College Daughter going on trip with BF

[Hoosier_Daddy]

While it is true that the parents have no control over the daughter’s actions at this point, I disagree that it is “none of their business.” When one family member rejects the morals with which she was raised, it affects the whole family, as well as friends and others close to the family. The danger is that her actions present a role model to her siblings—a teaching by example that is in opposition to what they have been taught. I do agree that one ought not to drive her away with condemnation. Neither should one provide bad teaching to the siblings by the appearance of condoning immoral action.

I agree to a point, but flat out asking if an adult child, genitals are being aroused by another person’s genitals is too much. Plus, no matter if the parent what as charitable as could be, in this situation, any logical parent would know that of course the person is sexually active, and probably sexually active at a large rate. Any thought to the contrary is “head in the sand syndrome” that many parents fall prey to.

 

[robwar]

Actually, I went back and looked at the ages and there is quite a gap between siblings the next youngest is 12. So absolutely I agree with you and change my mind. If the other sibling was late teens like 17-19 then I might broach the subject not necessarily to pit a sibling against a sibling but rather to counter the bad example that would be fresh in a late teens mind as a graduation/ boyfriend time was coming up. But even a 16 year old will forget the entire circumstance of who stayed where in a few years.
Also, maybe the OP can suggest some religious sites in Europe to see. If not Italy itself there is much to view all over Europe that has such a deep religious past and it can be inspiring. The Uffizi, Rome, Vatican, Notre Dame, etc… Europe is full of the best of man praising God, I wish we could see it more, and I wish they knew what was in their own backyard.

Yes, going to see the rich Christian traditions and sites would be nice but I kinda highly doubt that a cohabiting couple is going to want to see the Pope. But stranger things have happen.

 

[Miss_Felicity]

While it is true that the parents have no control over the daughter’s actions at this point, I disagree that it is “none of their business.” When one family member rejects the morals with which she was raised, it affects the whole family, as well as friends and others close to the family. The danger is that her actions present a role model to her siblings—a teaching by example that is in opposition to what they have been taught. I do agree that one ought not to drive her away with condemnation. Neither should one provide bad teaching to the siblings by the appearance of condoning immoral action.

No adult has a right to know the details of another adults sex life. I’m not condoning the daughters actions but I think it is a GOOD sign that she understands boundaries and has the ability to plainly state them, this may be the quality that turns the relationship with the boyfriend on its ear.

 

[pianistclare]

I suppose whether or not she reverses her thinking about co-habitation will illustrate 2 things:

1. whether or not her religious education of the past had any real impact
   or
2. the tremendous pressure put on young adults in our culture

Everyone reading this thread who has teens should be aware that your kids are already being indoctrinated by popular media, the internet, and television about how they should conduct themselves with regard to sex and what constitutes a good dating relationship and marriage. It’s never too late to reinforce or begin to share what the church teaches. Our society and our souls are in desperate need of truth.

 

[robwar]

I suppose whether or not she reverses her thinking about co-habitation will illustrate 2 things:

1. whether or not her religious education of the past had any real impact
   or
2. the tremendous pressure put on young adults in our culture

Everyone reading this thread who has teens should be aware that your kids are already being indoctrinated by popular media, the internet, and television about how they should conduct themselves with regard to sex and what constitutes a good dating relationship and marriage. It’s never too late to reinforce or begin to share what the church teaches. Our society and our souls are in desperate need of truth.

You preach it!

 

[SyroMalankara]

I think the OP should simply let her daughter do “her thing”, maybe help her with places to visit, ask her to check in whenever possible. Keep the lines of communication open. Chances are these two will break up and she’ll fall back to mom to cry. She’ll need you when that occurs. If they don’t and end up married, everyone wins, except if the kids take that example as one to emulate.

Personally, I’d have a very difficult time doing this, so maybe I’m a bit ‘do as I say, not as I do’, so I’m sorry.

 

[UnCatholicBride]

As a 20-something with perpetual wanderlust, I say let her go. Sure, she is staying with the boyfriend who she is most likely sexually active with… but she’s probably going to travel regardless of whether or not she’s with this guy. So at least you’ll know she has someone who cares for her while she is traveling Europe.

I’ve traveled internationally by myself. I’ve seen some pretty sketchy places. The adolescent brain isn’t fully developed until age 25… so at least she won’t be making bad tourist decisions completely alone.

