I, too, would be worried about long-term damage to my relationship with my daughter. You are being unreasonable.
Another thing to think about is that not everyone can automatically be detected as an older undergrad even if they’re much older.
For instance, when I took grad classes at an elite school and acted as a substitute community college lecturer several years after undergrad. most folks thought I was 18 or sometimes even younger even though I was almost thirty at the time.
Even nowadays when I visit friends at nearby campuses like Columbia, I’m still often mistaken for an undergrad or at least someone who is 20-21…and I’m in my late 30s now.
This was underscored at a Columbia U Christmas party I attended where one senior admin was in disbelief that I was actually in my late '30s until I mentioned Leona Helmsley’s quote about “Only the little people pay taxes”. It was only then that she lost her disbelief as she said “There’s no way someone who’s a current undergrad or even a young grad student would have been old enough to have heard/remembered that quote like you did”.
Why do you want to punish her at all? If she was advised badly, that’s not her fault. If she chose the wrong course and needs a couple extra courses to be able to transfer, the natural consequence is that she can’t transfer to that college until she takes them. If she were upset about it you’d be satisfied and not want to punish her further? It might make you feel better to give her a hard time, but I’m not sure you’re teaching her what you think you are. It just sounds spiteful to me.
If it’s a financial issue, just be clear to her what you can afford. If you’re just concerned she’ll be too old to be on campus, I wouldn’t even worry about that. Plenty of students take gap years. Graduating at 23 or even older isn’t unusual.
OP, yes, that is unreasonable. Support your child in an opportunity to attend one of the nation’s top schools. It will benefit her for her entire life. As a parent, I can’t fathom the idea of negatively affecting four or more years of my child’s life, destroying the child’s dream, just to prove a point.
She is grown up. Life will (and did) give her real consequences. Your days of administering punishments should be over.
I am even less convinced now that the OP is serious.
How can I come up with an outlandish post to rile up a lot of parents?
You know what’s sad? My mother is exactly like OP. So, OP, yes you’re being unreasonable and you know it otherwise you wouldn’t be making this thread. All I have to say is that my mother made unreasonable ultimatums like this and I am a sophomore in college and haven’t spoken to her since I left for college (without her help). Is that what you want with you and your daughter?
As I read through this entire thread in one sitting, I feel like I am watching a bunch of sheep go over a cliff, it is so obvious that the original post is a bunch of hooey. Not a thing about this rings true and valid.
On the other hand, if the OP is legit, s/he may have just been scared off by the harsh judgment and lack of empathy from so many commenters.
I never expected to be in a position such as the OP but our oldest is on her 7th year of undergrad at an expensive (top 5 most expensive in many surveys) private university. Blew first semester first year and had to start over. Made her regroup at home and get her head in the right place. She had a DUI within a month.Climbed out a window in the wee hours and snuck off.
Required her to demonstrate she was ready to return to college by taking courses at local CC and passing them. Took 3 semesters before she could go back to university full time-had to get her legs under her at CC and then at her university. Eventually got to taking 4 courses a term-a light but full load but guaranteeing finishing school would be drawn out even more. She never bothered to get credits from her CC courses transferred. Now it has been so many years that her school won’t take them. So who should pay for those do-over credit hours? How would you feel about paying 6 1/2 years of college living expenses instead of 4 or 5 years?
Our second child just tanked a whole 3rd year semester in a major which is way over his head. We have talked w him about changing majors, changing schools, He refuses to consider either even though he recently told us he does not intend to go into his major field after college. Would you pay for your kid to retake courses he/she failed? Would you comfortably pay living expenses for multiple semesters beyond 8? Would you pay for a kid to major in something too hard for him/her who has stated he/she does not intend to pursue a career in that major (most likely because internships have not been attainable because GPA is not high enough). Until you are parenting a child who is on a non standard path, you can’t see things through the OPs eyes. You don’t have the right to judge.’
OP, good luck. Obviously, I don’t have the answers, but I know we don’t always have control.
@grandscheme: That’s not the situation that the OP is in, though.
According to her, her D is acing CC. The D seems full of promise and there is little cost to another year of CC besides living expenses.
You’re in a much tougher situation and one where it would be warranted if you told your kids to come back home and find a school they can commute to or pick up a trade (or they have to find a way to be independent).
OP, I’m so sorry your daughter isn’t 100% perfect. Are you, yourself, the model of perfection?
Teaching kids how to overcome human mistakes that we all make is important. SHE is modeling to YOU how to overcome mistakes: you don’t give up; you try, try again. What YOU are modeling is that, when mistakes are made, we just throw in the towel, give up, and settle for less.
I like her approach much better. Don’t you?
