Sharing our kid over break now that she's in college

March 10, 2020 1:05 PM

I'm looking for advice on how to handle where my kid should live when she returns home from college for the summer.

Her dad and I are divorced and she had alternating weeks at each parents house when she was in high school. It seems weird to continue this with an adult college student.

Did your kid alternate between parents during summer break or did you make a different arrangement?

Winter break was short so it was a week at each house.

Our student is coming home after spring break as school will be closed because of covid-19 so I am scrambling on how to handle this situation sooner than I expected.

posted by vespabelle to Human Relations (15 answers total)

If she's in college, she's probably 18 or over, and so she should decide, unless there's some resource constraint that makes her plan impossible.
posted by praemunire at 1:10 PM on March 10, 2020 [77 favorites]

Additionally consider that future breaks may be filled with internships or travel with friends. There may not be much to decide other than this instance and big holidays. And obviously, at the end of the day it’s your child’s choice.
posted by raccoon409 at 1:17 PM on March 10, 2020 [10 favorites]

My kid decided whom to stay with and for how long when he came home for his first summer break home from college last year. (My ex moved to the nearby city and I'm still in the hometown, so the decision for him was not really about who to live with but about how to be closer to friends, I think.)

I moved out of the middle of his and his dad's relationship and left it up to them to figure out when they'd have time together. This was a little new (emotional labor continues after divorce y'all), but it worked out well.

Finally, raccoon409 is right. You have to increasingly plan for not getting much time at all with the kid. ... :(

(edited for clarity in the first sentence)
posted by correcaminos at 1:24 PM on March 10, 2020 [5 favorites]

It feels weird to alternate weeks because you'd be telling an adult where to live. I know she'll always be your baby but you should start transitioning away from thinking of her as a kid that you need to make arrangements for. What you have now is a young adult who needs help & support in learning how to make these decisions and arrangements for herself.
posted by bleep at 2:56 PM on March 10, 2020 [10 favorites]

It’s been many years now so the norms have probably shifted, but I had lots of friends with divorced parents and the idea that they would have traded weeks during their college breaks seems unfathomable. To the best of my recollection, they either had one home base all summer, or split the summer in half, depending mostly on proximity to summer jobs, friends, and/or the beach.

I’d say she’s 18 now and should get most of the say in where she lives, absent some extremely compelling reason to nudge her strongly in some particular direction.
posted by Stacey at 3:01 PM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

Mod note: Couple deleted; folks, gently, please take it that OP knows to talk to their own kid. If your family has handled this situation, OP wants to hear about different ways to handle it.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 3:03 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

20+ years ago, I was your kid, right down to the custody situation prior to going off to school. When I came home for longer periods, and when I freeloaded for an extended period of time after graduation, I defaulted to staying at my mom's house, but would frequently spend the night or something at my dad's every once in a while until I moved out to live with friends as roommates a couple years after I graduated. If your kid is anything like me, they will be very cognizant of trying to equalize their time spent between places so that they're getting a chance to hang out with everyone and vice-versa, but my situation is almost certainly not the same as yours in many respects due to any number of variables - distance between parents' residences, ease of access to transportation to work (once I started), how well each parent can accommodate someone staying with them, what the family situation is at each house (i.e. whether you or your ex have remarried and have other people living in the house along with you/them), and who kind of functioned as the "default" parent when I was a minor (this would have been my mom). My mom lived alone, while my dad had partial custody of my much younger half-brother from another failed relationship, so it was just easier for me to stay with my mom and I'd go over to my dad's for dinner once or twice a week when he had my brother. If either of my parents had a full family setup going on, it might have been very different. Neither of my parents really discussed with each other who I was going to spend time with - I'd just go stay with my mom and I'd go hang out with my dad if he invited me to. Even now, when I visit home after moving thousands of miles away, I do pretty much the same thing.
posted by LionIndex at 3:34 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Hi! I was sorta this kid not too long ago (got kicked out senior year of high school, was taken in by my partner's family, they were divorced so I went back and forth to houses with my partner). We stayed at one parent's house most of the time, but visited the other frequently and spent a couple nights/weekends over there. Deciding which house would be "home base" was a combination of logistics (which had more room) and temperaments (which parent is better at sharing a space with other adults). If those two things had been equal, we probably would've switched up home base every other summer or so, but partner's dad had more room and was more, uh, chill, about his space, so that was always the default.
posted by brook horse at 3:39 PM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

