Dear Queenie,
Our daughter goes to college in the United States and we pay all her expenses. We were planning a trip to her college town to find her a new apartment, but her boyfriend and his family invited her to go on a cruise with them that same week and she decided to go with them instead.
This seems disrespectful to us as her family, both by her and her boyfriend and his family, and we haven’t talked to her much since she went back to school.
Queenie, how should we handle this?—Angry parents
Dear Parents,
It is not clear from your letter whether you went ahead and found your daughter a new apartment without her, or just left her to live in her old lodgings.
Either way, I think you should let your daughter make her own living arrangements from now on – and start paying for them herself, which probably will mean that she will need to find at least a part-time job in addition to her schooling.
However, if she wants to have an adult’s freedom to make her own decisions, she must also learn to take on adult responsibilities.
