Anonymous wrote:I am not an only and I struggled with having roommates. I think colleges should try to accommodate the students and not cram 2-3 adult people in one room (how they do it is another question). Having a right for privacy is a reasonable expectation.

When schools mismanage enrollment and more people accept than they anticipated, they start doubling and tripling (?) a room. It's all business.

Anonymous wrote:Be respectful, if that is not a trait they have now than hopefully their "roommate" teaches it for you.

Yes, really the key to having roommates is to be respectful! You don't have to be best friends, but you need to be nice and courteous. I had to "teach" my freshman roommate, decades ago. Unfortunately, she didn't learn from me being respectful and making simple requests, such as asking: after midnight If I'm sleeping, please don't turn on music or all of the lights in the room or hold long conversations on the phone or long conversations with other people while in the room---do what most people do and go to the lounge or sit in the hall. Also, if you must set your alarm clock starting at 3 am to get up to study, then please actually get up and shut off your alarm, don't just hit snooze continuously every 10 minutes, until your roommate leaves the room at 7:40am to get to their 8am class.

Despite all of that, I still want my kid's to have roommates. For most kids, it's a great way to make friends (even if they aren't your best friend). Unless you are an extrovert, it is much more challenging to live in a single freshman year, especially when on most campuses, most freshman have roommates.

Anonymous wrote:I'm an only child and was SO EXCITED to have a roommate. I was really careful about keeping my mess on my side of the room and being considerate. No problems - still friends with former college roommates.

+1

I’m an only child who liked being an only and was worried about having a roommate. I ended up with someone who was very different from me personality-wise but in a complementary way. It was a good experience and forced me to confront some less-positive things about my personality that were shaped by my being an only child.

And as someone prone to homesickness—in my case an issue connected to my only-child-ness—I think it was very good for me to have someone around all the time so that I couldn’t just hide in my room and be sad. It made adjustment to college life much easier.

I'm an only with an only.

I wasn't psyched about the concept of having a college roommate but I didn't dread it either. Aside from sleepovers, I hadn't attended any sleep away camps and I totally got the concept and wasn't freaked out by it. It's just...how it works.

Your kid probably thinks about it a lot less than you do. In the end I ended up rooming with someone I'd known from middle school who I found out was attending the same college; it was great because we weren't "friends" but we knew the other wasn't crazy, so there was some assurance it wouldn't be a mess. I'd recommend that route for anyone, not just onlies, if it's an option.

My kid is only 13 but going to a college-based summer camp this summer. Part of the reason is that we want them to experience this sort of thing. We have shared a bathroom with them for several years (old house) so they get their fair share of communal living for sure. We also talk about how to be a good roommate (to US, or to each other) in our house, which I'm sure a lot of parents of onlies do...it's just parenting in a different context than parents of multiple kids are used to.

Ask your kid how they feel, advise appropriately (filling out the roommate questionnaire is important, etc..., encourage them to reach out so both roommates don't bring a fridge and no one brings a vacuum, etc...) and model enthusiasm not anxiety. This is basic little kid stuff, but it applies to young adulthood also.

In the end it's far more important a kid knows how to do laundry, make decent food choices, clean up a room, engage in minor conflict resolution, and find campus resources than that they have experience being a roommate.

My freshman year roommate was an absolute nightmare but she was one of four kids. Just clean up after yourself, don't bring strangers into the room at 2 AM and don't steal things.

College is so expensive. At this point I think all kids should have their own rooms. For $50k a year no one needs to deal with roommates.

My only child DD did not have any trouble at all adjusting to a roommate. She went to camp for many summers, and we have joked (but were serious) for years about the importance of not being an only-child nightmare roommate. Fair or not, they tend to have the reputation of being spoiled.

Anonymous wrote:I'm an only child and was SO EXCITED to have a roommate. I was really careful about keeping my mess on my side of the room and being considerate. No problems - still friends with former college roommates.

I was the same. I was excited to have roommates and really enjoyed it! I think it just depends on the person..

Be respectful, if that is not a trait they have now than hopefully their "roommate" teaches it for you.

I am an only child and I had a great 1st roommate. She introduced me to my husband 11 years later.

I moved from a campus double to a sorority house 5-pack, to group houses and apartments. I had multiple roommates at a time until I got married in my mid-30s.

I am not an only and I struggled with having roommates. I think colleges should try to accommodate the students and not cram 2-3 adult people in one room (how they do it is another question). Having a right for privacy is a reasonable expectation.

Anonymous wrote:My freshman roommate was an only child and she was SUCH A BRAT about space. This was one of the things I had in mind when I started sending my son (an only) to sleep away camp.

I think it is important to do camps, activities and such with onlies, as you mentioned, for socialization purposes. To be fair, I likely would have been fine because I'm an extrovert by nature and not "weird" about people being in my space. I welcome it, really.

I roomed with a friend of mine who was an only, but she was quite the opposite of me, and I attribute it to HER upbringing (and personality, which could have been nurture, not nature - who knows?)

I have a 16 year old who didn't get a sibling until she was 8 AND she's a homebody with ADHD. I begged her to go to sleepaway camps and she wasn't interested. Her first time away from home that wasn't going to grandparents' houses was last year. She is probably going to struggle a bit, but it is her personality.

There is is a book call the Naked Roommate or something like that will lots of useful information for kids about to move into dorm life.

My freshman roommate was an only child and she was SUCH A BRAT about space. This was one of the things I had in mind when I started sending my son (an only) to sleep away camp.