I went to a super small residential college in a large uni. I graduated with about 50 people- most of whom I knew pretty well (including one I married and another who is now my SIL). I couldn’t tell you the ages of any of them really with the exception of one fabulous woman who was in her 50s (and even that is a guess but I know she was old enough to have a child in the military).
If this OP is legit, the problem isn’t with anything the D is doing. The problem is squarely that the OP is an unreasonable individual… and really, I’ll be harsher than that. The OP is (or at least comes off as) an unreasonable control freak.
If OP is real, I wonder if the crux of the matter is that she is jealous of her daughter. She talks about wanting her daughter to realize how spoiled she is, and she doesn’t want her to be rewarded for the fact that she makes good grades easily. She doesn’t want her to have the luxury of forgiveness for a very forgivable error. Maybe she resents the possiblity that her daughter may be able to be admitted to a prestigious program. She always wanted her to go to a CSU, so maybe catching daughter in an error was seen as an opportunity to enforce that. OP, are you unhappy with your own life? Is that why you are seeking to punish your daughter?
Wow, some of these comments are completely over the top. How is attacking the OP as not 100% perfect or deciding she is jealous of her child helpful? She asked if she is being unreasonable, and all have said yes. But have also noted the daughter may not be right about definitely getting into UCB after one more year of CC. The advice to allow the daughter to try her path, with this being the last year of CC is sound advice and I agree there. Attacking the OP is just unnecessary and unfair.
My son will be 23 when he graduates because he repeated a year of preschool due to a disability. His roommate will be 24 (athletics gap year or two).
It’s also possible that the OP thinks of her daughter’s error as a more important matter than it actually is. This is especially likely if the OP herself didn’t go to college or got her degree as a part-time student and is therefore unfamiliar with how full-time college works.
Sometimes, people who are unfamiliar with college think that there will be a lasting stain on a student’s reputation if the student doesn’t finish a degree in exactly four years.
This happened in my family. When my sister was a senior in college, she signed up for a course that turned out to be too difficult for her. She dropped it too late to add another course. This meant that she didn’t graduate in May. Instead, she took one course in the summer session and graduated in August (and she paid for the summer course with her own money).
My father, who had not been to college, was horrified. He thought that this error would follow her around for the rest of her life and hamper her career. But it didn’t. All it did was force her to postpone her after-college plans (which involved moving to another part of the country to join her boyfriend) for three months. Nobody who has hired her for jobs has ever cared. In fact, people who know about it don’t even consider it an error. The fact that she got her degree in August instead of May is a thing of no importance.
Spending more than two years at a CC is also a thing of no importance when it comes to long-term success.
Its water under the bridge now. Either you let her follow her dreams “1 more shot okay love you” or you send them crashing down now?
After reading the initial post of @singlemomof1 again this is the impression I’m getting:
- She told her daughter that she could pay for 4 years of school.
- When her daughter started cc she told her she could pursue Berkeley but only if she did 2 years at cc and went directly to Berkeley.
- She doesn't understand that advising isn't always good and that sometimes rules change midstream. The classes her daughter's missing may not be her fault.
- When OP told her daughter she wanted her to go to a CSU, the daughter "hit the ceiling." That seems to be what triggered the argument.
- OP seems to think that attending a CSU instead of Berkeley will make her daughter more responsible.
I’m wondering if money isn’t at the root of this issue. The mom doesn’t really seem to want her daughter to work at a fast food restaurant forever. She wouldn’t have saved for 4 years of college if that were the case. If she can’t afford a 5th year of college, a reasonable alternative is to let the daughter get a job and pay for the extra year at the cc. Then she’ll still have her daughter’s college fund and can use it wherever her daughter gets into school.
By the way, I think the OP is real.
Some people set very strict rules for their college students and feel that they would be harming the student’s development if they allow the student to deviate from them. I think the OP may be one of these people.
My husband is this sort of person, too. He set the strict rule that our kids couldn’t come home after college. But one kid lined up a job in a nearby city that didn’t start until six weeks after graduation. She wanted to live with us until the lease started on her new apartment and she had a chance to have a bed and a few other essentials delivered to the apartment. My husband objected strenuously – but he eventually gave in because he realized that requiring her to pay for a summer sublet somewhere instead of living at home for a month for free was absurd.
I hope the OP realizes that what she’s trying to force on her daughter is equally absurd.
But it’s also possible all this grew from some history of frustration with the D’s attitude, maturity or record of following through properly (regardless of grades.) I went through frustrations with D2. There can be times when a parent legitimately says, No Mas.
(Up until the comments about a 23 year old being too old, that is. Those were just odd.)
@austinmshauri: Big difference in cost between a CC while living at home and a year at a 4-year away.
A year in college isn’t always the same thing.