I have a college freshman in Chicago this year. SO MUCH TO DO. I love it so much. I think I've visited like 6-7 times in the past 18 months or so. Art museum, field museum, planeterium, aquarium If I were picking one thing to do with a newbie, the boat tour done by Chicago First Lady and the Chicago Architecture Center is amazing. Theater district - check what shows are playing. Comedy Clubs - we have been to Second City a couple times, super fun! You can get discount offers on their mailing list (their stuff is generally rate R FYI) Walk millenium park and up Michigan Avenue. Note that the Bean has been closed, it is supposed to open sometime this spring but was closed last week yet so that might be something to check if you eally want the selfie at the bean. You can see it but can't get close. World's largest starbucks is on Michigan Ave. Frank Lloyd Wright tours - in town there is the Rookery and Robie House on UChicago campus. ETA - there are other museums down by the Robie house and UChicago's campus is nice too. We went to the Inst for Study of Ancient Cultures - WOW, amazing hidden gem if you enjoyed early SOTW 🙂 Off beat museums - Chicago History Museum, Jane Addams Hull House Museum on UIC campus, Driehouse museum, Ice Cream museum, Glessner house, I could go on all day lol. I have tagged so many I have visited or want to visit. Navy Pier Lincoln Park Zoo and conservatory on a nice day. Nice views of the city along the water trail from here. If you want the high view - Willis Tower or 360 Chicago. Definitely get tickets ahead. You can get transit apps on your phone. That is super handy and we use that all the time now. Then you can use google transit with maps and easily navigate the trains and bus. It is $15 for a 3 day pass. In terms of parking, we have stayed at hotels with reasonable parking. And I'm not sure the OP is asking about that or if it just came up. That takes some hunting. Ohio House Motel is our hidden gem hotel that I saw suggested on this board - walkable to lots of stuff and 2 el lines and parking is cheapish compared to the places doing valet. Not fancy at all and the parking lot is very tight. We prefer to NOT have a car in town. My kid's college campus does have some parking we can get a discount on when we need it for the day. You can park out near O'Hare and take the blue line in for something like $12 a day. There are metra lines that might offer similar options. We have used parking apps at times too. I like to have destinations mapped out and especially overnight parking requires planning. But again, we've done transit as late as 11:30 on the weekend after shows when lots of people out, totally fine for us. We've also used uber/lyft/taxi here and there. When we need to take a car in (like when my kid moved or after the holidays when kid had extra stuff to go back), we go in with the mindset we aren't going to use it to get around.

Well I haven't read all responses and my youngest finished dual enrolling last year and graduated. But both my kids generally had high quality classes and excellent teachers at their community colleges. I will say we are urban, those jobs are very competitive, and some teach the same classes adjunct at much fancier 4 year colleges/universities local. Both were able to transfer a lot of their credits to their chosen 4 year universities. My older kid graduated from a top 15 public U and still says some of his best teachers were at the urban CC. My younger kid had a CC teacher that went way above and beyond for her in a number of ways. They took both online and in person classes at times. I do get the feeling this can vary a lot by location and particular community college. I am sorry you are having a bad experience.

If you are leaning toward #3 and are fine with just forgoing these larger events, that is fine. I also think it is fine to continue as is, not including Sam if you enjoy those get togethers.

I think in the case of a friendly group renting a large house for a vacation desired by all, I think per person is perfectly fair with everyone using a common space and everyone having someplace to sleep. If some singles were having to double up, or someone was on a couch, etc maybe that would change the dynamic. Maybe give couples larger bedrooms/beds. In the case of hotels, if you want your own hotel room, you pay for that room. That also makes sense. Maybe the family matriarch or patriarch quietly covers a young adult or something like that. I could see that happening in our family. My oldest kid lived on a campus that had a lot of private housing options. And there were lots of crazy arrangemetns. An example is where there would be like a 2 bedroom with 2 students in one room and one in the other. How I saw a lot of families handle it was something like $1000 rent a month - 3 students in a 2 bed/1 bath $500 toward common space = $500/3 = $167 per student $500 for bedrooms. 2 bedrooms = $250 per bedroom So lone student with private bedroom would pay $250 + $167 = $417 Each student in the shared bedroom will pay $250/2 + $167 = $292 For a long term arrangement, this seemed pretty fair to me. My college age daughter was looking at a weird arrangement for this next year and if she would have been sharing a room,I would have pushed for an arrangement like this. Mercifully, this weird set up she was looking at fell apart lol. (and to be clear, I wish it were really $1000 for a 2 bed, that is just an example of the breakdown). I could see the breakdown using something like this if budgets were tighter.