 

[JimG]

I am so very sorry that you are going through this, clearly you are heartbroken.

The decision before you is one of a household rule that you and your husband will be making for your family. Will you allow your daughter, or any subsequent children to inform you that they are “staying all night” with a boyfriend/girlfriend while they are living under your roof and continue to live with you? Whether one of your children drives across town to sleep over at someone’s house and comes home the next morning, or whether they fly to Europe to do it doesn’t matter really since it’s essentially the same thing. If your daughter goes with your approval then you need to be prepared for younger children to inform you they are going to spend the weekend at their boyfriend/girlfriends house and you can’t object or start changing the rules then it won’t be fair. Don’t be fooled that your children won’t know she shared a room! They are young now, they will figure it out when they are teenagers! After all it is the natural sibling thing to do to make sure things are fair, when your younger ones want to spend the weekend with a boyfriend you will hear all about your daughters trip to Europe I promise you that.

At this time your daughter sees nothing wrong with sex outside of marriage, living together, or taking a vacation and sharing a room. How are you going to feel looking at her vacation pictures when she gets back? Are you going to allow your younger children to look at her vacation pictures? What if she talks about how nice her hotel was? You have even more decisions to make than where she is going to live you need to decide how this trip is going to be presented to your younger ones.

As I said previously, your focus at this time has to be 100% on what is best for your younger children. It is unfair to them to get a watered-down example of the faith because you are fearful of upsetting your oldest child. She cannot hold your family’s faith hostage like that, even though she is not doing it on purpose, you need to hold on to your faith strong! Your love your oldest daughter, however because of her behavior and her telling you that she sees no problem of living together you are operating out of fear that you will drive her into living with her boyfriend. You cannot parent from fear, fear is not from God fear is from satan. You need to parent from a position of strength and Jesus is your strength!

If you decide to let your daughter go I understand why, however you must be prepared to live with the consequences that staying all night is okay when your children are adults living at your home. I am so sorry that you are going through this please be assured of my prayers.

This is very well put and I have to agree. I only wish that the daughter (as well as thousands of other young persons) could view their actions from this point of view. Such a situation makes the parenting of the younger siblings a much greater challenge than it should have been.

 

[insideitall]

yes jim, exactly. my mom had “eldest daughter syndrome” pretty badly and would constantly assume the worst, despite my never having given her any reason to not trust me or my friends, or to suspect anything was going on. drama queen

anyway, I agree with most of the other posts here. as long as the op is doing right by protecting her younger children from actions she doesn’t agree with, and the older daughter is willing to keep her activities on the dl, it looks like she’ll have to deal with her daughter’s choices and let her figure things out on her own.

 

[LongingSoul]

I appreciate your perspective about this vacation.

In my opinion, the geography of where this is happening is completely irrelevant. Whether my adult child is traveling across state lines to stay in some scummy hotel in Idaho for the weekend or whether they are jet-setting to spend a week in London or Rome what is the difference? Geography or the appearance of culture or travel experience does not have an impact on the morality of this situation. As a parent I can say to my child that I do not wish to have an adult child living in my home that spends the weekend living with their significant others, period. That doesn’t mean it is going to be easy though. Just my two cents.

I really can’t see this approach having a positive outcome at all. While it is right and proper that adult children should respect their parents rules while living under their roof, to deny them accommodation solely because of perceived sins that do not affect you in any way feels like inappropriate judgement of them. I just can’t see it having the positive effect on the younger siblings faith that is being striven for because of the overreach of judgement.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

I really can’t see this approach having a positive outcome at all. While it is right and proper that adult children should respect their parents rules while living under their roof, to deny them accommodation solely because of perceived sins that do not affect you in any way feels like inappropriate judgement of them. I just can’t see it having the positive effect on the younger siblings faith that is being striven for because of the overreach of judgement.

I agree completely. And that’s compound by the fact that the daughter has made utility and mortgage payments.

It would have irreparably harmed my relationship with my mom if she had accepted my money for house payments and then threatened to kick me out if I didn’t toe the line of her religion.

If someone is paying for their housing, they are entitled to be treated as an adult.

 

[LongingSoul]

I have been in these shoes and had to politely ask older children to leave my home. I didn’t do it meanly, or judgmentally or harshly but as kindly as possible say simply from one adult to another that this is not a good situation for me and I don’t wish to be living together any longer.