Some of this is, yeah, about logistics and location. After their divorce my parents still lived (and do to this day) in the same town, about two miles apart. During the two college summers I spent at home, I stayed at my mom’s and hung out with my dad once or twice a week. Any suggestion from either parent that they should have a say in where I slept would have been met with great skepticism.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 3:48 PM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

She should be able to choose freely based on her needs and wants and I hope that neither you nor your ex would consider limiting your support, financial or otherwise, as a consequence of her making a choice that one of you is less happy with. I am decades past college, but one of the ways that my parents ensured that I would likely maintain a very close relationship with them was to be very clear that they recognized adult me as an adult. It worked and we're all still very close.
posted by quince at 4:22 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

If she is the last chick out of the nest, she may be waiting to see if you or your ex are going to change your lifestyles drastically -- downsize houses, change careers, get an RV and roam the highways, move out-of-state to be with elderly parents, etc. This uncertainty is a factor in planning where to go when not actively on campus.
You and your ex are not obligated to put off housing decisions until the adult is settled in her own apartment with a job. But sit-down talks about your five-year plans are in order, so that she knows whether to find a roommate or take a summer internship out of state or what.

At the same time, she may have plans (not just daydreams) regarding her non-university time. Saving for plane tickets and lodgings, getting a visa, getting immunizations, getting information about how to declare her earnings on next year's income taxes, etc. If you are still declaring her on your income taxes and covering her insurance costs, this is a good time to go over transitions.
posted by TrishaU at 5:29 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

This was me. My internship commutes dictated where I spent the work weeks (usually mom's, one summer I was in an apartment about 20 miles away). On the weekends I would default to wherever my younger brothers were but I had a lot more flexibility to change plans if a friend was in town or whatever.

I personally really liked having a default schedule that included both parents because it meant my parents knew which weekends were potentially 'theirs' for family time and I never got stuck choosing between like dad grilling and mom going to the movies or whatever.
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 5:41 PM on March 10, 2020

one really nice thing about having two parental households is that whichever of you isn't chosen as her host can be the one to take the initiative in talking to her about guest responsibilities now that she's an adult (probably not paying even a nominal rent yet unless she has an income, but basic helpful things like cooking & cleaning to minimize the burden on the host household. not to assume she wasn't a thoughtful teen already, but she might not be prepared to take a step beyond whatever her normal contribution was as a kid unless it's explained to & discussed with her.)

anyway this division of labor would let you share the parenting duties even if she's only staying with one of you per long break. and that way, the one whose guest she's going to be doesn't have to be the one to deal with arguments or resentments, if there are any. a nice benefit for everyone.
posted by queenofbithynia at 6:50 PM on March 10, 2020

I let my kid decide. He often did actually move back and forth each week; in part out of habit and, I suspect, in part because his father encouraged it. And I think he gets different things out of each space... more room and fewer irritants at my house; more people to talk to at his dad's. He spent a bit more time at mine (and stayed here when I was out of town).
posted by metasarah at 6:03 AM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

I was this kid. My folks divorced when I was six and I bounced back and forth week to week, including summers once I went away to college, until I left home for good at 22. Technically, as a teen I had the ability to choose where I wanted to be. But as a practical matter, I didn't have the fortitude to upset that particular apple cart. So don't be surprised if you put it to your kid and they tell you they'd like to keep going back and forth. It might even be true! Routine can seem really comforting to a young adult, when so many things are changing. Or maybe your kiddo will express a preference to stay with one parent or the other for most or all of their time, at which point, it sounds like you're already prepared to support their choice.
posted by merriment at 12:37 PM on March 12, 2020