Picking College Via Boyfriend?

paying3tuitions
Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:20:36 +0000

First thing is to come to terms with the fact that if she’s like 99% of CC stories, she WILL become more self-sufficient, in one phase between now and h.s. grad, in another over the summertime, and then again after she moves into the dorm. Unless, of course, you follow this plan:

if she needed something, it wouldn’t be a chore to just run over and help with whatever she needed.



You see she is already showing some independence from you (in a bizzarro form, of course) by questioning which school to go to (the six-hour place with the boyfriend) or making plans to visit from a 3-hour distance.

I think the first order of business is to give her a new message of confidence that she WILL BECOME more self-sufficient in the coming year. In fact if you change your tune on just that item, it’s not impossible she’ll fight you less about the boyfriend/college location item.

If she goes 3 hours away, is there a greyhound bus between the two locations? Although I’m learning that protective parents have bad imagery about riding public buses, in fact they are safer on the highways than cars.

Perhaps you can empower her more to think of herself, without absolutely making a fight over the boyfriend. He might last, or not. But tell her she should be where she has Choices. If you tell her she deserves Choices (not one scenario or another) she might like that better. Picking the best academic situtation for herself still gives her the choice to visit the boyfriend, no matter where he is. Then focus on her own program, talking about her, her, and her.

If you lay out all the options again of where to attend, asking her to imagine herself in 4 years graduating from one of them, which would make her most proud? Where will she have gotten the best courses in her major? Ask her to find it for herself, don’t tell her. Don’t extol or berate one place over another.
Instead, ask her questions so she comes up with answers in her own words.
Then leave it with her for a day. Perhaps a big session where the subject is only her, without discussing the boyfriend, would get her to focus on the long-run.

If the subject of the b.f. comes up, maybe you could lighten it up and say, “You can visit him from all these places==one, three or six hours away, so assume that. Let’s get back to you!”

Also, do you have any contact with the boy’s mom? Maybe if you and she are friends, you could explore if she’d want to encourage her S to not sway her so much. BTW, are they imagining mutual visits or is she just s’posed to drive to him all the time? I wondered about that.

Instead of running down the b.f. for all the places he didn’t get into, you could take a different approach and say, “I hope he does great wherever he goes, but that’s not relevant to your choice at this moment.” That sounds different than saying he’s likely to flunk out and move back home anyway, leaving her solo at the 6 hour school.

I think she needs a huge dose of confidence, to hear a voice in her head that
is all about her, not just him-and-her. Who better to give that than you, her mom? Say all kinds of things about how much she is maturing and growing, with pride not regret. If you say it enough she might begin to believe it and then do it. Then you’ll believe it, too. Sometimes it goes in that sequence.