If you are talking about perceived sins being that I didn’t know 100% whether or not my older children were engaging in sex acts you are right since I obviously didn’t have proof nor could I obtain proof. What I did know was that they were leaving, spending the night at a girlfriend/boyfriend’s home and coming back. I told them that I couldn’t have that example living under my roof around my younger children, that’s all. I didn’t want my younger children to see their older sibling leave waving “Goodbye, I’ll see you in the morning!” when they were going off to a boyfriends, or “See you later I am spending the weekend with my girlfriend at a hotel.” Even though they really weren’t making those announcements you can bet my younger children knew or would eventually know where they were. Especially with a vacation to Europe the original poster’s daughter is going to show her siblings photos!

Most of my younger children know 100% that their older siblings were asked to move out and the same will be asked of them. Funny thing now is that my relationship with the children that were asked to move is GREAT. Looking back they respect what my husband and I did, that’s not the same with all families but it is with mine anyway.

My goal was not to judge my adult children, they were adults living how they wanted to live. My goal was to create a home where I could raise my younger children in a Catholic environment where the adults in the home were living out the faith as best as possible. I also told my adult children that while they were living there they were expected to attend Sunday Mass!

While I can’t boss other adults around, I can, and should have a say in what my minor children are exposed to IN THEIR OWN HOME that’s why I had to ask my older children to leave. They did and I don’t regret it for a minute but that’s just me. Hope this makes sense, God bless.

This is where it can get inconsistent though. I can understand requiring the adult children to go to Mass while living under your roof… but that’s different from not allowing them to come home because they don’t regularly attend Sunday Mass. If the children don’t go to Holy Communion then you can be sure they are in a state of mortal sin meaning they should be kicked out so the younger children aren’t being sent mixed signals about your expectations. Otherwise the adult children might go to Holy Communion regardless, not really believing that it matters, which is worse for their own souls in the long run.

My mum faced that dilemma with one of my brothers. She originally had that expectation that he attend Mass when he was in their home but her strong suspicion was that he wasn’t darkening the doorstep of the Church otherwise. He would always rock up to Communion with the rest of us and she couldn’t really make a scene in the middle of Mass. With adult children it gets to be how much control can you really excerpt over them without misrepresenting the importance of freewill to them and the younger children.

 

[KendraDZ1902]

God bless and thank you for sharing. I will give an analogy using an agnostic-vegan parent as my example, simply because for me this is a parenting issue, not an issue of faith or forced faith

If I were an agnostic-vegan parent, and it were important for me that my young child were raised in a home where meat was not ever consumed because I considered the consumption of meat a form of violence; then if I had an adult child living in my home that began to eat meat at home, and kept eating meat at home, I would politely ask them to move out so my younger children were not exposed to that kind of “violence” in their own home.

This is about having the right as a parent over the home life that your child is raised in. Whether it is meat-free, no swearing, organic, no-sleep-overs, Sunday Mass, whatever your values are I am 100% for a parent’s right to decide what their young children are exposed to especially in their own home that is above all sacred space.

From what I understand, the daughter isn’t doing anything wrong at home.
Mom has even said that she is great help with bills and helpful with the little ones, on top of school and internship. I could see kicking out an adult child if they were having sex inside your home and, after talks, has made it clear not to follow house rules.
The trip doesn’t involve family plus the boyfriend. Just daughter and boyfriend. Sure, she will bring back photos, I highly doubt she would show bedroom photos to anyone, especially young children.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

I agree the daughter has been wonderful, that’s not in question, she’s been a great kid. What the original poster has to decide is if she will allow all of her children to have “sleep overs” at boyfriend/girlfriends that’s all. That’s what this is, it’s a sleepover. I don’t care if it’s in Europe or if it’s at his apartment, it’s a sleepover…

Of course her younger children will find out about it, they won’t need to see bedroom photos to figure it out. I’ve got teenagers they would see photos from a vacation and put two and two together. My children always had their radar up because “so-and-so-did-it” are you kidding me? I heard 100’s of times how I “wasn’t fair” believe me the original poster will get grief if she allows this sleepover and then tries to change the rules for the younger ones, that’s all I was trying to warn her about.

Atheist vegan here. An adult child who ate meat outside of the home but conducted their private life privately and away from my other minor children would be a DREAM!

Adult children should be expected to behave like exceedingly polite, accommodating roommates. But they retain their adulthood and their rights to make their own decisions without paternal oversight or blackmail over housing accommodations.

