Has anyone's kid made their school choice based on the dorm bathroom situation?

Parents Forum
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<p>My daughter was fearful of the communal bathrooms - (will there be privacy, will I have to wait for a shower? walking down the hallway in a robe, etc.etc.) in the end she had no qualms - a shower was usually always available (there were those who always took showers in the morning and those who always who always took at night - naturally just worked out). The kids became very close with the bathroom cleaning lady (D collected to buy her a gift at Christmas). </p>

<p>This year she shares a bathroom with her roommate - and hates how dirty it gets and all the hair on the floor SHE has to take care of!!!</p>

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<p>To be blunt, his issue is with using the toilet when other people are in the room, or could walk into the room.</p>

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<p>^^^^ all the girls and women in my family are like this. I guess we inherited it from my mother. My daughter was uneasy about it when the school year began , but I think it is a non-issue now.
I remember feeling very uncomfortable with a dorm at a college we visited. They had co-ed bathrooms. That really bothered me because it was an older dorm in a predominantly female school..hey have been doing what they can to increase the males, but the bathrooms were NOT private enough for this mother's comfort level</p>

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<p>I'm not sure communal bathrooms with kids you know will register the same as public bathrooms.</p>

<p>Missy: I am not minimizing your son's preferences or needs. I am only saying this because my S would never go to the bathroom in high school, and I mean never. I don't know how he did this.</p>

<p>He didn't have a problem in college.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Missy: I am not minimizing your son's preferences or needs. I am only saying this because my S would never go to the bathroom in high school, and I mean never. I don't know how he did this.</p>

<p>He didn't have a problem in college.

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</p>

<p>Did your son even bring up the issue before he started college? Was he concerned?</p>

<p>The idea of Son in a dorm with a bunch of other guys scares me as it is. A while back, a young woman with OCD posted about how terrible college was for her. Once her roommate found out about the compulsive things she had to do, she teased her with things and made it worse. Tell me that if a floor full of guys finds out that a resident has a problem using the bathroom with others there, there won't be at least one of them who will everything he can to harrass Son in the bathroom, for sport and amusement.</p>

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<p>I know some girls who did not want communal coed bathrooms and it was something that made an impact on where they applied.</p>

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<p>missypie:
Unless your S becomes a recluse he will eventually have to overcome this hurdle someday regardless and maybe college will be the starting point for him. The fact is that he can't expect to live at a college or work at a workplace, travel, and do many other things without having to sometimes use a public restroom. Although he doesn't like this (I'm not sure anyone does), he knows logically that he'll have to do it at some point.</p>

<p>Given that, maybe he can come up with his own mind tricks to help him - like only going when the bathroom's empty and not leaving the stall until there's no one out and about to see him. It's a compromise and he'll probably soon learn that it's not worth the wait - especially when he stops to realize this function is one thing he has in common with pretty much everyone else on Earth - one of life's great equalizers.</p>

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<p>I thought for sure that the communal restrooms would be a big issue for my Aspie S when he went to college. He would not use public restrooms for a long time when he was young and very rarely used them in even high school. However he has never been very vocal about what his issues were. He is not exactly a neat freak but he does wipe the toilet seat and uses seat covers or lays toilet paper on the seat before using the toilet. But he somehow coped once he got to college. (Our annual camping trips where we used communal bathrooms and showers must have payed off...)</p>

<p>Perhaps you can help your S explore ways to cope and adjust/hide his own idiosyncracies? (ie he could try to find times to use restrooms when other people are less likely to be around, or if the problem is that he is self-conscious about people hearing him when using the toilet around others (just a guess?) maybe he could bring a portable radio along and play that to cover up his own presence a little?)</p>

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<p>I think the bathroom situation is a very valid concern for this particular student and many others. Perhaps there are accommodations that can be made by the school, but perhaps not, in which case I can surely see opting not to attend if that will be a problem. </p>

<p>I agree that college kids can be cruel- so anything that points out this issue to others should be avoided. </p>

<p>Just for info- my D shares a communal bath that unfortunately is located three floors down. This is in an old building (1900's construction). She has a 4 person suite with common room for living. Given that she has recently increased her fiber intake as part of healthier eating habits, this creates some interesting situations- like running down the stairs and yelling "gangway"!</p>

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<p>If the school makes accommodations or the kid skips a school and chooses another for this reason, what will happen when they get out in the workplace where they're generally not going to have the accommodations? Or when they're stuck in an airport, or 'gotta go' when they're at a public location like a theater? They're going to have to confront the issue at some point and although they might have been able to figure a way around it while living at home and attending K-12 for a 6-7 hour day, that's not going to work if they're to move on. It seems that the college transition is a good time to confront and work their way through this. </p>

