Agree!
I disagree that 6 hours away is close. My daughter is 2.5 hours away and it is a pain to drive 2.5 hours there, back and then return her after the weekend and break. If she had a car it would be a one way trip, but she doesn’t so for her to come home for the weekend is 10 hours out of my life.
I can’t tell you how many of my nephews friend went to school OOS and have now returned to go to the flagship about 30 miles away. I think most missed their friends a lot more than missed their mothers, but still didn’t want to be far from what they know and like about their home town.
If she loves the school,that is 6 hours away, she can love another that is closer.
OP, I don’t think you really CAN know that she’ll be fine. She doesn’t sound fine, she sounds SCARED. My older D chose a college and a major based on what she thought her dad and I expected of her. It all looked great on paper, but for several reasons, it did not go well at ALL. In fact, her unhappiness was what led me to discover CC in the first place. In the end she changed schools, major and her entire career aspirations. It also almost cost her her relationship with her father, my ex because he was certain he knew her better than she knew herself.
You have an advantage-your D is telling you ahead of time that she may want to change her mind. Listen to her. Six hours is pretty far away when you’re desperately unhappy and think your parents will insist that you stay where you are. I know this from personal experience.
I once worked with a young woman who left college because of homesickness. It was only 125 miles away!
And yet just a few years later, she happily and successfully enlisted in the Navy (and this is from a landlocked state).
So I agree with those who say maybe she is not ready. Just be open to that possibility, and don’t assume it’s a permanent situation.
There’s always community college and local schools.
This tells me that this child is trying very hard to do what you and her sister do with ease. Six hours may be no big deal to you and I get you’re saying to your daughter to reassure her. But maybe six hours is a lot for her. Everyone is different.
When do you write “she wants to not feel scared” , I see a child trying so hard to be someone she isn’t. I think it’s okay to be scared. Everyone says, trust your instinct, trust your gut. If your daughter listens to her gut, what does it say?
Six hours away is not close. It means an overnight trip for whoever is doing the traveling, with a substantial chunk of both days spent getting from point A to point B, rather than spending time at your destination.
It’s not something you will be inclined to do very often.
My daughter went to college six hours from home. I never went to her campus except for August drop-offs and May pick-ups. She never came home except for scheduled breaks (and she didn’t even come home for all of those because sometimes 12 hours on a bus doesn’t seem worth it if you’re only going to be home for four days). This was fine with us, but it doesn’t sound as though it would be fine for your daughter.
6 hours is close. It takes my kid 3 airplanes, 30 hours, and a dozen time zones.
Has she ever been away from home for anything that kept her away for more than a night or two?
Well, yes.
But if the goal is for a student to feel “I can easily go home for a weekend if I want to, and my parents can easily come to see me,” six hours is not close enough. If the student has a car or access to good mass transit from one location to the other, 3 hours (4 at the outside) is close enough. If someone would have to go pick up the student, make it 2 hours (because that’s a 4-hour round trip for the driver). 6 hours doesn’t give the same feeling of freedom to visit back and forth.
Wow. 6 hours is not too bad. You can get off of work at 5 and drive there before midnight. Frankly, after a while your kids will make friends and not be that interested in you coming by to visit. They will get a life of their own. Odds are fairly good that she can find other students who live somewhat near you so they can share rides.
It sounds a little like when you drop a kid off at daycare and they cry until you leave. Once you leave, they are fine. The theory is that the kids want to make sure you know that you will be missed. Relax. Counselling was probably an over-reaction unless she has other issues. It is perfectly normal for some kids to start to get nervous once the reality of growing up hits them. Paying for it made it real. It was most likely just a momentary reality check and she will adapt well.
Many counselors will identify an issue. If your kid has no issues, you have no reason to schedule another session. You need to really know your kid and see if this is momentary anxiety or if she reacts badly to things on a regular basis. The way you framed the situation, it seems like this is out of the ordinary for her and the counselling is not something that has been ongoing. Be careful. Bad decisions can be made in either direction with counselling.
