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How do I approach my parents about this?
So when I was applying for colleges in 2016. My mom is easily influenced by what her friends say. Her friends were telling her stuff like don’t let your daughter go to a far away school cause my daughter was lonely and depressed when she went away. Or tell your daughter to live at home it’s cheaper blah blah. So my mom basically controlled the types of schools I could apply to the furthest away I could go was a school 2 hours away. And the rest had to be in the area. So I applied to that 2 hour away school and I got in but I also got into all the schools in my area. The problem is I didn’t get into the program I wanted I got into all my backups and the school that was 2 hours away gave me an alternate offer. I would’ve taken it but my mom said why bother and told me to go to a school nearby (for a backup program that I didn’t even want to do) so that I can go from home. The reason why I’m writing this is because now my sister is going to college and my parents had the nerve to tell her she can live on campus. Mind you the school she’s going to is 30 minutes away by driving and an hour away by train. I don’t think it’s fair because if you’ve seen some of my previous posts my parents basically ruined my college experience from day one by not letting me live on residence and not letting me go to school clubs (since they start at 6, which since school is mostly during winter months it gets dark outside). I’ve been going through loneliness and depression b being at home because since I go to a commuter school (an hour away by bus, 20 mins by car) people just go to school to go to class and then go home, it’s hard to make friends that way and I believe if I lived on residence it would’ve been easier to make friends since I would’ve always been on campus. I expressed my anger to my parents and they said “you can live on campus when you’re doing your masters” as if undergrad and graduate school is the same thing. I haven’t heard of a masters student living in undergrad res, there’s student housing but it’s not the same thing as residence. What do I do? My dad also said that he thinks I’m scared of the real world and I need to grow up but how can I enter the real world when he’s sheltering me? All my parents are doing is enabling my social anxiety and I know if I lived on residence I could’ve conquered my social anxiety because when I went to orientation (I was only allowed to go to 2 out of the 10 orientation days) I went to orientation by myself and faught the anxiety by talking to a bunch of people I didn’t know.
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I answered you in detail on the question about having overprotective parents in which you mentioned college and the same you mentioned here.
You never said then and didn't now whether the parents are paying for all your schooling. If they pay, they usually get their way. So if you don't want to be beholden to them and feel like you have to do exactly as they wish, the answer is doing the harder thing and working your way through school which will take lots longer.
You ask how to approach your parents about something but told a story and didn't make it clear what you want to ask. From the story, I could assume you want to ask about living on campus like your sister. But it doesn't matter what you want to discuss because I am betting you haven't done anything with any of the advice you've gotten.
Here's one odd piece of insight: We grow up seeking approval, affirmation, nurturing and love from our parents. Could it be you fear losing that if you do not do as they ask? If so, you need to let go of your need to please your parents. That is advice straight from a family dynamics workshop.
You have the kind of parents who probably won't listen to only words from their kids, dear. So only taking action will communicate to them. By taking action, you communicate that you are no longer allowing them to exercise control over your life. You can’t change your parents. You can only change how you deal with their controlling parenting style.
It seems your parents are more easily influenced by listening to various suggestions from other adults. So either you grin and bear it and stop complaining or if what I just said angers you enough to do something about it, then DO something. The easiest way, not the best way for you though, is to find a relative your parents are close to, a relative who will side with you and tell them the story and how the parents have been listening to friends to decide what to command their adult children to do. This relative can give their opinion which is your opinion. That would be the easiest but keep in mind this doesn't give you the experience of standing on your own and gaining control of your life. You might get what you want this way but you are setting yourself up for a life long problem of being weak and hiding behind others if you can find someone to be your voice and force the issue, like having a caretaker. Some women choose a husband to control their life instead of their parents which can be much worse.
Not to scare you but I found the following to be true but in my case starting with first husband:
Either way, by not learning now how to take control of your life now, you leave yourself open to attack from not just the parents, but a boyfriend or spouse, boss, co-workers, friends, accquaintences, where you are continually used, abused, given unfair ultimatums, trampled on and taken advantage of. That's not much to look forward to and attending college alone will not help you get past this. All the above treatment I got from my ex husband but to some degrees experienced that in jobs, even from people in my life. Heres an example:
I want you to picture in your mind for a moment you are in a job where your boss asks you to do something against the law or ethically bad and if you don't you'll lose your job, what will you do? If you are strong, you'll quit, eveb as scary as no income is because your morals won't allow you to do something wrong even if the ultimatum is some time without income. Or if weak, you cave in to the fear, allowing the boss to use his ultimatum as leverage to get you to do his will, which is again a way of controlling you. By silently agreeing to his ultimatum you are making a choice, to give control of your life over to someone else. This happens every day to someone in the U.S. Do something wrong and keep the job, or refuse and quit. I am not making it up, I've read peoples stories and some are from people in higher end jobs like doctors. The most horrifying one was a story of a doctor who performed late term abortion. The baby survived even though other pre-mature babies died. It was in a container to collect waste tissues. After time went by and the baby was still alive, he had the baby transfered to neonatal premie care area of the hospital he worked at. He was reprimanded and told the baby was aborted so it should have gone out in the trash. NOw thats a moral choice. Its alive, not dying and deserves a chance to live rather than be thrown out with the trash in a hospital of all places. This was many years ago and things have changed some since then but I remember the doctor said if it happened again, he would do the same. He was threatened with losing his job. So he quit and went to work elsewhere. I may have some details wrong as that story was about 25 years ago or less if I recall but that was the actual story. The doctor made sure that story got out in print.
