When our kid finished college 3000 miles from home…she started a 27 month Peace Corps appointment…in Aftica…in a village without electricity. I never really worried about her there either.
We went to visit half way through her time there…and did skype every Sunday.
I think being in college far away was a good middle time to prepare her to be farther way for a couple of years!
Oh and when our youngest was in Jordan he called us to ask, “How high should your temperature be before you go to the emergency room?” He ended up going to the ER where they gave him everything but the kitchen sink for mystery illness. (Probably just a virus.) We had an interesting time helping him figure out what they’d given him. He decided he didn’t need any of the opiates. Luckily he recovered quickly, but there was a brief, oh dear what have we let him do moment there!
Wow! Lots of great responses. I just wish I would’ve checked in at lunch, but I worked thru lunch today
@mknott Please keep us posted on your progress. Many of us in the same situation following this very helpful thread.
Good luck!
Uh oh I had a huge post but I think it was truncated after an emoji.
I’ll type it up again after I get home
DD is an only child and we are older parents, so it is very important to me that she be fairly independent, especially since our extended family is fairly small. She spent weeks away from home at choir camp and on choir tours overseas from her middle school years, and in high school was interested to going to college where she didn’t know a soul. I felt it would be an education in itself for her to get out of the SF Bay Area because the rest of the country is not as liberal and I thought it would be good for her to experience that.
DD attended a small LAC outside Chicago with the understanding that she would never be able to come home at Thanksgiving and possibly not over spring break either. Her first task when she arrived was to make arrangements and back-up arrangements for Thanksgiving.
I think one of the biggest drawbacks has been that we use an HMO for health care, and that HMO is not in the Chicago area. Thus, DD was/is covered for emergency care but not for urgent/chronic care. This has been a hassle because she hasn’t been home enough or long enough to take care of some of these things.
A risk of a child attending school far from home is that she will never return. DD now has a job in Chicago. With great benefits that kick in this month. She was a history major and education minor. Her company has an office in the SF Bay Area, but the cost of housing is so high out here that I told her that she couldn’t afford to live here unless she gets two or more promotions, and even then her quality of life would go down.
Yes, we miss her, and yes we are close. We talk regularly as she walks to her train. But I feel my duty as a parent is to encourage my chickadee to fly.
I was just having this conversation with a friend whose dd chose a school about 3.5 hours from their home. Still in state, but not just around the corner. Both of mine went far away. Ds1 was down to the eventual winner and a state uni about two hours away. Ds2 always planned to go far away.
I preferred that they go farther away. For me, the biggest drawback was that I didn’t get to meet a lot of ds1’s friends. He had this whole other life with people whose names I knew but didn’t know. We didn’t have the money to fly up for parents weekend or to move him in every year. Also, I was afraid that he’d find a girl and never come home. That didn’t happen. He’s back here. 
I feel much more connected to ds2’s life. He’s just more open and brought friends home over spring break. I’m even FB friends with some of his college friends!
But it was difficult at times. When they are sick or hurting, you wish you could be there. But ds1 gained so much. I know that if he’d been close he wouldn’t have done the things he ended up doing, academically and socially. It was the right choice.
I think it was the right thing for me, too. If he’d been closer, I think the apron string only would have frayed and not been cut. I don’t think it’s right to keep a child close because of your fears.
@CCsiteObsessed Wonderful and painful at the same time. True definition of bittersweet.
OP: I had twins. They could have gone anywhere they wanted and we looked at colleges all over the country. S wound up 45 min - 1 hour from home (same metropolitan area). D went 1000 miles away (from midwest to east coast).
Both of them came back for Thanksgiving, Christmas and spring break. Do you want to know how many more times my S came home compared to my D in those 4 years? Exactly once. You have got to think of them as being gone at college – and when that’s the case, the distance doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t have been right for me to have gone and hung around S just because he was closer. He deserved his privacy and his chance to have his college experience too.
Regarding your wife’s fears – certainly you know that many kids have gone to summer camp and separated from parents well beyond college-age, right? My kids flew to a summer camp 600 miles away from the age of about 9 or 10 on. Certainly she’s aware that kids sleep away at camp, right? It’s good practice, IMO.
Regarding homesickness - I’m sure both of my kids were homesick at some point. Whether they were physically near or far had nothing to do with it. It’s not as though the cure for S’s homesickness would have been to have “rescued” him and brought him home.
We communicated pretty equally with both kids – phone calls every few days, texts as the moment struck us.
I was no more or less comfortable with the “far one’s” safety as I was with the “close one’s” safety (if anything, I felt better about the “far one’s” safety as she was in a more upscale, safer neighborhood overall). Again, what does the closeness have to do with anything?
Hope this helps. It’s a big country out there. Don’t be like so many people who can’t possibly conceive of anything beyond their front door.
I wouldn’t hold my kid back if there is The Uni she wanted to attend and it happened to be thousands of miles away. On the other hand if there is one that’s close to home and is just as good of fit then I wouldn’t see the need to go far away. As an example, if my kid liked Northwestern (a flight away), then she could like Cornell (4 hrs drive) just as well. Why go far away just for the sake of it.