And as for the other children wanting to do it someday, you can simply say “When you are a 21 year old college graduate who helps with the bills, you can share a room/eat meat. But right now you’re 16 and you’ll do what I say”. Children are children and adults are adults. That’s a very important lesson for kids to learn too.

 

[KendraDZ1902]

Atheist vegan here. An adult child who ate meat outside of the home but conducted their private life privately and away from my other minor children would be a DREAM!

Adult children should be expected to behave like exceedingly polite, accommodating roommates. But they retain their adulthood and their rights to make their own decisions without paternal oversight or blackmail over housing accommodations.

And as for the other children wanting to do it someday, you can simply say “When you are a 21 year old college graduate who helps with the bills, you can share a room/eat meat. But right now you’re 16 and you’ll do what I say”. Children are children and adults are adults. That’s a very important lesson for kids to learn too.

I agree with you.

 

[HouseArrest]

She finished the university for her education, but what has been happening these past 4 years with regards to strengthening and understanding her faith? In my opinion, the college atmosphere is enough to make almost any teen turn away.

It is too bad the SEEK15 conference and the Love and Fidelity conference are over! Those would have been perfect opportunities for her to realize that not every twenty something is following the ways of the world with regards to relationships with the opposite sex. They teach students there is a better way to live. There is no way for her to know about this if she doesn’t see it.

I am not sure what other opportunities there are right now, but would she agree to attend such a conference?

P.S. The SEEK15 video talks are on youtube.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

Well, it does seem from the latest posts by the OP that the daughter is most likely already having sex. It doesn’t seem the OP is actually funding this trip in anyway, since if anything, it is the daughter who is helping to support the parents, not the other way around. And it does seem to be unfair in some way for the OP to evict the daughter, not unless she plans on giving the money back.

The issue of when to opt for family harmony, versus taking a moral stand, I think is very difficult in situations like this. Also, if the daughter is 21, she really does not have any obligation to obey her parents in anything. On the other hand, if the OP is very concerned about the negative example for her other children, who are still legally minors that she is responsible for, one could argue that she is justified in placing their welfare above that of the adult daughter.

 

[jacktilde]

It’s just a sign of the times. Who would like to get looked at oddly as a grown woman sleeping in a seperate bedroom…IN EUROPE.

Either way, she can make the right decisions whether you put 3 floors between them or not,

 

[Book_Worm]

What do you hope to accomplish by throwing her out of her home?

Will this threat deter her from taking the trip or changing the room arrangements?

Since you say that she’s always been independent, that doesn’t seem likely although it may tempt her to lie about it.

Will it prevent your younger children from knowing about the details of her trip?

I don’t see how unless you prevent her from seeing her siblings.

How will you explain her move to the younger children?

Explaining your reasons (and if you don’t do this, she might) would ensure that they are aware that they’re sharing a room, which they might very well not otherwise.

Where will she go if you throw her out?

Is there a possibility that she would move in with her BF or his family?

If so, that would also be more obvious than whatever takes place a few thousand miles away.

I fail to see how this move would accomplish any of your objectives. Additionally, it seems decidedly unloving, especially in light of the financial assistance she’s provided to you.

 

[HouseArrest]

What do you hope to accomplish by throwing her out of her home?

Will this threat deter her from taking the trip or changing the room arrangements?

Since you say that she’s always been independent, that doesn’t seem likely although it may tempt her to lie about it.

Will it prevent your younger children from knowing about the details of her trip?

I don’t see how unless you prevent her from seeing her siblings.

How will you explain her move to the younger children?

Explaining your reasons (and if you don’t do this, she might) would ensure that they are aware that they’re sharing a room, which they might very well not otherwise.

Where will she go if you throw her out?

Is there a possibility that she would move in with her BF or his family?

If so, that would also be more obvious than whatever takes place a few thousand miles away.

I fail to see how this move would accomplish any of your objectives. Additionally, it seems decidedly unloving, especially in light of the financial assistance she’s provided to you.

I wouldn’t say anyone who posted here suggested the OP “throw her daughter out of her home.” The OP never suggested it. Another poster stated that in order to live in the family home, the children need to follow the set rules, and if they do not wish to, the adult children understand they are to make alternate living arrangements.

As stated by the poster who suggested it, the intention of having an adult child live elsewhere has nothing to do with hiding his or her activities or attempting to change his or her mind.