<p>Given that, I have no doubt that plenty of kids have the bathroom facilities as at least a factor in their selection process. Your S has plenty of company in his concerns even if it's not as major of a concern to the others. It's important that your S realize that most others are less than comfortable in this area as well.</p>

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<p>missypie,
Just a thought- has your S tried anti anxiety medication? My son also had a tendancy to get anxious about social interactions, as well as being slightly OC regarding certain cleanliness issues, and recently started some anti-anxiety meds, which seem to have helped lower his general anxiety level considerably.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
A while back, a young woman with OCD posted about how terrible college was for her. Once her roommate found out about the compulsive things she had to do, she teased her with things and made it worse. Tell me that if a floor full of guys finds out that a resident has a problem using the bathroom with others there, there won't be at least one of them who will everything he can to harrass Son in the bathroom, for sport and amusement.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Bathrooms are a really personal thing, and I understand Missypie's concerns. However, I will put this out there. For better or worse, I think girls can be much crueler to each other than boys are. I know we see the stereotypes in the movies about the bully guys, but I really think you are underestimating the young men today in certain respects. Unless he gets on a floor with a bunch of jerks who by merely sharing a space multiple their jerkiness, I think most guys will leave a guy alone who just likes to go the bathroom in peace. However, this is assuming that his auspergers allows him to be reasonably social on that spectrum. </p>

<p>My son (no aspergers or learning issues -- just average joe) is very particular about bathrooms and quite frankly, he seems to also use them as his "free from distractions and disturbances" personal office!!! We tease him that he will be one of those people on "Cribs" who has a celebrity bathroom with a full-on desk that swings out from the wall. In our powder room there is a small table that actually was intended to take up the depth of the room in a decorating sense. In about third grade, what used to be merely reading in the bathroom evolved in getting his Math done using the table that was never intended for any real use. Seriously, I swear he could have written an epic novel in the amount of time he has sat in this "room" of his up till now. But I trust he'll figure it out. </p>

<p>Point is, everyone has something.. whether it's liking your room orderly or chaotic, showers with doors vs. curtains, etc, etc. We can and do adjust. Some just do it better than others. However, I caution anyone with a serious social phobia or other untreated issue to put themselves in a situation that would be beyond their capabilities. Understanding the limitations and rising to meet them is surely optimal, but I do not think a phobia about public bathrooms would or should qualify anyone for special accommodations UNLESS you are willing to pay for that accommodation. In the classroom? yes. Learning labs? yes. Tutors? Support? Yes and Yes. But that's just it. College is about more than just going to class and I think there are two things that are hugely important in this undertaking: 1) the student has enough skills and talents to navigate the system in some independent way and 2) the student needs to be self-sufficient enough to engage in college life.</p>

<p>I have a niece with Aspergers with a touch of OCD as a little icing on the cake of life. It's not easy for her sometimes because she does seem a little quirky to people. But she takes meds for the OCD and she has created some unique ways to compensate for herself. And to me, this alone makes her a hugely successful college student.</p>

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<p>My son doesn't have Asperger's -- although he is the type of kid who used to be able to do things like name the corporate headquarters of the 200 largest companies in the U.S., and still astonishes me sometimes by what he has in his head, like the time before we went to Italy last summer when he drew a map of Italy on a piece of paper and put at least 40 or 50 towns and cities in precisely the right places. But he was very phobic about a lot of things when he was younger. I don't believe he ever used the bathrooms at school, except once or twice in emergencies, for about 6 years, from 3rd through 8th grades. The only explanation he ever gave was that the boys' rooms weren't clean enough. How he ever held it in all day without exploding, I've never been able to figure out. Thank God he got over it. </p>

<p>Of course, this is the same kid who was terrified of down escalators and refused to go on them until he was about 10, and who decided when he was 4 or 5 that there was something frightening in our kitchen and literally did not set foot in it for about three years. (He always refused to say what it was that scared him. I'm sure he heard a noise.)</p>

