<p>I don’t want to be discouraging, but after our son’s first semester, we all drove down to the school before second semester started to beg for help. If you aren’t going to bring your D home right away, it would be worth a shot. It was a miserable failure for us but that is because everyone we met with was utterly indifferent. It was just bad luck on our part. If you can just find one person who you can truly interest in your daughter’s success, no matter what their job title, it will be worth the trip. </p>
<p>Actually, it may be worth the trip even if you do encounter an indifferent group…it will give you an idea if your D is going to get help or not.</p>
<p>Toledo, have you met with anyone at the Disablities office? Some offices are really invested in the success of their students while others are all about following the letter of the law and no more.</p>
<p>This whole helicopter slur is designed to make parents stop being involved in things they are paying for. You are paying for this education. I wonder who would call that Hellicopterish? My parents certainly would have. ;)</p>
<p>Look, if you think you can “help” then go and help.</p>
<p>Kids who have dyslexia, or whatnot, sometimes need a little extra time and extra support to make it through classes that have less than nothing to do with what they will do when they get a job. HOnestly, my daughter would NEVER be ALLOWED to write things for a living, and yet to graduate college? Write she must.</p>
<p>I got her a tutor.</p>
<p>Go support your daughter, help her to learn how to problem solve these things. Be there with her, show her how it’s done so that she can do it herself. I’m not a fan of doing it for them, but some of the things your daughter needs to learn how to do right now are things most of the kids she is in school with won’t have to learn until they have a job or a child of their own.</p>
<p>IMHO, for the OP to get the grades is “helicopter-ish” already. You are getting privilaged information. I think hoovering over a college to make you adult DD to up her work habit and increase her grade probably is too helicopter-ish. Your DD is an adult, she has to be responsible on her behavior. </p>
<p>Right now, I think OP has two choices:</p>
<ol>
<li>Fully Withdraw and put a stop on bleeding.</li>
<li>Partial Withdraw and try to work out those three to six credits and then put her through some thing else.</li>
</ol>
<p>Since your DD is going to lose the matriculation anyway, is it worthwhile to salvage those 3 to 6 credits? Will she turned around get those A’s for those remaining credits? Will she change her behavior as planned/promised had she stayed? No one can answer other than you and your DD.</p>
<p>People mature at different rates. My daughter was more mature at 14 than my son is at 19. Turning 18 may grant a certain status legally, but that does not mean that 100% of 18 year olds are ready to succeed on their own.</p>
<p>I think it’s only helicopterish if you go in with guns a-blazing and the attitude that your little precious could have done no wrong. If you go in as part of a support system with the kid leading the way, I think it’s called parenting.</p>
<p>(Don’t meet with the professors, though - let her do that one solo while you wait in the cafe!)</p>
<p>Plus, it sounds like you and the kid need to reconnect and remember all the positive stuff about your relationship that has nothing to do with her grades. :)</p>
<p>There seem to be two main schools of thought on this thread - bring her home now or help her work it out for the semester/year. I understand the argument that no solution is good without her buy in - but given her reluctance to face up to the fact that she has a problem in the first place, by telling mom she didn’t know what her grades were, indicates to me that she may not be capable of making the best decision for herself. 20K a semester is expensive maturity training - and may not get you anything more than what would have been achieved for free by working a job at the local mall or burger joint.</p>
<p>I don’t think the decision should be punitive but it should be practical. Unless you have a lot of money and no other use for it, I’d make a practical decision based on return on investment. This semester isn’t a good return on investment for either you or your daughter, you need a better fit. </p>
<p>If you put 40K a year into your daughter’s retirement fund for the next 4 years it wouldn’t matter what her job was - her retirement would be better than most and she could support herself flipping burgers if she wanted. I’m not advocating skipping out on the education, but she isn’t getting your money’s worth where she’s at.</p>
<p>artloversplus - In August I wrote a check for $42,000 and that bought me the right to see my son’s grades. (IMO)</p>
<p>toledo - I hope you can find some time tonight to try and unwind. I kind of like the idea of spending a day or two at your D’s school to offer support/guidance as she navigates through her options.</p>
<p>Re: conversing with the disabilities office…your student will need to give a written consent for you to do so. Even though this youngster had an IEP in high school, colleges are not obligated to provide the same “level” of support in the same way. There are no resource rooms, or special education case managers to remind and assist the students in getting their work done. Students, in most colleges, need to seek out the disabilities office themselves to make arrangements for necessary accommodations and the like. If the student doesn’t do this, it usually won’t be done…different than high school where the teachers are there to make sure it happens.</p>
<p>Many college students are reluctant to work with the disabilities office because they don’t want to feel or be different from their classmates. </p>
<p>If your daughter wants you to go with her to the disabilities office, then that would be terrific…but in the end, when you leave, it will be up to HER to continue to seek their assistance. The teachers are not going to remind her to do so. The reality is the teachers won’t KNOW unless your daughter gives her consent for them to know about her special needs. You, the parent, can’t do this once your child is 18.</p>
<p>Lots of layers to the onion here…I still think this kiddo needs to find success and that is NOT happening at this college. Once she feels successful in some way, she might feel she can build on this success and add to her college course load, or reenroll in this particular school. BUT the success part needs to come first, in my opinion.</p>
<p>This college degree is not a race…it’s a journey…and it may take a little longer with a detour or two along the way.</p>
<p>Lots of good thought here. Both times I sent a boy off to college I wondered what I would do if they failed freshman fall. We didn’t have any friends who had much luck with a second chance semester. I finally came to the conclusion that if I could afford it I’d let them have a full year.</p>
