For those of you who have students heading off to college needing accommodations, is it typically the parent or the child that reaches out to the disabilities office once you’ve finalized your school choice? I’m trying to let go of my high school parent ways, but if it’s not unusual for the parent to start the process, I will certainly do that. My daughter is very good at advocating and working with her teachers in high school but the parent is typically the go-between with the administration. Thanks for any input on how you’ve handled for your child.
In general, at college, I would encourage your child to take the lead. I would coach and assist and nudge at first of course. But colleges generally only want to deal with the student. I might suggest asking your child if they would sign a FERPA consent form so that the college can share more info with you. https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/safeschools/modelform.html
I took the lead. I didn’t want any surprises. My son was 17 at time of acceptance.
I wanted to be certain all required items were received and no surprises when he went in for his face to face meeting. Also, initial meeting, I went with him.
My son would not have taken them up on most services, but, at least for first semester, I think we both needed to hear what was available and be certain we had written confirmation they had all items.
Helicopter parent? I didn’t care. Please realize, most schools are filled with student workers.
After confirming in Spring all items were there, we hit campus in August and we were told of all the missing things. I had notes and copies of emails. They had it, but things weren’t input to their new system.
Some things are too important to let an overwhelmed hs senior try to handle alone.
Every semester since the first, he had handled himself.
My daughter is in first year in a Canadian university. Before the intake meeting at DSS, I had similar worries about “helicoptering.” But just as it is often helpful to have a knowledgeable support person accompany a patient in a medical setting when a lot of information is flying fast, for us, having a parent involved in the initial DSS meeting has been a practical and time-saving benefit with respect to accessing DSS services.
My daughter has a physical disability. She made the initial appointment to meet a staff person from the disability services office, but she asked me to go along to the intake meeting. We were glad that we were both there, since it was useful to have the perspective of a parent who knew the student’s strengths and challenges very well, while also having had experience as a university student. Along with the staff person, we did end up doing quite a bit of effective brainstorming about specific mobility concerns, so I think that the meeting was much more efficient and productive because we were all there.
The other benefit of having us there together was that I could take notes, freeing my daughter up to concentrate on the content of the discussion.
Throughout first year, my daughter has made all of the contacts by herself with the DSS office. However, we do brainstorm behind the scenes. There have been so many fresh challenges for her, and she does like to have help in talking things through. Because I was also there to receive the basic briefing about potential DSS interventions, it has helped my daughter and I when we have generated possible solutions on our own.
Tailoring accommodations has been a complicated but worthwhile project this year.
I made the contact at all schools my kids were accepted at — they were busy with school. The Disabilities offices at the Us told me what documentation was needed and what their office could provide.
S eliminated one school because they said they’d ask him to withdraw (and forfeit his dorm and merit awards) if he missed 2 weeks of class in any quarter, even if it was due to documented medical chronic condition.
All other schools indicated they’d work with S and us.
We also made an appointment to meet the Director if Office of Disabilities when we went with our kids to move them into their U. All 4 of us went to the meeting, me, H, D and S. Thereafter, we passed the baton to the kids and they handled things thereafter.
I think it depends on the child and the disability. My son’s mental illness was serious enough that I took the lead. But he was responsible for talking to each professor at the beginning of the semester.
Even with all the help, he had to drop out eventually. But we felt that the Office of Disabilities did everything they could to help. We were refunded all of his tuition, too, even though he dropped out late in the semester. Everyone was so kind.
It’s all about the students at this point. Lots of the materials you need to fill out are online. You fill out pages and pages of stuff and get it signed by your student’s doctor and submit. They don’t want to talk to parents anyway. Good Luck!
I took the lead, but my son and I were working together on this. Nothing wrong with you being involved. And it’s not true that they don’t want to talk to parents, particularly if your child signs a waiver allowing you to talk with the school, disability office and/or counselor. My son did that. He and I didn’t care about sharing his grades, but he certainly has always been fine with me being aware of his medical and mental health issues as well as his learning disability accommodations.
