<p>D had a teammate who was very obviously anorexic (meaning not just super skinny and eating like a bird, but with the classic bodily symptoms.) Everyone on the team knew it, and the coaches knew it. But because she did not disclose her condition to them, they all had to pretend there was no problem. Ultimately, the coach instituted a time-consuming battery of tests mandatory for ALL team members that included a BMI test, a bone density test, a nutritional eval, and various medical tests despite them having just been medically cleared a month prior. The idea was not to single her out, but still get her help. I think the girls were OK with that strategy because it meant the girl was immediately hospitalized, but nonetheless they had to be inconvenienced and subjected to lots of unnecessary nonsense. I think her parents were in serious denial. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I wonder if parents just can’t bear the thought of taking the time off during or after high school to help get their kids mentally healthy before they ship them off or if they just don’t want to admit to themselves that they have a troubled kid or if they seriously believe that it’s “normal” behavior. I sometimes think physicians have a difficult time confronting parents about things. I think that is a very smart coach. Disclosing eating disorders are difficult because it doesn’t really impact a roommate all that much (unless you have to listen to someone vomit after every meal - been there done that in college) and I have come to believe that parents “think” the kids will grow out of eating disorders. </p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Agree the coach was very smart!</p>
<p>In my experience working at universities for more than 20 years, some parents with troubled children send them away to school on a wing and a prayer. They have the mistaken idea that the problems will magically clear up once the kid is away from home. They are too embarrassed, or unrealistic, to inform the school of the problem. Most kids will only get worse when they are away from their support system and under stress living at school. It’s unfair to the kid and grossly unfair to the kid’s roommate(s) who are put in the untenable position of dealing with a roommate with a serious problem like anorexia or schizophrenia.</p>
<p>For a kid like the OP describes, who needs to sleep with an overhead light on, or who has a severe peanut allergy or the like, those kids SHOULD be in school BUT they should disclose to the school and get a single room so that they can function and not impinge on a roommate’s right to a normal experience.</p>
<p>I have a friend whose daughter has experienced several severe traumas in her life. She needs her space more than most people do and has crying jags that can last hours. She is in therapy and can generally function well but when she went away to college, my friend explained her daughter’s issues to the college and arranged a single room so that her daughter wouldn’t adversely affect another student’s college experience. (I’m happy to say the daughter, who is now close to 30, is doing much better and is married and expecting her first child!)</p>
<p>Also wondering here to what extent you would then HAVE to disclose any “problem” you might potentially have with a roommate or which your roommate might have with YOU.</p>
<p>You know, I don’t think either of my kids filled out a roommate questionnaire. DD#2 is rooming with other members of her team, and they have a suite style apartment but limited cooking in the suite. They do share bathrooms.</p>
<p>My other daughter is in a traditional dorm. Just got her roommate assignment yesterday (moves in Tues) and they seem to be compatible after 3-4 phone calls yesterday. One a theater major, the other dance. My daughter is an absolute slob, so I feel for this other girl. Maybe she’ll be better at school, but I doubt it. The other girl seems to be concerned about male visitors in the room or any other visitors and whether my DD was a morning person or not, but none of this was asked on any questionnaire. The school did give students the opportunity to room with someone they know, and also has freshmen interest groups where they pair them with others in the same major, but my daughter decided to roll the dice and get a random roommate. We’ll see if it works.</p>
<p>^^Most kids have gone to sleepover camps or gone to sleepovers or something along the path to growing up where phobias or other social issues would surface so most kids won’t have anything that would be beneficial to disclose or maybe they became aware of something that would be good to disclose. I think the thread was touching on more extreme issues like being unable to sleep without having total light in the room, unable to use a bathroom away from home, things on that order, to need extreme amounts of quiet or sensory deprivation not ussually available in a suite or shared dorm room. </p>
<p>When we toured Vandy, the tour guide told us that after she was accepted, she joined a facebook group for students entering the university as freshmen at the same time as she. There were “looking for roommates” threads, she told us, where students described themselves. For example, she said she needs more sleep and is more of an early to bed kind of person and she studies in complete silence. She found a match through that facebook group and after freshman year, they continue to room together. I don’t know if students from other universities have a place to meet other students and come up with less random/more focused roommate situations. We’ve not heard anything like that at any other college tour.</p>
<p>^ I think a lot of the colleges have facebook pages like that. My sons college does and so do a couple of the other ones he considered. </p>
<p>“I don’t think that needing to sleep with a nightlight is any stranger than requiring total darkness” Yet the consensus seems to be that the person needing to sleep with artificial lighting in the room is reasonable and the person who sleeps best without any artificial lighting in the room (I"m not talking about total blackout darkness, just no artificial illumination in the bedroom at night) is unreasonable.</p>
<p>Mathy the thread is not about a nightlight. The example was someone who needed the room lighted. That is not normal behavior. Some people do like total darkness but generally use eye shades which would not be disturbing to a roommate. Most people could adapt to a small plug in night light like some people use in a bathroom or hallway or in a small child’s bedroom.</p>
<p>
Sorry, I’m one of those kids. There was time when I couldn’t fall asleep for a year because I had an issue with this.
