What do you do when kid doesn't want to come home?

Parents Forum
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After reading all this I am thankful all our kids are settling close to us post college and we see them all the time. We raised these kids away from any family, they never really knew grandparents, or aunts and uncles - just knew of them, and it was a big hole. Maybe that helped us be closer as a family, idk. The universe is rewarding us now by having them settle relatively close by and stopping in all the time post graduation. They will raise their families close to each other and I love that. I feel for the OP, I would miss my kids if they weren’t around and it would hurt if they didn’t want to come.

For each kid, the experience at home is different - I give great thought to what each one likes and make adjustments so it is more comfortable for them and they want to be around. Big home cooked meals or going out together, smothering them or leaving them totally alone, being busy or hanging out - find the balance for that one and roll with it.

But this is also a time of his life - it makes complete sense that at this point he wants to do other cooler things. College breaks are the perfect time to explore - no burden or responsibility weighing them down. But time will march on and he will figure out his life and you get more use to him not being around. Maybe next time he comes home, he will love being there and you will find it odd for him to be around and crave your space. It happens. :slight_smile:

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My oldest daughter doesn’t like to come home. She and her dad get along better from a distance. They’re too similar (he doesn’t see it; she does). Every year, she has fewer and fewer friends left. Then, there’s the ex, who never left town and is now a cop here. That kind of scares her. Stinks to be me, I guess.

However, as others have suggested, we have gone to her. We also just got back from a girls trip. I flew her out of her new hometown rather than insisting she come to mine so we could all fly together.

My friends and I used to say that if we did our job right, the kids leave. Doesn’t mean you don’t feel a sting.

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Ages and stages. Your former nuclear family has split, just like your childhood one did. Kudos for your son for having a life as an adult. So much more in life than parents! I still remember that I had no money (and or time) with medical school and residency. My sister travelled Europe at a similar age (with her H), staying in hostels et al. Now is the time for him to go places and do things. Later there may be more money but not the time.

You have entered the stage of life AFTER kids. Yours does not owe you any time. You no longer need to be available when (if) he chooses to visit. No more planning your life around his vacations.

Going to his city and seeing him for an hour here and there is as much as you should do. Unless he can take time off to do something with you. Think about it. When a child comes to your house how much time together do you really spend? You can keep caught up via phones, emails and things like Skype.

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That is such a harsh view. My kids would be sad if I acted that way.

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In college, I discovered the ideal time at home was less than 24 hours. I was only 3 hours away.

Keep being welcoming, avoid stress, and wait for them to grow out of it. Done right, you’ll be fine.

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I totally agree with @intparent. Very harsh. Glad that works for you and you are satisfied with it @wis75 but neither my kids want that kind of disconnect and neither do I. I feel grateful that we have still have a close connection and see them with some frequency while at the same time letting them develop their independence.

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Our “kids” are 28 and 30. We are fortunate that both enjoy coming “home” for Christmas. D generally stays a month or more and S stays a week or two. In between, we visit them or invite them to join any of our trips. We tend to see them at least once or twice a year in addition to the December visits.

S is 5000+ miles away. He does quite a bit of traveling, including international trips. D has done a bit less but both seem happy and are always happy to visit and spend time with us and their extended family.

Sometimes it IS a phase where hbr kids want to spread their wings more, especially when a friend invites them to see a new part of the world at low/no cost. We have encouraged our kids to travel and are glad they have. All we can do is keep open relationships and have a good welcome when they’re available. It has worked for us and hope it works for others.

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My kids spend time with me out of obligation and also because they want to. My theory is the less you see each other more out of touch you are of each other. When kids were growing up, I didn’t always believe in quality time, but rather quantity. I believe It matters to be there.

My kids know I want them to be around for major holidays and for our annual one week family vacation. D1 gets close to to 5 weeks vacation now. She goes on 2 weeks vacation with her SO, one week with us, and the remainder she spends it on long weekends with her friends.

I also live in the same town as D1. D2 is living with me now until she goes off to graduate school, but she will eventually settle down in the same city. I could live at other places due to my work, but both of my kids know I chose to live close to where they are. We get together for dinners, sometimes with their SO, but more often than not, it is just 3 of us (I am divorced).
When my kids were growing up, I dragged them to my parents’ house for xmas to spend time with my relatives. They would tell you that there times when they would have preferred to stay home. They said they sucked it up because it meant a lot to my parents and me, but now they are glad we made them go. They are very close with their extended family.
I do go out of my way to make it easy or want to spend time with me. D2 is going to travel around Europe with her cousin this summer. She asked me if I wanted to go to Europe with her for a week before her cousin joins hers. I readily agreed, but guess who is paying for her airfare and her week with me?! :slight_smile:

It takes work to keep a relationship going. It is hard to have a relationship when you do not talk or see each other. I could let friends drift away, but not my kids.

