<p>POIH, in your heart of hearts, what do you think of the idea of your wife moving to follow your daughter? Good idea or not? Forget the finances; pretend that money just fell from the sky, leave that out of it. </p>
<p>anneroku:
</p>
<p>The daughter hasn’t been saying, “Oh, yes, I can’t wait til you all move to Boston with me!” Indeed, when specifically asked her opinion, she suggested NYC.</p>
<p>POIH, I’d like to give you a hug. You’re breaking my heart.</p>
<p>Is your wife opposed to counseling under all circumstances? If she’s ok with it, you could present it as your needing to come to terms with your daughter going to college and with the other possible changes in your family.</p>
<p>In your deepest heart, do you believe your daughter is really fine with this scenario or do you think she feels she has no choice? If she really is content, then there’s not much you can do except mitigate the financial damage.</p>
<p>However, if your daughter doesn’t want this (and I hope you will touch base with her about the fact that if you and/or wife move, then home won’t be the same anymore) you have an obligation as the loving father you are to sit your wife down (hopefully with a counselor or a clergy person) and tell her in no uncertain terms that she needs help and you won’t allow her to stunt your daughter’s growth the way hers has been stunted. Tell her you understand how damaging it is to lose a loved one in childhood, but that you know she loves your daughter most of all and would never want to do anything but the best for her and the best is to let her make her own life. Tell her that you completely support her in moving to where your daughter makes her permanent home, but that you can’t allow her to follow your daughter for college. Don’t forget to tell her that you love her and will fight for your daughter’s best interests AND for your marriage.</p>
<p>POIH, assuming that you / wife move to Boston for the sake of argument, what expectations does your wife have in terms of how much time daughter will spend with her? DInner once a week? Stay over one night on the weekend? What?<br>
What if daughter wants to do an internship in, I don’t know, Cleveland or something for a semester. Does wife relocate to Cleveland?</p>
<p>That’s a great point, Pizzagirl. Their daughter might also decide to change schools. Sometimes happens.</p>
<p>
[Quote=Northstarmom]
Unless your D is very different from those admitted to places like MIT and Ivies, your D will not be spending much time with her Mom. Instead, your D will be diving into academics, extracurriculars, new friends.
[/quote]
Or she will feel so guilty that her mom has sacrificed her home, friends, savings, income, career, husband, to follow her across the country that she feels obliged to spend time with her even to the detriment of her academics, extracurriculars, new friends. </p>
<p>Regardless of how much my mom professed to want to do it, if she had essentially given up her whole life just to be near me, I would feel obliged to see her. A lot. Especially if she was was just sat alone all day in some rented apartment in a strange city, spending thousands and thousands $ on my education.</p>
<p>
I’m not sure about my D but I don’t think myself that it is a good idea under the present ecnomic situation. If I get a wind fall of money then I would rather be close to my D than 6 hour flight away.</p>
<p>
I’m not sure but it will be at least Friday/Saturday night stay. If my wife choose to stay too close than it might be staying at home after freshman year.</p>
<p>Regarding: Post #167 </p>
<p>Oh, the poor girl.
This is wrong, very wrong.</p>
<p>POIH, Forgive me if I am out of line, but a thought occured to me – is your wife laying down this ultimatum because she really wants out of the marriage and your D going to school across the country is the crack in the door she needs to make the move?</p>
<p>I am sorry if I have offended. It was just another perspective that I thought might help to explain what’s happening. It might be worth exploring if you both decide to seek counseling.</p>
<p>“I’m not sure but it will be at least Friday/Saturday night stay. If my wife choose to stay too close than it might be staying at home after freshman year.”</p>
<p>I went to Harvard, a place very similar to MIT in terms of the kind of students who go there. I am LMAO at your expectations. I can’t imagine that your D really would do such a thing. She’d be the laughingstock of the campus. Students at places like MIT just don’t go running home to Mommy and Daddy each weekend. They have strong, independent personalities and much more interesting things to do than seeing their parents each weekend. Students who need to be around Mommy and Daddy all of the time are the type of students who go to lower tier colleges that are known for their hand holding and parental like supervision. </p>
<p>And what are you going to do if she refuses to come home? Drag her home? Cut off her tuition? I bet darned well she knows that you can’t make her go home each weekend, and she’s not planning to do so.</p>
<p>If your D were a dependent person who’d act the way you’re expecting, she wouldn’t have gotten into a place like MIT, a campus that expects students to take full advantage of the college experience.</p>
<p>Forget the money – to think about moving to be within 50 miles of your D’s college is just weird, and that’s even with taking the cultural differences into account. Many many Asian families send their college-aged offspring to another continent halfway around the world for college, never mind to just the other coast, so I’m not buying the “cultural differences” argument. Sorry.</p>
<p>To follow one’s offspring around as this family has done – that’s very strange, too, and that is NOT attributable to culture; see “another continent” above.</p>
<p>Even if the D is “fine” with it now, for her sake, loosen the apron strings. The message you are sending her by having to be so close at ALL TIMES is that you don’t trust her to live on her own, to manage to be even on a supervised trip without you! Ick.</p>
<p>Your wife needs a new hobby; following D around isn’t a good one. What kind of example would she be setting for her D as to what a marriage is, if she’s so willing to leave you to essentially go to school with D?</p>
<p>I agree with others that this whole thread reads as one of DadII’s “jokes.”</p>
<p>Really. Ick. No, it doesn’t make sense, on any level.</p>
<p>POIH- I’d like to ask a few questions. </p>