6 hours is only “close” if the adolescent is independent and gets there and back him- or herself. My son had a great option that far away, and we decided together that it was too far - for him. He’s anxious, has a history of depression, and had a high level of support at home, by necessity. He ended up 3+ hours away, making it a 7-hour roundtrip drive for me. Still not close.
OP: Your daughter likely feels she “should” be able to do this, because other people do it. There is no “should.” My son loved his choice of college (still does) but became increasingly anxious about moving away as the summer wore on. I thought he should commute to the local university from home but let him decide. I made sure to tell him - and I still do, whenever the anxiety about going back after break creeps in, which it does - that the choice is 100% his, that he can always come home and go to school, any time, and it would turn out perfectly fine. Take off the pressure. Sink or swm doesn’t really work. The day we dropped off my son, he was a wreck. We were talking about whether he’d make it through the weekend. He’s doing well but he knows that he does not HAVE to be away at college. I think my son now believes that people actually do come home, I wasn’t just making that up for his sake; his neighbor and friend at the dorm went home after the first semester.
This thread’s been helpful, to me, anyway. One of my D’s admitted-to schools is a little over 7 hrs drive from us. It’s over an hour to the closest airport, and the school supposedly runs a shuttle there but only during designated breaks.
I’ve been trying to decide if I should see this as close enough, or too far… A part of me is saddened by the prosepct of it, as I know I won’t be able to see her as often…
If she chooses this school, I’ve been clear with her that she needs to get herself to the airport and back for holiday breaks, spring break, etc. My husband and I will drive her there in August, and back home in May, and of course, go down for parents’ weekend.
My parents live 7 hours away from us, and years of driving there and back makes me consider this a very do-able day drive. But I agree with others, 6-7 hours is too long for one day trip. Picking up and driving back in August will be an overnight stay for me and my husband. That’s not a big deal, either, imo.
My own D is not one to get homesick easily, but she’s also never been that far away for more than two weeks.
Idk what the answer is for OP’s daughter - she does sound like a young adult still reluctant to stray too far from the nest, so soon… But then again, I’ve seen kids be completely homesick the first week or two of freshman year, then suddenly forget all about home as they got busier with classes and new friends and got into the groove of dorm and college life… and they were fine by the end of the first month.
I think the key might be to reassure her that she can absolutely come home on any given weekend if she needs to, or someone can go to her and visit.
I visited and had lunch with my kids throughout college, maybe every two weeks. They were within an hour or an hour and a half away. Each of the three is now fully independent and two live across the country quite comfortably. I believe my involvement during college years encouraged and supported ultimate independence more than if they had been further away without support. I was training wheels, so to speak. Every kid and every family is different. I helped my kids visit schools that were far away and let them decide, and I am grateful for those years when they were in college, but close, looking back.
@BeeDAre my D’s good friend is at a college like that and when she travels outside of the breaks where the shuttle is provided, she uses Uber. It’s in an area I would not have expect Uber to even exist, but it does and she’s able to come and go as needed. My D ended up choosing a school in a large city, but very far away. She’s been far away before, but never for nearly this long. I will really miss her and expect to keep Skype in business.
Uber, Super Shuttle, etc. are all viable options. At my children’s college, the kids would get together and split the cost of a cab.
I think some posters may be projecting their own experiences onto OP’s. It’s possible that her daughter isn’t ready to go away, but it’s also possible that she loves the college she selected and will be just fine once she gets past her initial anxiety. It’s okay to be nervous about something. That doesn’t mean that you still can’t do it and move past it. It’s okay to tell your child that you will be their safety net if they need one, but I don’t think you should tell a student that if they feel nervous that means that they can’t and shouldn’t try.
I think being nervous about moving far away is normal but total meltdown is a different thing especially 6 months away from the actual move. I think counseling is perfect and I would base further decisions on the counselor’s input. Can you find a plan B school now that is very close to home? Maybe having that plan B will make her feel more secure that she can change her mind where if you wait much longer it may be very hard to find a plan B.
And even every kid within a family.
@pittsburghscribe sure we are. My D didn’t know how to tell us what she really needed to do and it went badly. There’s a fine line between giving your kids a little push when they’re nervous and shoving them off what they see as a cliff. An hour with a counselor might help OP and D figure out where the line is.