<p>We do have the space to leave the kids’ rooms intact, but I would do so even if that wasn’t easily the case. Many freshmen take some time to fully adjust to being away from home. To feel as if there is not a space of your own to return to can be a lot to handle on top of all of that. Even if I eventually really did need the space for other purposes, if it were me, I’d probably go slowly and ease into that as confidence and independence in a new living situation become more obvious.</p>
<p>When S1 left for college last fall he left instructions not to change anything in his room. So I haven’t. S2 has an identical room down the hall so was not interested in moving anyway. In the meantime, the dog has taken over S1’s bed! S1 will be home for about 6 weeks this summer and will have to negotiate with the dog for his space.</p>
<p>S1 and friends have decided to move to an off-campus apartment for next school year. It will be interesting to see how he feels about changing his room at home once he establishes himself in his own new apt. at school. I have a feeling he won’t care very much about the room at home anymore. Even now when he comes home to visit he refers to the return to school as going home. That always puts a lump in my throat.</p>
<p>I guess i don’t understand the need to coddle sooooo much. Changing a room, is not taking away anything from the college student. Do they need to hold onto old trophies, teenage posters, the same books?</p>
<p>If the parents are still there, the door is still open, the love is still there, why the need to keep a room exactly as it was in highschool</p>
<p>Personally, i would hope my children would have outgrown mentally their highschool room </p>
<p>We have 18 years who go to war, move out on their own, get jobs, and yet we have parents who are so worried about the adjustments of some seemingingly capable young adults</p>
<p>We have generations of kids who somehow managed to adjust to college and didn’t seem to have issues if their room was changed</p>
<p>Is it our own fears of them not adjusting well and coming back to changes, or their own fears</p>
<p>We talk about independence, allowing them to choose their own school, their own path in life, yet we are so afraid of not leaving a room intact.</p>
<p>I am not understanding how coming back to a room that has been rearranged, may have some different furniture, have cleaner walls, and less junk would be hard to deal with </p>
<p>I would hope that at a minimum they could handle changes in their home, if we are to hope they can handle college, being away, handling their own problems that come up</p>
<p>Maybe i am crazy, but I think the having a home that is warm and inviting and open is what is important, not if their room was different</p>
<p>Guess I am in the minority here</p>
<p>DD’s room will stay the way it is now, unless she wants to change it. After all, it is her room at her home. Her school room will be her second home, but this will be her home until she is out of school and established in her own place, at which point she will take all of her furniture (if she wants it) and belongings from her room here. When she does visit on weekends or breaks from school, I want her room to be a nice comfortable place to which she can return. Everyone has different ideas and different needs. I don’t think anyone is right or wrong about the issue. I think you just have to do what what works best for your family.</p>
<p>DS’s trophies et al will be back in place when he comes home for Thanksgiving. I like to believe that you can go home again, at least for a few years.</p>
<p>I’m sure my S has “outgrown his high school room mentally” but just has not chosen to find the time to physically clean it out. He has not visited his high sch. even once since he graduated. He’s not clinging to the past. His visits home have been few and those were spent working.
Maybe he’ll get to it in the few weeks that he is at home this summer. It’s not high on his priority list. We don’t need the room so it’s not a big deal.</p>
<p>He is a strong independent young man who will only spend part of his summer with us because the rest will be spent in training with the United States Navy. He has endured incredibly tough military training both mental and physical. He is certainly not “coddled” because his closet hasn’t been cleaned out and the old bedspread still lies on his bed. The dog likes it!</p>
<p>It’s staying EXACTLY the way he left it until HE cleans it up. :)</p>
<p>thats what I feel like dig
unfortunately during all the heavy rains of this past winter the basment flooded and the stuff that had been left on the floor got thrown out
oh well
its one way to get rid of it!( granted she didnt want the stuff that she had left- but it was in the category of too good to throw out, but not good enough to want)</p>
<p>My parents really haven’t changed my room since I left (except to put the guest towels in the bathroom nearby when I come home), but it’s not really my room anyway since all of the stuff that made it my room (posters, knick knacks, etc) are all at school. It’s really just kind of empty. I don’t think I would have a problem if my mom changed it, but really there’s no way to know before it happens. During Christmas vacation, I slept in the guest room frequently anyway because it had a tv (again, mine is at school).</p>
<p>I suspect keeping it the same is more for my mom than it ever was for me. Although it’s still my home, it would still be so without my room. My parents moved right after my older brother graduated from high school and went off to college, and they bought a house with a room for him in addition to the guest room. I suppose it has some practical uses in case we had guests in the summer when he was at home or at Christmas, but does one month or so in the course of four years justify an extra room in the house?</p>
<p>While I personally like the shrine idea VERY much, we first turned his room into my husband’s office, as he retired and took a very part-time job managing a gifted ed program. Now we’ve sold his room as part of the house as we make the transition to being full-time RVers.</p>
<p>Bad, bad self-centered parents!</p>
<p>But then his plans are a lot more exciting than hanging around us in the summer, too.</p>