A lot of grocery stores will do nice trays and sandwiches and salads for a party of 30. The food truck idea is great if you can get one. It may be easier on a Monday! Your ring security is TOO CUTE! 😍

As someone who has worked with tweens/teens/young adults including neurodiverse ones and as someone who has launched kids to college in recent history, I would just say maturity doesn't happen for a NT kid or close to NT leaning kid one day at 18. Young adults are away from their support systems for the first time, learning to navigate adult relationships, trying to build new friendships, have healthy boundaries. They may have emotional childhood baggage of their own, They may not understand the ins and outs of neurodiversity. In some of these situations, I think the expectations on neurotypical kids/young adults to be perfect with empathy and communications may be too much to expect. Being in the middle of some of these situations, I've found very different stories on each side.

What a sweet baby! Congratulations to all for the new bebe! 😍 We have an 8-9 month old kitten now I found last August. It felt karmic, it was just weeks before my youngest left for college. She is BONKERS! Always finding trouble. Buckle up! 🤣

I think introversion isn't a yes or no. It's a scale. So I happen to fall very close to the middle. When I've done Myer-Briggs, I have popped up both introverted or extrovert, but very close to the middle of the scale. So sure, you can tend extroverted, but be ready to have a break. For me, I know different settings can hit differently. Like I love small groups with good back and forth conversations, but don't love all larger events. Entertaining in your own space is a special kind of tired. I also think, covid kind of shifted me a bit though I really would love more in person interactions than I am getting.

My kid is starting quarter #3 today too. Weirdly, I am driving the 6 hours out to her next weekend alone for an off campus performance thing she wanted helped navigating. I think she would be fine if this happened again, but I am excited to have the excuse to go! She is coming home for summer and should be great! We had a really nice spring break, she enjoyed a lot of personal space and sleeping in like crazy and we did a few fun things. This week she starts the process of picking on campus housing for next year (which was up in the air for her for a bit) so I am crossing all digits that goes smoothly. She is trying to get into a campus apartment.

Can you approach SIL? "Hey Auntie B - would you mind not texting job stuff to X. He's at the age where ..." list minor consequence in the home due to interference. "You know how tweens are! Thanks so much! The bean dip is delicious today, extra bean?" Sending a PARTICULAR job ad to a 12 year old is bonkers to me. This is still the age where kids might be I want to be a fireman, astronaut, doctor, truck driver, etc without ANY realities about what that takes or look like or what your life style looks like. And a single decently paid role, doesn't mean it will exist ready and available in 10 years. And it seems especially odd during a season while they are looking at colleges unless this is her spouse's job or something. This is the age where you educate kids to the best of ability, keep all doors open, don't get too attached to any one version of a kid and let them reinvent themselves over and over and over while presenting a wide variety of opportunities. I have a recent college grad and a college freshman. I'll just say their current paths are drastically different than any perceived middle school path they imagined for themselves. And they may continue to evolve and change. I'll not drone on with my particular story, but in my family I saw some real long term consequences from overinvesting energy in locking in a kid's path FAR too early. Never be more invested than the kid. My larger concern in reading this is your spouse's attitude. I could ignore the above if my kid met a text from an aunt with an eyeroll and my spouse and I were on the same page. Are you saving for college? Sending kids to college these days takes planning and parental support on multiple levels. Middle school was the age where we really started to get a grip on what we could afford and planning accordingly. That doesn't mean a kid might change path or is locked into anything. It just means you are preparing for that next step of higher ed. If that isn't happening, options may be limited when you get there. Maybe there is some tension because you percieve visiting colleges as "fancy". Visiting colleges is a perfectly normal thing to do and doesn't mean you are spending a zillion dollars. Is this niece a junior or senior? We regularly visited colleges when on family road trips during the high school years. We visited everything from community colleges on up. But I think it is weird THIS isn't what she is chatting about with the younger cousins right now unless she has some particular tie to this "job" stuff she is sharing.

Colby has always made me nervous because they are one school that doesn't publish an up to date common data set annually and they look pretty bad in the NYT economic diversity profiles (that is older data, but the fact that they aren't publishing newer data ...) My kid was admitted to Oberlin a few years and we got really mixed reviews on being a music inteested student not in the con. We even got mixed messaging on double degree. Not every faculty member was excited about those students in their studio. No guarenteed studio spot was a deal breaker for us,, especially since that was more expensive for us. We were always lucky enough to have music teachers in our metro that were well qualified to work in a college setting so stepping back from that would have been tough. The musical studies option popped up soon after that, so hopefully maybe there are better options/contingencies for more dedicated music students not doing a full on BM program. Crossing fingers! I really think these music schools would do well to update their models and curriculum to more how modern musicians are working in the world. You have a great set of options, good luck with final visits! Teacher/faculty made a big difference here so hopefully you can connect with teachers everywhere you'd like. And maybe if you don't that can inform as well, it definitely ended up being a turn off on a few schools for us.