<p>Let me start by saying my husband’s family is Mex- Am and very family centered. Virtually no one lives more than half an hour from each other. We live 45 minutes away and we are told that is too far. One family moved to the suburbs; parents and another sibling moved to the same suburb within 2 miles of each other. I understand cultures where keeping close is normal.</p>
<p>My question- Does your daughter truly want to go to the east for college? If she is accepted to one of the top school like MIT, would the rest of her community look at her like she is crazy if she said she would rather go to a UC that would be closer to home? Would the pressure to accept at the Ivy/MIT be too much for her to withstand and stay quiet despite the fact that she would rather go to Cal? </p>
<p>Will she feel anxious out east without being able to meet up with you and your wife every other week for a meal or sleep at home for a weekend if she has a bad cold?</p>
<p>The homesick loneliness can go both ways, particularly with only children. I don’t automatically assume that a student is dying to leave home far behind. Good luck working this out.</p>
<p>
This is a different scenario. I think a fair number of parents move their families to locations with good public high schools, to states with good public universities, etc. This is totally different because at that time the kid is still a kid and living at home with the parents. The parent basically ‘moving to college with the kid’ is not a normal thing to do by any means and is counter-productive to the kid gaining their independence. </p>
<p>
If your W really thinks your D wants to stay with her every Friday/Saturday night then she’s setting herself up for major disappointment and conflict when it doesn’t happen. If she imposes it on your D then it will destroy your D’s social life, negatively impact her studies greatly, negate a significant part of the reason for going to MIT in the first place, cause conflict, and could inflict a permanent wedge in the relationship between the W and the D.</p>
<p>OP.</p>
<p>Sorry to be blunt. You and your wife fit the classic definition of helicopter parents to a T.
So, you want to move with your daughter so that she will spend most of weekend with you while in college? Then follow her around within 50 miles even after graduation no matter where she does? Do you realize how suffocating this is? Will you ever let your daughter loose to find her own place in the world?</p>
<p>As I said in my previous post, this is mostly about your wife’s (and, yes, even your) emotional needs and inability to allow your daughter to be an independent entity, NOT your daughter’s safety, comfort, and security. </p>
<p>I am from Asian culture, and I have seen way too often parents’ need for control and their inability and unwillingness to let their children be independent entities don a holy mantle of “all for the children’s needs, and I am making a huge sacrifice for them” type of justification. In MOST cases, the underlying dynamics is the PARENTS’s emotional welfare and needs, NOT the children’s welfare.</p>
<p>When will you ever let your daughter be her own person?</p>
<p>POIH, does your wife realize that she could eventually be a burden to your daughter? Right now, your D may need your presence or advice constantly, but when she lives on campus and begins college, she WILL change and wants to be more independent. Knowing her parents are just waiting for her calls and presence may prove too burdensome for someone this young.</p>
<p>Perhaps you can ask your wife to move there for a few months in your D’s first year for a trail period, but tell her she needs to move back with you the second year Hopefully, while she is in Boston, she can see your D can live a full independent happy life without going to her Mom.</p>
<p>At the same time, a few sessions of counseling for the family is in order</p>
<p>
No, I’m not offended but I’m fearfull of the fact that this might happen if I refuse to move.</p>
<p>I really like my D to attend MIT and live in a dorm. I stayed in dorm through out the undergrad and grad schools and think it has made me very independent.
I also don’t want to move and would like to give D more space but this can lead to a terrible end to my relations with my wife which is something I don’t want.</p>
<p>
Whoa – you guys really need to talk to some current MIT students! Staying at home every weekend will not be possible. The issue is not what the other students will think (they accept all types of kids and will not be judgmental.) The issue is the workload. Your daughter will be pulling all-nighters and doing psets with friends, not to mention socializing on the weekends. It is not realistic to expect her at home on the weekends. Did you require her to stay with you on the weekends when she was at her summer programs?</p>
<p>“Would the pressure to accept at the Ivy/MIT be too much for her to withstand and stay quiet despite the fact that she would rather go to Cal?
Will she feel anxious out east without being able to meet up with you and your wife every other week for a meal or sleep at home for a weekend if she has a bad cold?”</p>
<p>There’s nothing to suggest that the daughter wants this, only that she’s resigned to it (because that’s how she’s grown up). There’s nothing to suggest that the daughter actively wants to crash at her parents’ apartment every Fri / Sat, only that the mother wants it that way.</p>
<p>POIH, you deserve a lot of credit for raising this issue … it is not easy to deal with these things, and good luck to you in getting your wife into counseling.</p>
<p>“No, I’m not offended but I’m fearfull of the fact that this might happen if I refuse to move.”</p>
<p>Sorry, but your wife’s planning to move across the country to be with her college student daughter whether or not you choose to go is a big red flag that your wife isn’t very committed to the marriage.</p>
<p>Your going with your wife isn’t going to make her any more committed.
Really, what do you think she will be able to do day in and day out in a new city in which she’s unlikely to have a job or to have any friends? At best, she’ll see your D on weekends.</p>
<p>If your wife prefers that kind of existence to living with her husband, than at best, your marriage is just a shell. </p>
<p>Whether or not your wife enters counseling, you should enter counseling to get a clear perspective of your life and the repercussions of any actions you take in this situation.</p>
<p>And if your wife’s friends indeed are saying that her plans make sense, they may be saying that because they know this is your wife’s way of leaving the marriage. Another possibility is that your wife is lying about others’ reactions to her plans.</p>