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@BigWideWorld I would try for the best parent award. I would offer him some spending money for Europe and wish him well this year. What a fun opportunity. Then I would give him options for the following year. Would he like to go to your house, have a family get away somewhere fun or have you guys go visit him. Also do you have a Skype schedule? Do you text each other?

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I understand the son may prefer to go to Europe with his friend, but may be he could go home for few days before or after the trip.

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@BigWideWorld, I can totally relate. It is hard to have less contact with our kids when we were so close to them before.

We live in So Cal, and our son went to MIT for undergrad. He and I were super close (homeschool parent here), and it was so hard to have him across the country. I remember one year, I went 11 months without seeing him-so sad! We don’t have a lot of money, so we really couldn’t visit him much. I dropped him off freshman year, went again one other time, and then the whole family went out for graduation and wedding! :slight_smile: (Yes, he got married 8 days after he graduated)

I had to be content with Facebook, texts, phone calls and the occasional Skype session. I might not like social media all the time, but boy, I was grateful for all those modes of communication.

Now that he’s married, of course we don’t communicate as much, but yay for me, he and his wife took jobs 5 1/2 hours away, so we see them at least 5-6 times a year; I will take it!! They are both talking about going back to grad school, and being that they have a ton of friends in Boston, I suspect they might end up back there. Wow, that would be sad for me, so I am enjoying their relatively close proximity.

I’m thankful that my son still enjoys communicating fairly frequently, though he and his wife live such a lovely, busy life, time can go by quickly. But he and his wife are always happy to have us visit, so we try to get out there when time and money permit.

I definitely like the idea of you going out for a visit if money and time permits. You can both sight see and see your son each trip that you take; nothing wrong with that in my book.

As you can tell, I’m one of those people that values family staying close by. My parents moved 5 minutes away when my eldest son was born, and I was so glad to have the help. My mom and I were politically worlds apart, and it did get dicey some days towards the end of her life, but I was glad they chose to move near me. Now that my dad is 90, I’m so glad to be able to be close enough to take care of him when he needs it.

I’d love to live near all kids when they’re all grown up–probably not possible, ha-ha, but can’t blame a gal for trying. :slight_smile:

Hugs to you!

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It’s interesting how our families have their own ways of doing things and connecting.

Both of my parents went far (FAR) from home and raised me and my sibs away from their parents, but we did visit them most every summer and sometimes more. My parents split up and eventually both moved far from ME (when I was in college). My brother and sister are in different cities.

After I had my own kids we moved near mom and some other family and have remained, so my kids had regular grandparent/cousin contact, sleepovers, babysitting, etc. Older S lives a few blocks away and loves it here, younger D went away to college and will likely not live here again.

I’m visiting her abroad soon, because 6 months apart is pretty long for us. It’s a vacation though (her school break there), and she and I (and sometimes her brother) do road trips or some kind of travel 1-2x a year, at least long weekends. I guess I could have insisted she come home for her break but visiting her for another road trip will be much more fun :slight_smile:

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  1. Cross-country trips are VERY taxing. As someone in a grad program, that seems daunting.
  2. If he's in his 20s, and has an "attitude problem," he probably doesn't want to be trapped at home. There's something in the dynamics that he doesn't like and doesn't want to stay there. A hotel would probably be more appropriate.

I’m 27 and have a very, very close relationship with my parents. I still only get up to their house 1-2 times a year, and it’s only 4 hours away by car. There just isn’t the time and when there is, I want to spend time with my husband and relax. It has nothing to do with my parents, but I have such little free time that when I get it, I want to enjoy it by relaxing or doing something fun. Not that being with my parents is a chore, but that’s just not what I want to do with the few days I have off here and there.

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My parents could not have been prouder of me and supportive of my hard work and life (though my mother was/is always judgmental). I found that going home forced me either to regress to a way of relating that I was not comfortable with (it was just depressing) or pushing back against that pattern of behavior (which hardly makes sense if you visit once or twice a year). So, I didn’t visit much. [This has not ended – I went to NJ to help my 93 yo mother with her taxes and some life decisions and she complained that I hadn’t been there since August].