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<p>This is my real reason for leaving his room as it is!!! If I clean, I’m just going to throw everything out.</p>
<p>D’s room still has six boxes in it that haven’t been unpacked from when we moved in four years ago. It’s still “her” room, replete with all the girly stuff on her dresser, drawers full of leotards, etc. D and TheMom just went through the closet to get rid of some clothes. I suspect this will be “her” room until she has her first permanent living space after college. It’s definitely a sanctuary for when she comes home on breaks. Just asked…yep, she’d be offended if we changed it.</p>
<p>We use it for a guest room for visitors, of course. Even an adult male Ccer has stayed there when passing through.</p>
<p>My mom converted my room into a sewing room. She cleared out before break, but I confronted her after I found fabric and yarn stored in my closet. :mad: </p>
<p>She always said she’d do it, but I didn’t think she meant it! :rolleyes:</p>
<p>When I went to college, my parents moved to a one-bedroom apartment. I got to sleep in the storage space in the basement, which I shared with the cockroaches. Big ones which crunched when I stepped on them when I went to the bathroom during the night. I wore shoes to bed and slept with the lights on.</p>
<p>Needless to say, I didn’t come home much, which my mother actually complained about!</p>
<p>My kids’ rooms are still their rooms. Every so often I threaten to rent them out, but I haven’t yet. We have lots of space, though.</p>
<p>My kids are doing the switcheroo too. The 7th grader has made do with a very small room for the last 6 years, while his graduating senior sister has lived in the lap of luxury in the ‘big room’ with the big window seat. (Actually, both rooms have desks and a Hollywood style bath between them, so other than size they are pretty comparable.) The change is really a necessity; the 7th grader has big stuff…a snare drum, bell set, keyboard and is looking to add a full drum kit. He needs the room and we need him in the back of the house for sanity’s sake.</p>
<p>We will make the change over in the next month, so my senior has the new room to make her own throughout the summer. She is all for it as long as I repaint the little room for her…in red! (I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it…I’m just a earth tone kinda gal.)</p>
<p>PS…EEEEK dmd!!!</p>
<p>Could your daughter settle for red curtains & some other color paint? It’s much easier to change curtains than repaint & a red room sounds SO bright! Son doesn’t want anything “messed” in his room until after he’s gone I believe. In any case, he won’t likely be coming home all that often, no matter what school he attends, since it will be a plane ride or two to get home & LOTS of travel time & $$. When I was away at school, I came home for summers & that was all. We’ll probably pay for him to come home for winter break & summer–not sure about anything beyond that.</p>
<p>P.S. I don’t blame you for not coming home much & don’t think many would if they had to sleep with shoes on & crunch roaches when they walked around “their room.”</p>
<p>DS’s bedroom is “laundry central” when he isn’t here. We fold laundry on his bed, set up the ironing board in the room. It’s nice because if it all doesn’t get put away, no one needs the bed!! OTOH…when he gets home, we just put the laundry in the laundry baskets and put it on the washer…move the ironing board, and voila…it’s his room again just the way he left it. He is a junior and as time has gone on, he himself has “liquidated” much of his stuff. As long as he’s in college, the room is still his when he comes home. We have a guest room already, and plenty of space in the house. When DD leaves for college this coming fall, we’ll leave her room as it is.</p>
<p>HImom - you got my strategy…I’m pushing the ‘red anywhere but the walls’ like mad. </p>
<p>I pitched a ‘Burberry’ theme room…tan walls with red and black accents…she pitched back an hippie ethnic theme…midnight blue walls with red, purple and other jewel tone silks, beads and bamboo,etc… I countered with a red and beige toile room with beige on the walls and red toile accents…she responded that I had old granny taste and ‘mock-fainted’ in exasperation. </p>
<p>(I actually like her idea…but I’m not telling her yet…lol!)</p>
<p>Like dig’s Son’s room, my D’s room will remain just as she leaves it when she goes back to school on monday. I will just check and remove any trash out of the room otherwise, when she gets back in june, it will be just how she left it. </p>
<p>I don’t consider it coddling, and one of the first things she says when she opens the door to her room with the beanie babies, american girl dolls and the whole 9, how good it is to be home. When I dropped her off as a freshmen, I resigned myself to the fact that wherever I am, it will be her home, but she’s never going to “live” here again, just drop in from time to time between other stages in her life.</p>
<p>I remember when when my parents purchased the house we grew up in (a 4 story brownstone with lots of rooms) they said they purchased that house so we would have a constant reminder that no matter what happened in life, if we needed to we would always have a place to come home to. My parents have been gone for over 25 years now and my younger sister lives in the house with my nephews (they each have their own floor)</p>
<p>I don’t need the space however, I would nto even entertain the thought of putting out in to the universe that there is a “spare” room in my house. </p>
<p>I come from a large family and my brothers and sisters feel that because D is away at school it is now a free pass for their kids to visit and spend a few days good ole Aunt Syb. </p>
<p>I have had friends who now feel when they come to NYC that they no longer need to book a hotel, because they will just invite themselves to stay with me (not).</p>
<p>We moved to a smaller home during D1’s sophomore year. Since two of the girls were going to have to share it made sense to be her and the youngest. She has adapted well with only a few complaints in the summer. It really does depend on your family situation – what is possible and what makes sense.</p>