Awful and it flashes me back to the major bridge collapse in Minneapolis a number of years ago now that was within a couple miles of us. Hoping the timing keeps the tragedy numbers very tiny. Sending hugs to our Baltimore boardies.

I think it is fine if you can get it done with minimal or no debt. We have worked in STEM with engineer types and have worked with people who retrained and got out of vet work to pay off loans. We live near a well regarded vet school. Many years ago I had a small but well maintained, comfortable home for sale in a nice neighborhood (3 bed/2 bath 1930's vintage) in close range. Someone from the east coast bought it in cash sight unseen for their new vet school young adult student and his girlfriend to live in. I suspect a lot of people chosing vet school have that kind of financial backing and ease. Or live very stressful lives trying to catch up with debt. This is an old article but is specifically about debt wrt going to vet school. The student featured here seems extra bonkers but even with half that debt, yikes. I have young adults so I get you can counsel but they're going to do what they're going to do. I certainly wouldn't be putting my own finances on the line for a high level of debt. But at a minimum I'd want a kid to be going in eyes wide open. https://www.startribune.com/debt-swallows-up-students-at-vet-grad-professional-schools/275017651/

That was actually a pretty prominent item in the news? In general, in the US, if a polical figure disappears for medical reasons there is typically a statement released. And often it is WAY more info than needed in my opinon to shut down discussion. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/why-is-us-defense-secretary-lloyd-austin-hospitalized-again-2024-02-12/ I really borderline care about any of this at all. But it does feel like shaking your fist at the sky to expect people not to wonder about a prominent public figure basically disappearing. A lot of the chatter is from people who actually care and respect the royal family. The need for a modern country to have a government supported royal family in this day and age with "duties" is another matter and the UK could make a change here.,

I agree. I think what is hard in particular about the royal family is they walk this line between public servant and celebrity. I would also note, since Charles released a brief factual statement about his diagnsosis and treatment and an overview of how he would be working for the most part it shut down the wide spread gossip, speculation, and chatter. It would be nice if you could just turn off your notoriety at your convienence, but it's not realistic. Taking control of the narrative early`is generally the best option here. And I totally agree that in general, someone with some fame and backing bringing a diagnosis to the public eye often helps other patients, can raise funds toward research, raises awareness and education, etc etc etc. That said, everyone gets to chose their own way of handling things. But to expect to be a government figure in the public eye almost daily and disappear without anyone wondering or speculating just isn't realistic. It goes without saying that health care professionals leaking information is completely unethical and inappropriate and I hope anyone who did that loses their job.

I spent some time volunteering in a research hospital with a lot of cancer patients. And social workers always encouraged people to use accurate language with children at their level, whether it was a child that was a patient or a parent or grandparent. That doesn't mean deep detail. That means age level overview. Children don't have the stigma associated with the language that adults do. That allows parents to set the tone and narrative. Because people slip. If they don't hear the C word from you, they may accidently hear it from a well meaning neighbor, church goer, schoolmate, grandparent, uncle, doctor, medic during an emergency. Kids aren't dumb. Obviously, families are going to vary on approach. A particularly anxious child may need a different approach than another. But I absolutely think it is healthy that kids are told factual, age appropriate information while given plenty of space to process and trying to hold on to some pieces of normalacy. Withholding from a young adult not living at home is different than withholding long term from a child who sees changes and differences day to day who might not feel they can talk about it. American Cancer Society has good resources on talking about a diagnosis with kids.

I think this is a reach. Most sources (child psychologists, social workers, etc) recommend talking to kids about anything healthwise going on at their level. Back during my childhood when we were told nothing, we ALWAYS knew when stuff was going down with parents and grandparents and just swallowed the stress of it without being able to talk openly about it. It is understandable that it took awhile for surgical recovery and a plan to come to light, them to have time to process and share appropriately with their children and loved ones and get their bearings. It sounds like she has a hopeful diagnosis and I wish them nothing but the best. I'm sure she will have the best of care and follow up, which is more than plenty of us get. .

I always thought the "coma" rumor was odd. It isn't really that weird to be medically sedated and weaned slowly off a vent/meds after a major surgery. I really appreciate they chose to release information in her voice and hope that will shut up most people.

Picked up kiddo in a snowstorm last night! Winter has returned- boo!

