Parents won't let me visit home?

Parents Forum
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<p>So my parents pushed (maybe even shoved) me to go to a school far, far away because of scholarship money on the understanding that because I can fly for free, I could come home pretty easily when I had a long weekend. Well my first three-day weekend, I had only been at school for two weeks, so I asked my parents if they thought I’d be coming home, and they said, no, it’s too soon, and I agreed. Well now I have a three-day weekend coming up in October and so I asked them if they could start figuring out the flight stuff, and my dad tells me, no, I can’t come home till Thanksgiving, maybe Christmas! He says he worried that something will happen to my flight back to campus (delay, not enough standby seats etc.) that will cause me to miss classes. (Though there’s probably about 20 flights a day from my city to Pittsburgh.) He also said it’s just too much trouble for my step-mom to deal with. (Really, it’s too much trouble to go online and book a flight?!) </p>

<p>Anyways, I feel like I’ve been set up. I didn’t think I was never going to get to come home. I mean, I love the school, I’m making lots of friends, but I still can’t help regretting going so far away. So much has happened in the past year that has changed me from the person who can’t wait to move thousands of miles away into a much more family-oriented, home-body kind of person, but what was I going to say? “Sorry, parents, I know I’m supposed to be leaving in 6 months to go claim that scholarship, but I think I’m just gonna stay in town.” But anyways, what can I say to make my dad realize that I can’t make it through most of or an entire semester without visiting home?</p>

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<p>I’m sorry you seem to have been blindsided by this. I do understand about discouraging you from coming home just two weeks in, but a random weekend in October seems unlikely to pose problems on the space available seat front. </p>

<p>With respect to Thanksgiving, is your home in a city served by Southwest? If you could buy a return ticket for Sunday afternoon, that ought to answer your father’s question about you not getting back. While you’re not used to buying tickets, in this case that might be the answer. (If you were able to buy a ticket on Southwest, you could keep the value even if you didn’t need the flight. Alternatively, you might just buy a round-trip ticket on some airline right now for Thanksgiving, and deal with it that way.) </p>

<p>I traveled on passes, and got stuck a few times, but more often than not I made it just fine, so I feel for your situation. Good luck!</p>

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<p>Hi</p>

<p>I am sorry for you, but it could be worse. </p>

<p>Is the problem that your SM gets the free flights through her job? Why does she have to be the one to book tickets. </p>

<p>It sounds like someone doesnt want you to come home. I am very sorry. </p>

<p>If Dad is worried about you missing flight, can you agree to come home for just one- two days and return first thing Sun morning?</p>

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<p>You are lucky to have a wonderful scholarship that even allows you to go home on those 3 day weekend. You probably forgot that because your dad wants to be sure you focus on school. Well, I’m going to agree with your dad. Going home for such a short visit won’t allow you to do much, other than travel to the airport, wait at the airport, fly far, far away, and then figure out how to get home from the airport… only to do that in reverse a few hours later. I think you’ll discover not many kids go home for those short breaks.</p>

<p>I’m guessing the other reason why you feel the need to go home is validation that you’re loved and wanted. That gets to the question you posed, “what can I say to my dad…?” I think you need to be honest. Tell him you miss him. Tell him how you’re changing into someone who has taken a look at your life at home and wants to say, ‘thanks’. You may even come to the realization that you thought going home would be “a breeze” because the flights are paid for, but you know your life right now needs to focus on school. Then, I think, he’ll feel as if you heard him.</p>

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<p>Ask your dad to come visit you for that long weekend instead.</p>

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<p>Why don’t you invite your dad and stepmother to come to Pittsburgh and visit you? It would save you a lot of travel time, and when you finally would get home…well, all of your friends from home are at their colleges anyway!</p>

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<p>It’s no wonder you feel like the victim of a bait and switch.</p>

<p>All the same, I would advise you to give this matter some time. You can’t control how you feel about your situation, of course, but try not to *do *anything that can’t be undone. Don’t have a big confrontation with your family. Don’t nurse a grudge so that you’ll never be able to move past this fall. Don’t go join the French Foreign Legion. (OK, that last one is unlikely, since it would take you even farther from home.)</p>

<p>What nobody has said yet–and I don’t know whether your father and step-mother have said it or not–is that air travel is time-consuming, and getting from Pittsburgh to [Your City], Texas, could eat up most of a day. Remember, you have to get from Pitt to the airport, clear security, fly stand-by, and then get home from the airport in Texas. How many hours out of Day One is that going to take? Day Two, you’re home. Day Three will be mostly consumed with the procedures of day one, in reverse. And you’ll need to be at the airport in [Your City], Texas, in time to take the first flight of the day, in case it has room and no flight later in the day has. You’ll burn as much time traveling as you’ll spend at home. </p>

<p>And are these twenty flights a day non-stops, or at least direct flights? The uncertainties of traveling stand-by are multiplied when you’re connecting. In addition, airlines generally have fewer stand-by seats than they used to. In order to cut costs, airlines have reduced the number of flights they operate daily, even when it means they have to ground some of their fleet. They operate fewer flights, fuller, in order to be profitable (or, in some cases, to operate at less of a loss).</p>

<p>What I’m trying to say, nicely, is that I think your parents are probably right–and that their reasons are pragmatic and not personal. I went a similar distance to college, a hundred years ago. I didn’t go home until winter break. It was a long time. I kind of missed home. But I was OK. You will be, too.</p>

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<p>Sikorsky, his parents are not saying he should not visit. His dad and SM are. That may be a difference and it may not.</p>

