Originally Posted by
datlas
It's tough. She is VERY 18 and does not understand that good opportunities for her are everywhere, and the cost>>value for NYU. I even told her that in retrospect, I would have done well to have gone to Rutgers (with most of my classmates) rather than Johns Hopkins for undergrad, and that's when the gap between state and private college costs was not so wide. She does not get it.
That said, she is her mother's daughter (very stubborn and determined) so if I had to make a prediction, I expect she will dig in her heels and we will acquiesce, with certain conditions, to let her go there.
Yeah, it will look like the end of the world to her, poor kid.
One piece of advice from an old negotiator is that if you think you're going to give in anyway, it's worth cutting your losses and truncating the conflict phase. Instead, make your personal displeasure (in first person terms), your reasons, and your conditions for assent, clear at or near the beginning of the discussion. That shifts the moral burden onto her and you'll come out of it with advantages you wouldn't have if she "wins" a protracted fight on what she perceives as the merits of the question.