I have to say that both of my kids did get very sick while in college at one time or another. They were very glad that they were close enough that I could go pick them up. D1 broke down when I told her I would come get her. She said all of her friends were busy with classes there was no one around. She was so weak that she couldn’t even go to the kitchen to get water or food.
Another plus side to be within driving distance is I was able to go to many of their dance performances. Few times a year I would also just drive up to have a girls’ spa weekend with my kids.
Our daughter will be going 3k miles away in 20 days! Yikes. As her dad, I have been focusing more on making sure she has access to money, if needed, and access to decent health care (she has a chronic condition). Her mother is obsessing on dorm room needs, clothing needs and making sure they can FaceTime each other.
Since she is our first, we would probably have the same worries if it was a 3 hour car ride. And even though we tell ourselves she is only a plane ride away, the distance can be an issue. Google maps says we can drive it in 44 hours - so there is that. However, my wife and I both support her decision to leave and encouraged it. Yes, it is scary. But a lifetime of giving in to fear and anxiety is worse.
I grew up on the central coast in CA and attended college in western MA. It was a great boon for me to be exposed to so many people and types of people I otherwise wouldn’t have met. It was also great to spend Thanksgivings with friends from the East Coast (flying cross-country for a 4-day break was a waste of time and I was broke as a joke). I’m really glad I went so far away.
DD did a survey for her sociology class that comfirmed what she already believed. ALmost without exception, the kids that get the most homesick live the closest. We allowed DD to go to school in Boston, and we live in CA. ONe suggestion: for those kids, identify your favorite airline, and start racking up the miles on the credit card. We do everything on our Jet Blue credit card, and it pays for most of her air travel.
I don’t think how much a kid grows is measured by how far away they go. Whether 20 minutes, 2 hours, or 2,000 miles, a kid can grow a lot or a little. There is growth and then there is simply being exposed to different things. The student that lives 30 minutes from home can still fend for themselves and grow a lot (if parents let them) academically and socially (if they don’t pop home all the time). The friend’s kids I knew that went sorta close (within an hour or two) virtually never came home, just at the usual big holidays like their far away friends.
These four years are going to be a growth experience whether going far away or staying somewhat close, they become adults either way (or we hope they do). What the kid has done/experienced, or not done/experienced, up to this point, may make the bigger difference.
We live in the mid-Atlantic so there are literally hundreds of good colleges within a reasonable driving distance. I told my kids that if they wanted to go to a school that requires flying, there had to be a very good reason: the best school or major that couldn’t be found within driving distance. One went to school instate and we still didn’t see him all that often (beyond the first few weeks). He didn’t have a car, so it still was several hours to make two round trips to go get him and bring him home again. The others were farther away and just came home for the main holidays/breaks. I also pointed out that in the four years of college, they would only be there for half the year (assuming they came home to work in the summers) and could live where ever they wanted for the rest of their lives. Most of it was a financial decision. I might have had a different opinion if we lived in another part of the country where the choices were more limited. .
The disadvantages to distant schools are that when you come home, your college friends are generally not around, you can’t come home for big events, and the cost and hassle of flying. Flights tend to get very pricey around holidays. All three of my kids have been exposed to a much wider variety of people than those in the suburban bubble they grew up in. All have grown from the experience.
The insight and advice is wonderful and gladly accepted. I have raised my D traveling the world so I am not surprised she wants to branch out. I am not interested in clipping her wings. We all have to have those discussions with our children and come up with the best school that fits the situation. There are factors we all evaluate like financial, academic, opportunities, emotional, social, and health. Not many people will come on this board and tell us how their child dropped out after 10 weeks, but it happens. I have witnessed it and looking at the situation, asked myself “why would they send their child there knowing the risk”. It’s easy to be a back seat driver. I truly believe my D is capable of being independent whether 1000 miles away or 10 miles away. However, she has had health and depression issues where she may board herself up in her room for days. That can happen anywhere though and Mommy and daddy don’t need to always be rescuing a 19 yr old. But we are parents. Driving 3 hours to Wisconsin is not the same as flying 3 hours to Denver. You have plane schedules and available seats to deal with. I’m open to all at this point. It should be a fun journey this fall. Applications are open!
It probably would have been good to note this in your first post. It gives context to why your wife is stressing.
I agree with @MotherOfDragons that seems like a pretty relevant fact to have left out. However, while it likely does explain some or most of your wife’s stress, it probably doesn’t change the ultimate decision. I say that because many schools are prepared to deal with this if they are notified before moving in. But some are better than others, and some research into a school’s preparedness to deal with these things is warranted (RA training, mental health professionals both on campus and on call, etc.) so this can be factored into her decision as to which school to attend, as well as giving you and your wife some measure of assurance.
Mine went 6 miles from home to the state flagship. It was great! - I can’t think of any “cons”.
^I literally just talked to the counseling center at my daughter’s school, where she will be a freshman this year. They said she should fill out a questionnaire as soon as we arrive on campus, and they will set up an appointment for her. They have walk-in hours, so if she Skypes* with her regular counselor occasionally, she probably won’t need to get a private therapist there (thank goodness, since it looks as if there are no in-network people there for insurance purposes). The woman said it’s good to be proactive and figure out a plan before a crisis occurs.
*Skype is not secure, so there’s another form of communication, but I forgot what it’s called.