My freshman is on the way home for Spring Break today. She just finished up winter quarter. We actually went and visited her last weekend for a really big performance on campus. Ugh, so fabulous and fun! She is having a pretty GREAT freshman year in most regards. She is actually taking a train home for the first time which is pretty exciting lol. It's the most economical and efficient way to get her home so I hope it goes smoothly! Though if we're on the ball with flights, that isn't typically too bad for one. She is having some roommate woes. Less that the roommate is awful and more that she is having some mental health struggles. She had a group she was going to try and find an apartment with and that kind of fell apart. So she will probably be on campus again next year. And as a parent, it's more expensive, but hooray really because she's in a big city and it's one more year not to worry about signing a lease with the right people in the right location, etc. and another year to make good social connections on campus. I think it's normal and even good to have to navigate some less than ideal situations on campus. But other than that one thing, everything has been pretty GREAT. I have seen some parents complaining about advising/registering but again, been fantastic for my kid. She made dean's list first quarter, we'll see what happens this quarter.

Have you sat down and talked to your husband about this? Is his trip necessary? Could you go with him? Do you have another friend or relative you could just stay with or go visit and offer up money for expenses? Have you/your husband called any agencies to discuss your needs? Do you have a church community you can reach out to? Have you worked with a social worker in a hospital setting on services, etc? Have you checked if you qualify for something through your health insurance? Why do you need to do things like sort through large piles of clothing while he is gone as a larger project? I would do that when you get your husband to work with you or one of your adult kids when they have somet time. I would just be focusing through get though that 15 days. That might be things like Social needs/check ins Fall alarm, which would be good to have anyway Uber/Lyft usage Packaged meal purchage/uber eats, etc One thing is if you live near a college, you could try hiring a college student to just live with you for 2 weeks for $$$. You'd want to check references and asking your people locally if they might have ideas. I have a couple friends in college that worked as aides on and off through college part time. That might be an appealing offer for some college students. But if you are struggling, I would expect your husband to be helping you set this up and sourcing ideas and even your adult kids might have ideas. And I'd definitely be checking if you qualify for in home services prior to setting anything up.

I haven’t read the whole thread. But sure totally fine to leave a 7th grader home for a few hours. We certainly did. That said, would I do this regularly or daily while the kid is on an honor system to get school work done? No. I don’t think that is a good idea. If I had to do this daily I might consider an educational change prior to like high school at least and maybe older depending on the kid.

I had to go look up in what context this was said as a spin off. I just think the locker thing is a trend. When I was a student EVERYONE used a locker. We took great pains to decorate and organize them. Some schools aren't using them for safety reasons. And it's not on trend at other schools. Kids are not carrying stacks of books like they are in the dark ages. In no way do I think kids aren't using lockers because no one showed them how to do it. It is not rocket science. Never in the history of the world has information been more easy to access Padlock tutorial 2:08 My mom never taught me how to cook. She gave me free range in her kitchen. She bought me a couple cookbooks. If I didn't clean up good enough, she gave me direction that. I loved learning to cook that way. To this day, I still love playing with new recipes, cuisines, and techniques. I have taken some classes over the year, but more as a social event. I actually think I learn and retain better by at least trying to figure it out. That's not a pride thing at all, I ask for help when I need it. I have taken classes to get a kick start on a new skill even in recent history. I married relatively late for this board. I have 2 STEM degrees. I owned my own home and worked a corporate job for years. I've traveled alone to foreign countries, etc. So I have just learned to be a good independant problem solver and that has served me very well in life. Even through married life and parenting. Another example - I knit and crochet. I was taught the very basics from someone. I figured everything else out - I can pretty much make anything and pattern create at this point. I rarely repeat a pattern or an item because I like to make something new all the time. I think the point about confidence is a good one. Some people are better with this than others. I hope we all have the self confidence to try new things and have grace helping others or asking for help if we need it. In my corner of the world I certainly don't feel "figuring things out" or communication skills is regularly holding people back. My caveat being that I think I definitely feel like I'm still coming back out after covid and re-engaging in the world like I might have before. At our house we got pretty used to just staying in and not engaging with the outside world for a long time.

My kids didn't attend B&M school but they did a lot of structured extra curriculars and in person dual enrollment classes. Seems like everything they did had a don't ask don't tell policy. Phones silent and away and there was no problem. When she did committed music theater with long runs, they had a locker they kept youth phones in during shows. But the stage manager and asst stage manager were always accessible through show times via text.

That is beyond obnoxious. I wouldn't respond. But I'd also hide and potentially just straight up unfriend. I'd encourage my kid to do the same if she uses that brand of social media. 17 year olds date and break up and it's just not that big of a deal even though it can feel dramatic at the time.. That is just way over stepping as a parent of a teen. And to argue with your teen publicly on social media? Yikes. Shouldn't be surprised if that kid decides to put some distance in that relationship at his earliest opportunity.. I'd be quietly celebrating the break up.