Only taking control over your life will help. At your age dear, to be fair, I wasn't ready to take full control of my life. It wasn't my parents but the guy I married at age 20. He was controlling and verbally abusive. I didn't grow the balls to take control until almost 30 years into the marriage, despite family encouraging me to leave him from the start. He verbally attacked them too for standing up for me when I couldn't for myself. Actually, talk didn't help. He smirked at me when he saw me packing all my clothes to leave, "Can I help you pack?" he offered. He thought I might go to a friends overnight and return the next day. He had no idea I had finally decided that the alternative of staying with him and dying early from the daily stress and unhappiness, was not a good one. We had a shared bank account. When leaving work to go stay with friends out of state, I made sure the money was given to me in a check and put it into a new bank account I had in my name only at a different bank. He was enraged when the money didn't show up in our account and I'd been gone a few days. By 4th day, in retaliation he called the phone company and told them to shut off my phone which they did. Of course he did that as a last ditch effort to scare me, hoping it might make me feel he still controlled my life and I had no choice. Time went by and he sent many terrible emails which I never responded to but read. I had friends who know him and saw him often enough who told me he was going around telling terrible false stories about me. My thinking, if anything he said was believed by people, then those people didn't really know me as these couple of friends did, and were not really friends.(People who believe only one side of the story as the truth without checking out for themselves what the truth about a person is, are simply weak minded people, easily controlled by others and not worth being in association with. In grade school, I switched schools when the parents bought a house and the first couple of days of school, all the girls approached me to warn me not to associate with Twila, and told all sorts of bad things about her. I had a choice to believe them or check out Twila for myself. I had actually moved in next door to her. I did the latter, and found nothing wrong with Twila except that her and I didn't have much in common to become close friends.)
To relate to yourself, don't be surprised if in anger your parents start telling horrible untruths about you to others when you finally are ready to take control of your life. I don't think you are ready yet. As I said, I wasn't ready at your age. However I did not have someone--like me telling you-- how it wouldn't get better and how things would progress as time went on. If I had, I am pretty sure I would have made the effort a heck of a lot sooner than waiting til I was approaching 50. By the way, it took my ex 7 years to get his head around it and be ready to get a divorce from me. I can't think of anything else I can tell you right now that will make a difference in your life.
As a last note, if the parents aren't fully paying your way through college, then you are not stuck having to worry about them pulling out the funding of your schooling if you choose to go against their wishes. A parent is a parent til the day they die, but their role as raising and teaching you and choosing for you stops when you legally turn an adult which you are now. I have grown children and I don't always like their choices or what they are doing. I find myself having to bite my tongue and not say a word or share my opinion or advice. If they do not ask my advice as another adult who knows them better than anyone else, then I can't as I'd be out of line. I have only asked sometimes, would you like to hear my view of it, or my opinion, or would you like me to share some advice, to which most the time they all say no, then I can not say a thing. Obviously, this all hasn't even entered your parents minds and they have no idea how much damage they are doing by not allowing you to spread your wings and make your own choices. Let me explain why.
In college we can experience and learn three important things: an close community with peers, many opportunities to learn new skills which can be scary and overwhelming at times, and an opportunity to bond with unrelated adults who can give good advice and counsel to help young adults figure out who they want to be, where they want to go, and therefore, how to get there. These can be deans, advisors, health and mental health advisors, learning specialist. you simply have to ask around to discover what panel of what is available, not to make decisions for you but give you enough facts and evidence to make the best decisions for yourself. YOu will mess up and make bad choices at times. Everyone does. But your parents role is not to prevent you from doing that and protect you. They could as parents, like don't play with the outlet, you can get a shock, or don't touch the oven door, its hot. They could steer you though the obstacle course of childhood and do what they could to protect you. When you reached adulthood, the protection they are used to, setting the boundaries, making the rules and making choices for you is no longer a good thing, it is actually counter productive to you learning how to be an adult. The only way you are going to learn now, IS by actually making those mistakes yourself, trying to limit mistakes by using plenty of people as sounding boards to bounce your ideas or situations off of to gain different info or perspectives of looking at something, not to gain a direction or action to take. You can do this with supportive non controlling parents, other adults in your life you trust and of course the many adults whose role is to give guidance at college. Start talking to guidance counselors about your situation. They may have good info to share as well.
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