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<p>OP, it’s hard to give you good advice because we know so little about the situation–we can’t tell if your dad is a hard-hearted meany or a loving father bird who is gently pushing a reluctant baby bird out of the nest.</p>

<p>What, exactly, would you do on a visit home? Who would you want to see?</p>

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<p>Agreed, kayf. That’s why I referred to her as the OP’s “step-mother” in the text of my reply.</p>

<p>But I have no earthly idea what the OP’s relationship with his or her step-mother is like, and the OP did use the word “parents” in the title of this thread.</p>

<p>It’s possible that that relationship is an issue. But if it is, it’s none of my business. And my answer would be the same whether the parents in question are biological, adoptive, foster, or any other kind.</p>

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<p>OP, are you a freshman or a transfer?</p>

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<p>I go back to this scholarship that allows you to fly home any weekend “that your Dad pushed you to accept”. Right now, it sounds “too easy” to get away for a 3-day weekend, but is that motivated just because of the free flights? What if you could only get free flights on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Would you still want to go home? What if you could get free roundtrip flights only 4x a year, would that change anything?</p>

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<p>I’m not thinking he is getting free flights, but maybe I am wrong. I am thinking he is able to get his Dad to pay for the flights because he got the scholarship and there is possibly more money available then to bring him home. However, maybe there are other financial issues with Dad that have not been disclosed and him having the son stay at school and not coming home is a way to save money until the holidays. Just an opinion, could be totally off-base. Maybe Dad thought he could afford to fly the son home whenever. Or, maybe he just promised that with the thought the son would love being at school so much that he would not want to come home.</p>

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<p>I think the key word here is “step-mom”.</p>

<p>I would say that your new home is your school.</p>

<p>Find a girlfriend, and go to her parents’ house during the breaks.</p>

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<p>OP, have you actually check out the door to door flying time from your dorm to your family’s home? If you’re going from Pittsburgh to Texas, it’ll probably be like ten or twelve hours each way. Most people don’t fly home for the weekend because so much of the weekend is eaten up by travel time.</p>

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<p>That’s exactly the kind of mental adjustment that’s hard to undo, and that I would still advise the OP not to make rashly.</p>

<p>It may come to that. It may already be the case. But we aren’t there and we don’t know. </p>

<p>Certainly, the fact that the OP’s dad has a second wife (or, at least, a wife not the OP’s mother) makes me wonder what’s going on, too. But I think it’s best to assume that the OP’s father will be the OP’s father until one of them dies, and to recognize that the woman in question is the father’s wife. I would not encourage the OP to do something early in freshman year that could put strain on the relationship with the father and step-mother for years.</p>

<p>If estrangement is inevitable–and I hope it is not–then it will come inevitably, and there’s no need to rush into it headlong.</p>

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<p>My kids go to school an hour or two away from our house. But, I encourage them to stay at school for weekends etc… because I want them to get the full college experience, and I think the more time you spend on campus the more engaged you will be in the whole college thing, hopefully leading to more success. Both have had friends that came home every weekend that ended up dropping out. It may not be that they don’t want you, they just might want the best for you.</p>

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<p>The flights are free. My parents don’t have to pay anything, though, if they wanted to they could pay about $60 each way for a confirmed flight, but I wouldn’t really want to ask them to do that for just a three day weekend. And the reason only my step-mom can book them is because I need her employee login to do so (which she obviously isn’t gonna just hand over to me). </p>

<p>My dad isn’t hard-hearted, he’s just… panicky. He’s worried about the flights, and worried about asking my step-mom to do anything. He seriously refuses to ever ask her to lift a finger. Now, I don’t have any grudge against her. If I called her right now, she would book a flight for me in a second, but now I can’t do that without obviously going over my dad’s head. I really have a good relationship with my dad and step-mom (my mom’s a whole other matter, no contact with her). He just doesn’t really understand the visiting home thing. He had nine younger siblings growing up, so when he went to college, his parents had no way to bring him home at all during the year, and he really didn’t want to go back to the crazy environment.</p>

<p>As far as time, I only have one class early Friday morning, so the plan was for me to leave Friday afternoon. The total travel time is about 5-7 hours if you count getting from campus to the airport and a short layover. Yes, the flights aren’t direct, but there’s about 20 flights a day from my town to Atlanta and 10-20 flights from Atlanta to Pittsburgh. We’ve tested it, when we came to visit we only stayed one night, flying in the afternoon and flying out the next afternoon, and we still had time to tour campus, go to several information meetings, and explore the more touristy spots of Pittsburgh. I did something similar for my summer orientation. Getting standby flights is hard on Fridays, so the plan was that I’d go to the airport and try, and if it didn’t work out just go back to campus. But now I’m not even getting the chance to try.</p>

<p>I guess my dad could be worried about me keeping up with school, but still, I feel like they should have at least warned me about this when they decided to pick my college for me. I don’t think they realize what a load off it would be to just come home for a weekend. College is not home, and there’s something so relaxing about just being at home. What if the stress of not knowing when the next time I’m going to be allowed home interferes with my schoolwork? (Ok, that’s a little over-dramatic; it’s obviously not, but I’m just saying…)</p>

<p>(For what it’s worth, I’m a girl and I have a boyfriend already lol).</p>

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<p>Where might your boyfriend be located?</p>

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<p>He’s in a different town from home, before you start getting any ideas. And he’s coming to visit me in a month, so that’s really not the problem here.</p>