Kids going far away

Lafalum84
Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:34:34 +0000

I think it’s hard no matter how far your kid goes, once they’re no longer living at home full time. But beyond the heartache for mom and dad, which we can learn to deal with if our child is really happy at their school, comes the practical problems, which are a pain.

My son is 5 hours away (assuming travel/traffic conditions are perfect, which they rarely are, there are several bottlenecks between us and him and it seems we can never get thru all of them unscathed.) He is also not really near a large airport, which makes flying a lot less convenient. OP, your dd will be at a large school in Dallas, so I assume they have frequent shuttles, etc, to DFW, which will help you out.

Many of my son’s hs friends are now 1 - 2 hours away, and holidays etc are not an issue at all for them. Whereas for us… ugh. We have relatives who live 3 1/2 hours away, DS’s school is 1 1/2 hours beyond them. DS got a ride home for Spring Break. For the return trip, we drove on Sat to the relative’s house and spent the night. Easter afternoon we left the relatives at 3pm, drove to campus (we wanted to drop him off since we don’t get to campus very often), visited for 1/2 hour, then drove home. Thanks to traffic the 5 hour trip home turned into 7 hours. We got home at midnight, and younger sis had to be at school at 7:30 am the next morning. Ugh.

I do wish he were closer, not only for the travel convenience, but because I’d like to meet his college friends. But he probably appreciates having his life be more separate from his parents, as it’s his first real taste of independence. And he loves his school, it’s an excellent fit for him and he’s doing well, so we’ll just have to deal with the inconveniences.