<p>He's much better, and less phobic, about all that kind of thing now. Still, it was unbelievably important to him to have a single room when he went to college. He's an only child, and the year he went to summer camp and had to be in a bunk, and the several summers he shared a room on college campuses at academic camps, were not happy times for him. To say the least. (I still remember the phone calls.) He's become quite a sociable kid, and has lots of friends now, more and more ever since he started participating in the drama club in 9th grade, but he still has to have alone time. He has to. Even apart from the fact that he sometimes has trouble relating to straight guys, or, more properly, they sometimes have trouble relating to him. And the fact that the University of Chicago is one of the very few places that has enough single rooms that just about any freshman who wants one can get one, was a huge factor in making it his first choice -- right up there with the academics and the kind of students the place attracts. In fact, I'm pretty sure that even if he had gotten into Yale, he would have chosen Chicago, and the opportunity of having his own room would have played a huge part in it. (His worst summer camp experience was at an academic camp on the Yale campus when he was 15 -- he had to share a bedroom in Vanderbilt the size of a closet with a kid literally 3 times his size. After he spent about a week falling apart and practically having a nervous breakdown, the place finally found an empty bedroom he could use, in the same dormitory.) </p>

<p>So he does have a single room at Chicago, and he's thriving. Without one, I am quite sure he wouldn't be nearly as happy. I know when I told some people about this, they gave me the whole spiel about how sharing a room was part of the college experience, blah blah blah. Well, it may be for some, but if it's torture for my son, and he can avoid it, why shouldn't he? It isn't as if he's likely to have to share a bedroom with anyone after college, unless he's romantically involved with them.</p>

<p>Anyway, I understand that what may not seem like a big deal to some, can, in fact, be a very big deal.</p>

<p>Donna</p>

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<p>
[quote]
The only explanation he ever gave was that the boys' rooms weren't clean enough.

[/quote]

This is a good point - I think there's generally a considerable difference in the cleanliness of the bathrooms at college vs. a HS. Also, in HS there are some kids who use a bathroom to get into mischief but I don't think that happens in college very much. It's really a different environment.</p>

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<p>I lived in the freshman dorm all my years at college so I could have the communal bath down the hall. During a summer session, the only dorm available was a suite, where you and your roommate shared a bath with another room of two girls. Well, one of the other girls had GI issues, so you could never get in the bathroom! </p>

<p>The only time I ever had to wait for a toilet in the communal baths was when we had fire drills in the middle of the night and everybody had to go before going back to bed.</p>

<p>As I remember, the communal baths were very clean, and there were plenty of showers and stalls. </p>

<p>I'm sorry to be blunt, but you really do need to think about these things. Especially if you're a girl.</p>

<p>On another note, are there really coed communal bathrooms?! That's just wrong.</p>

<p>Also, another note, when there's a fire alarm, you have to walk up and down the steps because the elevator is out. Makes one have second thoughts about living in that high rise freshman dorm. Here's a tip. Sleep in clothes. Nothing more embarassing than running into a classmate in your PJs during a fire drill.</p>

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<p>missiepie,</p>

<p>my younger sister turned down colleges that had a major that she liked, to go to a college that didn't have a major she liked, just because she loved their dorm's and bathrooms. she wound up hating the kids that go there and moved home, and now is commuting and finishing up a degree in something that she hates.</p>

<p>I'll never understand kids. ;)</p>

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<p>One of the reasons that my daughter chose her college is because of the bathroom situation. She has a chronic medical condition which, when active, causes her to need unrestricted/immediate bathroom access. Her college has either suites (2 double bedrooms that share one bathroom) or apartment style dorms for freshman. She is in a dorm which is apartment style. Her apartment is a 4 bedroom/4 bathroom but most of the apartments on the floor are 4 bed/2 bath (like Mike stated above). Choosing a college for the bathroom situation is not unreasonable for kids with medical or psychological issues.</p>

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<p>I don't have a huge problem with "all-gender" public bathrooms in general (after all, there are individual stalls), but college bathrooms have showers and it seems to me there's too much of a risk of invasions of privacy and other problems. But if they're only for kids who agree to it, I suppose those kids don't mind.</p>

<p>They do keep the bathroom on my son's floor very clean, from what he tells me. I haven't been in it, but there's a pretty much identical one I saw on a women's floor directly above his, and it's quite nice. Old-fashioned stone walls, thick wooden doors, lots of privacy. Very different from his high school.</p>

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<p>I went to college with communal co-ed bathrooms. The showers and toilets were behind doors. I don't care if a guy sees me brushing my teeth.</p>

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<p>I went to college with communal bathrooms with swinging stall doors on the toilets and showers - the type with large gaps around the doors to facilitate the swinging motion.... I would have been creeped out if some of the guys I knew could stand at the right angle and see me on the toilet. I had enough problem with the bathrooms - huge, echo-filled and freezing cold all the time.</p>

<p>Missy, if it's not asking too much, which schools have the problem dorms?</p>