’t get away with it.
If the OP and his spouse threaten to cut off all support for their daughter and kick her out of their home if she makes a decision they disapprove of, they had better plan to follow through on the threat.
I was given an ultimatum/tough love stance by my parents when I was the same age and it was the wake up call that I personally needed at the time to pull my head out of my rear end. However, of course, what works for 1 person does not necessarily work for another person. The OP knows the DD best, so I’m sure that they will decide what is best for their family & their particular situation.
I don’t think the OP would be unreasonable in setting conditions for his daughter to move back home, whether it be to attend community college, work and pay rent, or even that the daughter needs to move out and be an independent adult. Parents spend a lot of time getting their kids into college, doing the paperwork for financial aid and taxes and paying for the applications and testing. I think we’re entitled to be disappointed when the child doesn’t even give the school a chance.
I’ve explained to my kids that the financial aid packages, scholarships, etc., work for THIS school at THIS time, and the same opportunities may not exist at another school, at another time. I can’t deal with any more college searching. They’d have to look for other opportunities on their own.
There’s a difference between asking your kid to honor committments, trying to stick something out, looking at reasonable options, and tossing them out when they don’t do things your way. I would NEVER throw my kid out for leaving college. Would I insist on a new, viable plan to become self-supporting? Yes, of course. But throw them out? No.
I work at a church as the administrative assistant. It may seem surprising, but we often get calls or visits from people who aren’t even Christian, who know that churches can be places of refuge. We also work with a family homeless organization. You would be surprised at the number of youth and young parents who are in dire straights because their parents threw them out.
It’s not common for a kid with no money, no home, no health care, no job skills, etc. to suddenly become self-supporting or to pay their own way through some other no-parent-approved program. What’s more likely is that they end up sick, hurt, couch-surfing, getting into drugs or drinking (or both) or simply scrambling for each meal. But hey, if you’re willing to risk that kind of life for your kids, by all means, try it. Places like my church are there to help pick up the pieces.
It is different to just toss out an 18 year old with no money and no where to go, but this family had a plan and the child is opting not to follow it, to not even give it a chance. This ‘child’ is claiming she’s an adult and can do things her way, and if the parents don’t agree to her terms, she’s going to make their lives miserable. I’m not good with ultimatums from 18 year olds.
Op’s first post:
Post #12
I’d be willing to listen to her side of it, what her ‘plan’ is, but if her plan is “I’m moving home because I want to be with my boyfriend” well, I’d have no problem letting her know that that isn’t a plan that is going to work out for me, what the rules of living at home are, and that if she didn’t agree to the terms, she wouldn’t be living at home.
One of my kids had an idea that she could live with her boyfriend and take classes online. I told her that if she did that, she’d be on her own for all future educational costs, that I’d do the FAFSA and help her figure things out, but that I wouldn’t support this ‘plan’ financially or otherwise. We talked through a few options and came up with a different plan and what each would mean financially. It was a calm conversation and she had time to consider all the options. She chose to go back to school, without the boyfriend.