<p>I totally agree with Kajon. College is expensive. Period. It’s a huge outflow of parents’ money and they have the right to expect that kids aren’t flushing money down the toilet. We absolutely made it clear to both boys that we wanted to know what their mid-terms grades were and we made it absolutely clear they needed to maintain the GPA required in their major without having to petition which is a 3.0 in their major classes. We did not set a GPA other than passing for all the other courses. But it would be a cold day in you know where before I’d send one back for sophomore year without a successful freshman year under their belt.</p>
<p>The next one is going off having had an IEP since first grade so it will be more challenging.</p>
<p>OP only you can decide if you’ll give your D a “second chance” at this school next semester. I do agree that it’s time to engage the disabilities office and it’s time to helicopter in and demand that she utilize the writing center (if there is one), find some tutoring or study groups, help her navigate what she can withdraw from and the ramifications and flat out set a bar for the rest of this semester and next and stick to your guns. Good luck and I hope she can turn it around. Freshman midterms can be a wake-up call for some students and hopefully the alarm went off for her. </p>
<p>I’m troubled also by the fact that she “claims” she didn’t know how she was doing…that needs to discussion as most kids have at least an idea if they are passing or not at midterms. My son just got a D on a written paper (not mid-term) and he is POed to put it bluntly and we heard about it. Haven’t heard the outcome as he immediately scheduled a meeting with his prof this week but he’s in “charge” of this. The kids know how they are doing. I’m of the mind if they aren’t talking to you it’s not a good thing.</p>
The OP certainly has a right to know that her investment isn’t being wasted and given that her D wasn’t up front with the grades, it’s a good thing the OP checked. Whether a parent ‘should’ check or not depends on individual circumstances so I don’t think any of us can make a judgment call on this other than to say with hindsight, the OP did the right thing in this particular circumstance to check the grades. It sounds as if the OP had good reasons up front to ‘verify’.</p>
<p>Regarding the helicopterishness (??) of going to the school and meeting with all kinds of people on this - I’m not sure the school staff will even consent to it or if they do, may give somewhat of a brush-off since it’s college and they want to deal with the student - not the parents. I also don’t see the point of it if the problem’s already known - i.e. if the student is purposely blowing off classes and not trying in the least for whatever the reasons may be (partying, socializing, ‘having too much fun’). There’s not much the staff/profs can do if the student won’t show up to class and won’t do the work. There is, however, some practical purpose in the student meeting with various staff which is how best to mitigate the damage she’s already done with withdrawals, whether it’s possible to move some of the grades up, etc.</p>
<p>I’m a student so let’s all that that at leverage.</p>
<p>I think the best bet would be to withdraw from the classes which she is failing. Withdrawing is not the end of the world. I got a lot of advice from the Parents 2014 board where a student was accepted into programs with a W. I took a W this semester in a class where the professors was vague, uninteresting, and that fact that I failed the midterm. My friend also dropped the class too and our advisor was fine with it because we were not planning to be the major of the course we dropped. </p>
<p>For next semester you could have her take the least amount of credits possible and have her prove she can do well and talk to the disabilities office. If she doesn’t want to go to the disabilities office tell her she needs to prove herself through CC or just going without the disabilites. She needs to prove herself that she can be a college student. </p>
<p>Figure out what would happen if she took W’s and whether she could be full time.</p>
<p>You can helicopter around like a traffic cop without “landing” IMO. Some of the coaches in our highschool tell the kids: Family first, school second, sports third. I love that. Well I sent the kids off to college and told them, Classes and school first, learning to live independently second, having fun third.</p>
a. Not all schools will allow this. At my daughter’s school you can only elect for a class to be P/F at the beginning if the semester.
b. If it were allowed currently the class is a F. If it stays that way then …</p>
<p>Your coaches know what they are taking about. My school would say that sports are first, second, third while family is fourth and school is fifth.</p>
<p>Parents of students with disabilities should pay no attention to cries of Helicopter, Helicopter. Your daughter needs you to help her figure out how to succeed. She needs you to help her figure out what kind of support she needs; what kind of external scheduling cues she needs that others do not; and which people at college she can consult with to help her. The goal is to have her succeed on her own, but if she is not currently at that point, it does no one any good to pretend she is.</p>
<p>“Parents of students with disabilities should pay no attention to cries of Helicopter, Helicopter. Your daughter needs you to help her figure out how to succeed. She needs you to help her figure out what kind of support she needs; what kind of external scheduling cues she needs that others do not; and which people at college she can consult with to help her. The goal is to have her succeed on her own, but if she is not currently at that point, it does no one any good to pretend she is.” </p>
<p>Before your D drops courses she should check whether her school permits students carrying a part-time course load to reside in the dorms, as many schools do not.</p>
<p>Frankly, if there had been more helicoptering before deciding to send her then she probably would not have ended up in this situation. Now it’s like trying to put the genie back in the bottle but something still needs to be done to help her. They just need to listen to their gut and not to their daughter who obviously is not mature enough to make these decisions herself.</p>
<p>As a professor at a community college who gets many learning disabled students in my classes, I’ll just add a few comments. I have no special ed training! I have a Master’s degree in my field, but not once did I ever have a course in dealing with students with special needs. I’m sure this is the case for almost all college professors. Students with these issues have an office that they go through, but the ball is in their court to request their accommodations from us: extra time on tests, readers, etc. Few follow through.</p>
<p>There is only so much we can do for these students. It’s college- it’s optional, and it’s challenging. And believe me, it is not the right option for everyone, even community college.</p>