He attended Penn for 10 weeks. When we visited during his gap year and then when we flew to drop him off, we met together with the disability office. It was perfectly acceptable. When he began to struggle, I stayed in communication with as many people as I could. Penn was fantastic in that way. Yes, they expect the student to be proactive; I was 2600 miles away-nothing I could do. But I could definitely stay in communication with them to see if there was anything he could be doing better that I could encourage him in.
Unfortunately, it was too much for him, and he came home. Don’t be intimidated out of being involved and being supportive if you and your child feel it would help her be successful at school. That’s not helicopter parenting; that’s just plain parenting.
My situation is different because dd was 15 and signing up for dual enrollment when I called. I was told to come with my daughter to the initial meeting because I would have to sign off due to her age but also they don’t mind a parent coming to the first meeting for an older child. Once my daughter got the paperwork it was up to her to give them to each professor, have them signed, and returned to the disability office. Basically they could offer dd supports but it is completely on her to utilize them.
I made copies of dd’s 504 and doctor letters and had them with me when we went for early class registration, planning to drop them off at the disabilities office. She was already in the ADA doom so the room didn’t matter. We happened to run into the head of disabilities in the hallway of another building. I handed her the paper work, informed her that the accommodations were of no cost to the university and that she was already in the ADA dorm. The only time I had to contact her was when they were doing rooms for the next year and the gal in housing insisted that she be in another doom farther from the cafeteria and forcing her to cross a busy street for all of her classes. Dd notified me and asked me to handle it since she had enough on her plate with course overload work. I tried with the gal from housing and when the conversation ended, I wanted her head on a platter (turns out I wasn’t the only one and she was gone after the next year). I called the gal at disabilities and explained where they wanted to put her for the next year. She immediately said no and “I’ll take care of it”. She did. Otherwise, I never needed to contact her and all contact was made through dd.
My mother took the lead last year because my accommodations were related to compulsive behavior that is connected to quite a bit of shame for me, and she was worried, correctly, that I would not advocate for myself as strongly as she would. This year, I plan on trying to deal with the accommodations people myself, at least at first. Baby steps.
Thanks all for the feedback. I went online and the school’s disabilities site had some helpful info for parents along w/ an online form for her to complete in order to request the accomodations. Not sure why I didn’t check there first, but it was an easy way to get things started! That’s what she was most anxious about.
As I mentioned everything is online. Once you submit the paperwork, it’s pretty easy. They want their students to succeed. But they do want students to be advocates for themselves and not parents.
The initial conversations included both me and my child but I was the lead. We had our first meetings with the DSOs after admission and BEFORE acceptance. I sent them all testing documents in advance of the call and explained the requested accommodations. With all of the data and a clear request, we could get commitment to actions that they would take as a condition of acceptance. At one of my son’s two top choices, this was eye-opening as one of the two schools was very waffly and had to be forced to make choices rather than give vague words (we’ll give your son the support we feel he needs and we’ll decide in the fall). They insist on asking for raw test results (which our neuropsychologist said were completely unnecessary) but ultimately decided positively. The other school was great. With my D, using the acceptance deadline was also very helpful (she can’t attend unless she knows what accommodations she is going to be granted). If I recall correctly, this conversation was either via email or over the phone whereas for my son, they were while he was visiting his top three schools post-acceptance. [He had refused to visit schools with 10% probability of admission and only wanted to visit upon acceptance. These schools were also 1.5-3 hours drive. She and I had extended visits before applying and her first choice school was 8 hours away].
After the first meeting, subsequent communications were from our child, though I sometimes coached in the background.
Loved your typos…doom/ dorm!
I helped my kid by looking at the website to see who she needed to talk to and what was needed for paperwork, and coached her on emailing to get an appointment. I provided her with copies of all the needed evaluations and reports. I asked how it went afterwards, and reminded her to talk to profs as school required at the start of her first 2 semesters.
Our high school sent all my son’s documentation, a copy of the entire file, directly to the disabilities office for him. He contacted the disabilities office himself when he arrived on campus. But he turned 18 as a senior so I did not need to go to his last couple IEP meetings his senior year in high school so that is when I turned responsibility over to him with full support from the high school toward this step.