And in the world of Game of Thrones, it’s highly relevant. Of course, so are dragons and frozen zombies.
@Marian Children being born out of wedlock is still highly relevant today. Although the term illegitimate may be less familiar to you, it has the same meaning although culturally may have less stigma associated with it. Nonetheless:
Illegitimacy, in turn, has an enormous negative effect on children’s development and on their behavior as adults. Being born outside of marriage and raised in single parent homes:
Triples the level of behavioral and emotional problems among children;
Nearly triples the level of teen sexual activity;
Doubles the probability a young woman will have children out of wedlock; and,
Doubles the probability a boy will become a threat to society, engage in criminal activity, and wind up in jail.
This lends itself to less than desirable socioeconomic factors with an impact on welfare policy, which affects a community as a whole, whether Game of Thrones or the good ole USA. 
@OldFashioned1
“The daughter just lost a full ride (?) worth $100k to 200k, failed a semester of courses, and is shacking up with a boy – the OP doesn’t know (?). Pregnancy or drugs might very well be next.”
“Failing college + losing scholarship + shacking up is a whole other ball game. Teases out horrible judgement and likely a worthless boyfriend and potential narcotic use.”
Yeah, because every time I do badly in school, the only thing I want to do is have unprotected sex and do heroin. Don’t rush to judgement. This girl is likely going through a lot, and deserves love and compassion, not scorn.
One thing that the OP has learned - never think out loud about personal stuff here.
Her daughter flunked out of school. To follow the advice here, the daughter should be evaluated for sexual assault, have psychological testing, might have ADHD, might have autism, might have a learning disability, might have… I see this mindset every day. The answer lies everywhere but with the individual. I know people are just giving advice, but if you look at the sum of the advice it all points outside the individual’s responsibility. Somehow the daughter had the smarts and common sense to complete her first three semesters of college without a problem before bombing out.
The child had life handed to her on a silver platter. After working hard (apparently) in high school she earned a full scholarship, free healthcare, free counseling, free academic advice, interested/involved parents. Apparently she had the wherewithal in terms of executive functioning to find a boyfriend. She adroitly, consistently, and without fail concealed her progressive academic failure for several months (no ADHD there).
When calculating the losses, don’t forget to add $20,000 in forensic, medical, and psychological workup to the $200,000+ lost scholarship. The new alternative to personal responsibility might be a team of doctors, psychologists, and ADA attorneys as if a scholarship is an entitlement rather than a privilege. I am sure another student would be happy to accept the vacated scholarship.
@Wisdad23, it is possible that some posters out here have seen similar situations where one of those problems WAS behind an academic crash and burn. Sure, the kid could have just partied her way out of school. That is ONE of the possibilities. But there are other possibilities as well. How about if someone rapes you at college – are you going to keep going to classes every day (think about this personally – it happens to men occasionally, not just women)? Or if the parent provided a lot of scaffolding in high school for logistics, and the kid took classes that played to their strength first semester, it COULD be that some kind of learning disability came to light 2nd semester. It could be a combination of things, too. All posters are saying is that the OP should gather facts before jumping to conclusions about the cause. No one is saying that she should be a sucker for an untrue story or alibi – but there are legitimate reasons that SOMETIMES are part of this kind of problem for a student.
It must be grand to be all-knowing and always right. An anonymous poster comes on here and lays out a situation. Nobody here knows her, knows if she’s got the facts straight, knows ANYTHING about her daughter. It’s crowd-sourcing really. Giving her options and things to consider. We don’t all have to agree with each other, obviously, but NOBODY here (aside from the daughter herself) has any idea what’s really going on. So any one person’s “take” on the situation is no more proven than anybody else’s.
How some folks can be so convinced that THEY know better than everyone else is amazing to me.
One semester. Freshman with a load of AP credits.
@intparent like I said, everyone is just giving advice, maybe based on personal experience, I don’t know. But if you sum up the advice it is as I described.
Of course the root cause of the problem could be almost anything in human experience but fishing for zebras instead of dealing with the obvious first is more neurotic than systematic.
One successful semester actually.
Yes, I read that wrong. One semester with no problems and then one semester of bombing out.
But she had the executive function abilities to get a boyfriend, y’all.
…What? Are people with ADHD and the like somehow unable to date?
Edit: I understand the sarcasm now, sorry. Thanks for explaining (#112)
To be clear, I was referring to post 103 which mentioned executive function and having a BF. I thought that was a pretty odd thing to say. I’m not aware that boys in their late teens are particularly looking for executive function in a romantic partner.
Instead of a “Chance Me” with no grades or scores, this has become a “Diagnose Me”, with similar detail.
The OP came out and asked a question – “What do you think is reasonable?” in their first post. The answer is, “it depends”. And the rest of the posts are discussing what it depends on. Which seems reasonable – and maybe helps the OP think about what questions to ask and how to get to the bottom of the cause of the issues.
Please calm down, everyone. Please. :-@
That’s just so individual. I had a boyfriend all through high school and most of college. I made good grades and held a job all through my college years as well. Got my second degree while married with a toddler, then had another baby, all while working. So having a BF may have been a major distraction, or perhaps the only stable thing in her life. We just don’t have enough information to know.
Did you miss the part in the post you quoted where they actually said “some” and not “all”?
The OP’s daughter seems to realize that she is not returning to her college – which is hours away from home. If her boyfriend attends that college, that means that it’s going to become difficult for her to see him much. But the OP hasn’t mentioned her daughter being upset about this.
I wonder whether she had a relationship and it ended near the time of final exams. If she and her boyfriend broke up then, she might have been very distracted – to the point where it had a devastating effect on her grades.
Certainly possible. D2 has a boyfriend, and he is a supportive, caring presence in her life. Her grades improved markedly after they began dating. She was having a lot of drama in her life before he entered the picture, and things really settled down after they started dating. She just graduated Magna cum laude.
DH and I were talking the other day about how D2 and her bf will be in different cities while she attends grad school. Who knows how they will weather the separation, and DH said he hoped she would be able to handle a breakup if it happened, both emotionally and academically. I think breakups can be every bit as distracting, if not more, than happy relationships.
It would seem odd if the DD didn’t mention a break-up, if that was the cause. Seems like an easily believable excuse, “Mom, I was doing very well until Tom and I broke up. After than, I couldn’t concentrate or study.”
Has the mom come back? I think she was venting because she was really depending on that “free ride” to cover college costs. Understandably she is mad and upset, but unless the award can be appealed, it’s now water under the bridge and Plan B needs to happen.