Since my oldest daughter has been away at college, my water bill has gone down quite markedly, but when she was home this weekend, her shower seemed longer than normal. I went into the bathroom and commented to her how long she had been in there and she said, “Yeah, they’ve gotten longer since I’ve lived away from home.”

How could that have happened when she lives in an apartment with three other girls? Apparently, none of the others shower in the morning like my daughter does. I personally don’t know many other people who don’t shower in the morning. I’ve never been able to get away with showering at night because I’m a hot sleeper. Meaning to say, I snuggle up under my down comforter and sweat the night away.

For years, when she lived at home, I nagged my oldest to shorten her shower time. Her excuse when she was in high school was that her long hair took a lot of time between the washing and conditioning and she couldn’t possibly shorten it. I even bought a timer once so she would be more aware. There was a time in those last few years when I got her down to about 17 minutes.

Now she has short hair, she lives with other people and her showers have increased in length. I asked her what she was doing in there. She said she was ruminating on the world.

Everyone uses their shower time for some sort of mental exercise: at 4:00am my husband uses it to wake up, my youngest uses it at 6 a.m.to help her face the reality that she has to go to school, I use it at 9 or 10 to go over the tasks I have to complete for the rest of the day. So I understand how solving the problems of the world would take exponentially longer than those other tasks.

However, I really thought living with three strangers rather than her family would help my daughter come out of her selfish, teenage ways of using more than her share. Not only has that plot failed miserably, but even her eating habits have become more self-involved.

She’s always been my child who would eat the leftovers. Now that she’s not living at home, in order to make sure food doesn’t get wasted, I only cook two or three times a week. I put a portion in the freezer for my college daughter (if she’s deemed it freezer-worthy) and the three of us who live in the house eat a lot of leftovers during the week either for dinner or lunches.

When my oldest came home Friday night, she immediately hit up the fridge for leftovers as she hadn’t eaten dinner, then again in the morning for breakfast. She poked fun at her sister for reheating only roasted potatoes, but not the pork I served with them, “Way to ruin everyone’s weekend,” she said.

This statement irritated me. Not only are her showers considerably longer than they’ve ever been, but she feels entitled to all the food in the fridge, because all the food that she personally brings into the apartment is hers. The girls don’t have much communal food.

So what it basically comes down to is we parents spend their whole formative years teaching them how to share only to have all those lessons thrown out the window in six short months of living away from home.

I expected her to learn a lot at college, I don’t remember “How Not to Share” being part of the curriculum.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can also read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.” Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.