I still don’t like any light on when I fall asleep.</p>
<p>I don’t like any light either. I was so glad when the street light on the corner went out and was really bummed when it got replaced. We have blackout shades but too much light leaks in around the edges IMO. Between the clock and the A/C and dh’s phone there are way to many LED lights in the room. I’ve ended up covering them all and dh puts his phone face down now after I complained about the blinking lights. </p>
<p>I had one kid who wanted a night light and another who wanted total darkness and for 7 years they shared a room, so I am familiar with the problem.</p>
<p>Our kids both bought blackout curtains (with their room mate’s approval), which they used for all the places they lived. They like their sleeping area DARK and are disturbed by light. They fall asleep early in the morning, so don’t like being woken by sunshine or bright lights. It worked fine for them and their room mates.</p>
<p>The folks peeing in bottles and pooping in boxes are highly unsanitary and not something that should be tolerated in a dorm setting; I’m sure the sanitation department and others would have a lot to say about regs being violated, etc.</p>
<p>mathmom, we are so alike in this regard. I don’t like clock in the room either, I turned them around so I don’t have to see the LED lights.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why so many people are confusing the issue. The OP says nothing about a night light. It clearly states the roommate is “afraid of the dark and wants to sleep with the room light on.”</p>
<p>The suggestion was made that it would be reasonable for the phobic to settle for a night light instead of the room light. The point I raised is that some people are disturbed by artificial lighting in the room while they are trying to sleep and it’s not a no-brainer to simply use a night light. Like a few of the posters just mentioned, I also cover up the light from clocks because it does bother me.</p>
<p>^^ I was thinking that for someone in a dorm who needs to sleep in complete darkness and doesn’t like eyeshades might be to put up curtains around their bed area if they were in a bunk bed.</p>
<p>When I was a kid (up to teen years) I had a fear of being in complete darkness because my thought was that I would not know if I went blind (weird, I know - I had this awful fear of going blind). I just needed one little glimmer of light to stop the panic.</p>
<p>" All of these issues can impact the other roommate (sometimes to a significant degree- ever live with someone who spent hours in the bathroom vomiting every day? Not a walk in the park). But some disabilities we are compassionate about and others are not."</p>
<p>I think you’re conflating compassion and accommodation. I have compassion for the roommate with the eating disorder, but it’s not OK to use a shared bathroom for hours of daily vomiting. The other roommates can’t live that way. Refusal to remain in an unlivable situation is compatible with compassion and even love.</p>
<p>I don’t need to sleep in complete darkness, though I have a family member who does. I don’t even have blackout curtains, just ordinary blinds. Somehow the small amount of light coming in through the blinds is a lot less disturbing than an actual light in the room, maybe because a room light is artificial and more of a point source than diffuse. We don’t have street lights in our area, so it’s pretty dark. While I think I’d sleep better with blackout curtains, I also think it would make it harder for me to get up in the morning so I am willing to live with that for the benefit of having a little natural light help me wake up in the morning.</p>
<p>For the situation with the anorectic teammate, do you have any idea how much running unnecessary batteries of tests on everyone on the team must have cost? I’m thinking well over 100,000 dollars and probably more? And we wonder why college is so expensive! That could have been a faculty member that they hired for that price. THIS is why college is so expensive.</p>