Reply to Union Station at 10 PM on a Wednesday?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]He gets off the Acela at New Carrollton, and goes over to the Orange line. Then depending on the time he switches to the Silver at East Falls Church and goes to Reston, or someone comes and gets him at Vienna.  Metro is now staying open until midnight.

How on earth do you people survive in the real world.[/quote]

OP again. I also love the idea of him getting off at BWI. One of us could easily grab him there as well. SO much easier then a late night into the city[/quote]

OP, you seem really scared of DC.

When is your son taking this trip?

I suggest you and he get on the Metro and just take a trip around DC together, up till late in the evening.  Just walk around Union Station at 10 PM yourself with him.  Buy something.  Use the bathroom.  Hang out.  Then take the metro back home.  You are so petrified of what could happen, probably because of lack of experience.  SO just go with him.

I send my 14 year old daughter alone into DC on the metro!  She's a much bigger target than your 20 year old son, no matter how slight he is.  Dress smart, walk assertively, don't look like you have anything valuable to steal.[/quote]
Been to DC many times. Don’t care about daytime much. Reminds me of the guy who told his wife it was just fine to walk home from the bar in Capitol Hill at night, only to end up in a coma with severe brain damage[/quote]

It reminds me of everyone I know who said they’ll be fine taking public transportation and then they were fine.

Yes, sometimes random things happen, but like with your neighbor, they can happen in the safest places too, despite all of your anxious overprotecting. My friend had an aneurysm while feeding her horses and died before she could walk from the stable to her house. Maybe I should hover while my kids care for their pets in case something bad happens.

I’m shocked that your cousin (I think, some relative at least) offered to let your son stay the night. I can’t imagine a day trip to a bookstore being such a big deal that I’d broadcast all the planning to friends and family.

I mean this kindly. I have anxiety. It sucks. I can relate. But treating it helps and can make your life (and your family’s lives) so much better and easier. In the moment, if feels like you’re the normal one and everyone else is too loosey goosey, but you’re really setting your kids up for issues. Anxiety is one of those fun things that’s both nature and nurture, so having an anxious mom means there’s a genetic predisposition and you’re teaching him it’s better to embrace the anxiety instead of living a normal, healthy life. [/quote]

Did you pick up hitchhikers with the kids in the car when they were little? My husband used to use the anxiety line to justify this behavior. Forbidding him to go at all is anxiety. Asking him to use some common sense in traveling is something else again, given how much more crime-ridden DC has become under the guidance of Bowser. Some of our cities leadership is literally letting the inmates run the asylum.[/quote]

So you’re saying your husband has  thought you’ve had anxiety for years but you refused to take his concerns seriously. When the internet strangers you ask for advice (after consulting friends and extended family)  for how you can plan a day trip (for your adult son because you feel like public transit is unsafe) and they pick up on your anxiety vibes, you deflect and dismiss them because they don’t participate in objectively dangerous behavior and pretend that’s clinical anxiety too.

One anxious way of responding to this situation would be to forbid him to go. Funny that you’re not doing that, since he’s an adult and doesn’t need permission. Another anxiety ridden response is to try to control everything, like you’re doing. Did he ask you do plan every little detail? Really ask, like “mom, can you help me with this” or give up and say “fine you plan it” after you dismissed everything he said as naive?

If you’d try public transportation and familiarize yourself with the situations you’re concerned about, you’d probably get over some of your anxiety. It feels foreign to you because it’s new. The labels you’re using (bullet train) and assumptions you’re making (bus is far superior to train) suggest to me that you’re not totally familiar with how it all works, and you’re trying to control something you don’t really know much about. One way to treat anxiety is exposure therapy. When you do something more and you’re familiar with it, it seems less scary. You desensitize yourself to it. That doesn’t mean you abandon common sense and personal safety, it means you don’t call 911 because a homeless person walks toward you. [/quote]

Again, did your husband pick up hitchhikers with your kids in the car? You never answered that. Is it anxiety to express concern over that? I’m sure you believe the answer is no, which is why you avoided the question.

I’m not forbidding him to go, because I believe the trip itself is safe, just like I knew his trip overseas was safe (they were not accompanied by adults). I’m not familiar with how it all works, which is why I asked, and got some very good suggestions about getting off in New Carrollton or even BWI. I’ve definitely been to Union Station many times, but I’m also quite familiar with the fact that the pandemic has changed so much, and that the area around (and inside) the station has deteriorated significantly. I know that a lot of DCers don’t want to admit that but it’s fact, and it’s abandoning common sense and safety NOT to admit that. Unfortunately, political correctness has done a number on our ability to evaluate an unsafe situation - if you read Gavin DeBecker’s “The Gift of Fear”, he explores this topic in depth. We often ignore our inner alarm bells in the interest of not insulting people, or not being judged by others. I’m in favor of teaching kids and young adults NOT to ignore this instinct as it’s saved my own life more than once, according to the officers I reported the incidences to.
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