<p>Thank you all for the great posts and for the wealth of knowledge I have gained from CC! </p>
<p>I am coming out of hidding to find out what your house rules are when your college son or daughter comes home with their girlfriend or boyfriend for a visit? Do you allow the gf/bf to come home with your child often?</p>
<p>We are encountering this now, I am curious how other CC parents handle this.</p>
<p>Probably the most recent discussion: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/716967-how-handle-visits-boyfriend.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/716967-how-handle-visits-boyfriend.html</a>.</p>
<p>violadad, thank you for your link. It was an excellent thread however, not quite what I was asking about. </p>
<p>I would like to know when your child comes home for a weekend visit or an extended visit from college, and they bring their girlfriend or boyfriend home (who they are dating at that college), do you make it clear what your house rules are? What rules have you established for the visiting boyfriend or girlfriend?</p>
<p>Pulled the wrong link.</p>
<p>Here’s the one I meant to link:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1061366-sons-girlfriend-visiting-he-wants-her-stay-his-room.html?highlight=visits[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1061366-sons-girlfriend-visiting-he-wants-her-stay-his-room.html?highlight=visits</a></p>
<p>My D has been treated as an adult since she left for school.Her first boyfriend came and stayed with us during a week of her sophomore year and her current boyfriend has stayed over as well. We treat her boyfriends as the adult guests they are. She knows our likes and dislikes and understands that we appreciate and expect polite behavior and mutual respect. Other than that, I guess we have never had a series of “house rules”. And yes, they stay in the same room. (if that’s the “house rule” you are looking for!)</p>
<p>My children are now 24 and 25. D just got engaged to her boyfriend.</p>
<p>These have been my house rules for a few years:
Don’t do anything in front of me that will embarrass both of us.
If you’re going to share a bed, wash your own sheets.</p>
<p>Dmd. We need a like button for cc ala facebook!</p>
<p>3charms-
You tell your kid what the rules will be when they bring the bf/gf home for visits.
Your kid will inform their bf/gf the rules about:
Whether it is disrespectful for them to have sex in the house
Usage of drugs/alcohol/ smoking while on the visit
Curfews
Usage of a family car
Expectations for attendance for family dinner/family gatherings
Attend church with the family
Is this what you are talking about?</p>
<p>S brought fiancee home not long ago. I explained how loud sex noises can really be annoying to others in the house. I then added his mom and I would behave the night he was staying over, and asked him to do the same!
He’d never thought of it that way.</p>
<p>We abide by Miss Manners rules on this issue; adults who are not living together get their own bedrooms and a proper host ignores any and all noises in the night. We’ll put our white noise machine on high to ensure that is the case.</p>
<p>D has deemed our approach (and her bf’s parent’s approach) as Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. They are assigned separate rooms (that happen to be next door to each other at the other end of the hall). As long as I (and D2) are none the wiser and there is no mess for me to clean up, they are consenting adults.</p>
<p>Violadad, thank you for a great link. Batllo, yes.</p>
<p>Besides the whole sleeping in separate rooms or not sleeping in separate rooms, do you have other rules for your child’s gf/bf?</p>
<p>Do you allow the girlfriend/boyfriend to come with your child (who is away at college)each time they come home for a visit? Do you treat the gf/bf like any other house guest or like one of your own children? Do you expect them to clean up after themselves? etc…</p>
<p>I’m pretty liberal, but insist they will sleep separately in our home. I still set a curfew (it’s reasonable, but until my kids are fully independent, I still think my common sense trumps theirs.) And, absolutely, yes, I expect all college-age guests to help around the house. They can help clean up after dinner or walk the dog or whatever. We negotiate how many family dinners I expect them at. If there is some activity DH and I feel is important- eg, if we had planned a family museum trip or to visit some cute nearby town- all guests are expected to come along. I draw the line at things like visiting grandma, unless they’re interested. No, I don’t encourage boyfriends to visit each vacation. But, close female friends are always welcome. Why the difference? The nature of my kid’s relationship with the boyfriend, the added personal focus, my belief that relationships often benefit from breathers- and the fact that boyfriends tend to come and go. (I’ll have to think about what we’ll do about fiances.)</p>
<p>While I was in college, I was engaged to my now-husband for three years before we got married.</p>
<p>During those years, our families began to see us as an entity. They expected us to travel together, and we did. Almost without exception, if one of us got together with his/her family, the other one was there, too.</p>
<p>This was a really bad idea. </p>
<p>Out of courtesy, members of my family stopped bringing up topics of conversation that would not be be of interest to my fiance. Whole areas of our family’s life just disappeared. At least, they disappeared when we were around. People still talked about those things when we weren’t there. I would sometimes hear about them much later. For example, I heard from my sister long after the fact that close friends of my mother’s had gotten a divorce and that my grandmother’s brother had died. I would have liked to hear all the details about these two events from my mother, but when I visited her, she never brought up either subject because my fiance was there, and he wouldn’t have been interested in hearing about people he had never met.</p>
<p>The same sort of thing happened when we visited my fiance’s family. They avoided bringing up topics that wouldn’t be of interest to me.</p>
<p>I have not yet been in the position where one of my kids would want to visit frequently with a boyfriend or girlfriend, but if that situation arises, I would encourage the kids to mix it up – to sometimes visit with the partner and sometimes without. I would hope that they would do this with both families. There is something to be lost if they don’t.</p>
<p>“If you’re going to share a bed, wash your own sheets.”</p>
<p>Why didn’t you tell us that years ago? The kids are spoiled…</p>
<p>lookingforward, this is exactly what I wanted to know about how you treat your’s child’s girlfriend/boyfriend.</p>
<p>Marian, thank you for your story. I like the idea of some visits coming home unaccompanied and some with the friends.</p>
<p>I adore D’s bf. She met him at college midway through freshman year (they are juniors now). But I admit to being surprised when he essentially invited himself to visit the first time, summer after freshman year. He lives on the east coast, and we are in the midwest, so he proposed to D that he would fly to visit her for a few days over the summer. And his family bought a ticket for D to visit them for a few days later in the summer. He is super charming, kind, a good house guest, and I really am fine with his visits. Honestly, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to invite him to come probably, so it is good that he initiated it.</p>
<p>D has asked me before he comes each time if it is okay, and at least once I said I really wanted us to have family time because of some other obligations that would take up part of the time she was home, and he didn’t come (over winter break… I also thought the two of them COULD go a whole month without seeing each other, and they survived). D has taken to paying for her own plane tix when she goes to see him (or just setting up her tickets to school for a few days early or late, since he only lives a couple of hours from their college).</p>
<p>D is so reasonable in general that I have not created any special rules for his visit. No curfew needed, they tell me ahead of time if they will be there for meals, they seem to enjoy going out with me and D2 for dinner if we have that planned, etc. They walk the dog together for me (very cute, and I love it as the dog is very high maintenance and no one but me can walk him when D is not home). I don’t give him any extra chores, but if I would normally ask D to do something I still ask, and he helps her.</p>
<p>To our kids’ now and future bfs/gfs: You can stay over after you’re married.</p>
<p>(H and I decided on this policy after an extremely stressful/awkward visit.)</p>