Letting your daughter live with friends in a large, off-campus house could end in financial and personal heartache, Dr. Wes advises. Consider some alternatives, including just telling her no.

Dear Dr. Wes and Gabe: My daughter is a junior at KU. She has a chance to move into a room in a large house at semester and live with six other girls from her sorority. Her father and I are against this and feel it puts her in an impossible living situation with no financial or social structure. What is your advice? Should we fund this? She read Double Take in middle and high school and might listen to your ideas.

Wes: She isn’t going to want to read Double Take this week because it is my duty to inform her of the worst thing any young adult can face — her parents are right. I’ve worked in this fine college community for 15 years. I’ve seen this arrangement attempted many times and I can count on one hand the number of times it’s turned out well. It doesn’t always crash and burn, but the outcome usually ranges from pretty bad to catastrophic including lost friends, money, possessions, and trust.

Double Take columnists Gabe Magee and Dr. Wes Crenshaw

First off, assuming your daughter needs a cosigner, you’re going to be jointly and severally liable for her portion of the rent and everyone else’s. So, if someone doesn’t pay, you and your credit rating could be on the hook. Even if she doesn’t need a cosigner, how will you refuse her if she ends up shorted by one of the six other young women living there? If her rental history goes south, you’ll be stuck cosigning in the future. Everyone may have the best of intentions, but who can foresee how the fortunes of six college girls and your daughter might play out over seven months living together? There are just too many points of failure.

Unfortunately, your daughter has her heart set on this plan and only when her relationships are in ruin and her finances at risk will she then be proven wrong. Try offering to cover a small private apartment close to this house so she can hang with her sorority sisters and still close the door behind her when she goes. You could also try and get the girls to switch to an apartment complex that specializes in rental by the room, but I doubt you’ll get everyone on board. That’s always the biggest problem in these cases, getting seven young adults to agree on anything.

In the end you may simply have to say that most sacred of all words: No. She’ll hate you for it now, but in six months when that house is in an uproar because someone ate someone’s favorite yogurt or slept with someone’s ex-boyfriend, your daughter will be safely in her own space and far from the drama.

Gabe: From your daughter’s perspective, this seems like a fun idea. She and her sisters will be going out on their own, practicing living in the real world. If anything, this would be a good experience, right? But as Dr. Wes points out, this idea may easily end in disaster.

It’s going to be hard for your daughter to see the bad parts of an idea that she thought up and loves. And who knows? This may end up going well. But then again, it may go very badly for all the reasons Dr. Wes already detailed.

If your daughter was already living in the sorority house on campus, she could continue to live there with the sisters that she wanted to move in with. No, it’s not the same, but it’s certainly more stable than moving in on their own and paying rent together. A close single apartment might also work, but it can’t offer the same camaraderie that moving in together might.

Whatever the solution, it’s important to make sure that her sorority sisters understand why you see this as a bad idea so they can act accordingly. Make it clear to your daughter that there are other ways to bond with her sisters while still retaining financial stability, and support solutions that aren’t this dangerous to her finances. It will go better if you get her sisters’ support or at least take the fall yourself if they aren’t supportive and you and her father have to be the bad guys.

— Wes Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP, is author of “I Always Want to Be Where I’m Not: Successful Living with ADD & ADHD.” Learn about his writing and practice at dr-wes.com. Gabe Magee is a Bishop Seabury Academy senior. Send your confidential 200-word question to ask@dr-wes.com. Double Take opinions and advice are not a substitute for psychological services.