My father-in-law did something that I admired. He recognized that his young adult kids would not choose to come home in most cases. Rather than being upset at the kids or trying to guilt trip them into coming home, he took action.
After I had been dating his daughter for 2 months, he offered the following to his kids: “I’ve rented a large condo in Maui for three weeks over Christmas break. You can come if you want and I will pay your airfare. You can bring a friend (boyfriend, girlfriend, or just plain friend). I will not worry about sleeping arrangements. Your friend will only need to pay his/her airfare. I will cover on the ground expenses.” Guess what, we all went to Maui. The next year, we all went bicycling in China (just after China had opened to the West.

These trips were too good to pass up, and they got us in the habit of being together over vacations. Later, he rented and then bought a place in Florida near the beach when the young adults were parents of little kids. When he renovated his country house (a 125 acre walnut farm), he asked each of his kids what it would take for them to spend a significant amount of time there.

ShawWife and I plan to do the same thing. ShawSon actually likes spending time with us but is a) on the West Coast; and b) living in the intensity of being a founder of a venture-backed company in Palo Alto. ShawD does visit us more frequently, but she is so good at advance planning that she’s scheduled a trip with her BF and family to Patagonia over Christmas break, so we’ll have to wait for the next time.

Anyway, I think the advice of many folks is that the OP’s son’s behavior is reasonably natural. But, there are good responses. Visit him, but even better do what my FIL did. Make it just too tempting not to join you someplace.

1 Like
75

A happy dance?? Sorry I have 5 kids and we are always so thrilled to have a fool minute to ourselves!!! :))

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I guess I wasn’t a terribly helpful kid when I was a teenager. Every time my parents visit us and I’ve cooked a big meal or something, Mom will tell my dad, “See, our little girl has grown up!” Always makes me cringe…

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I am feeling very good about vacationing with my kids…they pay their own way for the most part!

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Our oldest son is a high school senior and I just stumbled on this post while looking for something else. We live in northern Virginia. Our son’s first choice was Virginia Tech Engineering and he applied ED but was deferred, now accepted to VT but not into engineering so he doesn’t want to go there. He got accepted to two other good Virginia schools but they are smaller and he wants the big division 1 sports. We encouraged him to apply to a few out of state schools with the two farthest ones in Columbus, OH, and Columbia, SC - both about 7 hours drive and easy flights and they are his top two choices right now. Then he popped it on us in January that he wanted to apply to Arizona State. We let him and he was accepted so now he wants to go visit. My husband and I are both reluctant to even go visit there because we don’t want him to love that school instead and be so far away. I saw a comment early on this thread that when your kid goes far away, they will likely stay far away. I do want him to be independent but the thought of only seeing him a few times or even once a year makes me so sad. I appreciate the input though on how I should be “behaving” in order to encourage him to want to come home to see us.

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@LUVSML, distance makes trips home harder. Friends at school may invite your son to do stuff with them. And, weather is seductive – East Coast weather over Christmas vacation is hardly compelling.

Fortunately, I think there are differences between the post-college young adult and an undergraduate. Your son is likely to want to come home and see HS friends as well as you. But, I’d suggest being prepared to visit him as well.

My daughter started school an 8 hour drive away (very inconvenient flying as well). She transferred after 1 semester to a school near us. Our son is now in grad school on the other coast. He comes back 1-2 times per year. This year, he came back when my wife had surgery (and his sister told him he ought to come back) and will come back in the spring to coincide with his 5th college reunion. He has a West Coast GF, loves the weather, and his professional life and network are Bay Area-based. He’s not coming back. So, we try to visit him as well and will schedule trips with him and GF (and our D and her BF) when we can.

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Harsh?! I don’t get it. Cut the cord, folks. Do you still see YOUR parents that often? When you were young did you have a life independent of your parents? Did you ever leave the nest? Obviously you all must have to be able to produce successful college kids.

When it basically takes a day each way- getting to the airport, catching flights, transfers, trip from the airport- trips will far less frequent. Even when it is once a year there is only so much to talk about, places to see of interest. Time can be much better spent with more frequent phone calls, keeping in touch with emails and visually with Skype.

You will never have the same parent-child relationship. Your life should be a whole lot more than being a parent at this stage in life. It takes time but you do change habits. You had a life before kid, there is also one after. You need to think in terms of contacts as a perk, not part of your routine.

Give your kid his space. No obligations, guilt tripping.

Sometimes I wonder how ancestors did it when communication was limited to a letter that took months to reach. Think of immigration in past generations.