<p>Even if he doesn’t “check those boxes” on the health forms, he will very likely be found out in the security clearance process. They interview EVERYBODY (D just went through it). If he has been behaving oddly, it will come out (people don’t like to lie to federal agents…). He will also have to reveal that he had some counseling and what it was for, although that in itself is not supposed to disqualify him.</p>
<p>moutainmomma-- we’ve heard those comments along the way since junior year of hs! Yes, he feels if it’s not an A why bother and throws in the towel!
We told him repeatedly when he left this year-- that Bs with a few Cs would be fine-- As in freshman year not realistic goal.</p>
<p>He’s highly strung guy-- tight-as**-- I am no professional either - but don’t think Bipolar, or OCD are the issue- nor depression. I honestly thing GAD is on target-- he could be 17 going on 77! But he thinks so lowly of anything non -STEM that a psych eval seems a pile of crap to him-- and he refuses out of that principle in addition to the fear of a record. There is a minute grain of salt that a mental health eval could be a red flag-- but seeing the college counseling service to handle stress is very very common. Or he may have already read a ton and not want to face what he thinks he has self-diagnosed. That could also be the problem - doesnt’ want to face the fact that he has a life struggle ahead.</p>
<p>Everyone- -you are all very helpful. Reality- all the diagnoses are all plausable, but if you refuse an eval and help, nothing changes.</p>
<p>Bookmarked.</p>
<p>I once had to vouch for a friend of mine who was applying to be in the foreign service. I’d really only known her well the year we were both in France and 17. This was 4 or 5 years later. Those security checks are pretty thorough. </p>
<p>I have no real advice for you, but sympathize. We have a CS kid who is very bright and always only just on the right side of normal. He’s had his share of visits to psychologists and neurologists. My son also has been interested in parts of CS that seem less practical. In the past he’s applied for some security/defense related internships although it the end he went in a different direction. He’s got a Silicon Valley job next year at a well known company - but as far as I know he won’t be doing anything that we can describe. His interests are extremely esoteric. It’s not all cell phone apps out there!</p>
<p>At any rate good luck to your son. I have no good advice for you, though of course like many other parents, I really wish he’d go see a mental health professional.</p>
<p>“he feels if it’s not an A why bother and throws in the towel!”</p>
<p>it’s possible this is it. He feels he has to be perfect. a lot of high achievers feel this way. Athletes know this one well and most learn the secret to winning (or getting an A) is failing!</p>
<p>“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Michael Jordan</p>
<p>No parent, College Confidential poster, or even a Pediatrician is properly trained or equipped to properly diagnosis these things. It takes a Psychiatrist, licensed Therapist (PhD preferred) and/or a professional who can do a full psycho-(educational) assessment for you to get the FULL picture. Anxiety is a very dibilitating disability, and your son may need medication and/or therapy from a GOOD medical team that works together, to get on the right track. It may not be laziness, immaturity, arrogance, ignorance - but anxiety.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>I was about to post something similar. Feeling anxious and panicking before finals are not necessarily indicative of a panic disorder or anxiety disorder. A number of criteria must be met to warrant a diagnosis and a trained clinician needs to be the one assessing. I’d just throw out one other possibility that is not clinical. He’s not even 18. He’s a boy in what seems to be a very difficult, competitive program. He fooled around and it caught up to him. He would not be the first or last boy to mess up his first semester, get a reality check and pull it together. A lot of boys do a lot of maturing around this age.</p>
<p>There’s been lots of arm-chair pyscho-analysis here and in the .5 thread by another poster a digression on the merit of various CS/Engineering programs and AP exams.</p>
<p>yes, clearly both families and the S’s in particular need to be honest with themselves about what may have caused the underlying flop and what they plan to do about it.</p>
<p>The short question however is really whether either student should return to school and under what conditions? It’s a balance, the young men need to become independent-- but if conditions are placed-- this becomes parent micro-managing. In our case, our S has sufficient financial aid and external merit, that he can literally borrow what is necessary to enroll in the spring- so the financial connection to his parents is off. </p>
<p>How does the student/parent decide whether to return?
It’s easy to say - yes, I want to go back- b/c that avoids the serious conversation that should occur.</p>
<p>It is one thing to say a student who does not need parental funds to return to school has the legal right to do so. But gaining legal/financial independence unfortunately does not mean that a student is necessarily proficient in planning and management of time, money and other resources, delaying gratification, using mature judgment, etc. - skills needed to function independently as an adult. </p>
<p>In the situation of the student who ends up on any sort of academic probation for low grades after stopping going to class while continuing to engage in social/recreational activities, whether or not a mental health issue is involved, I do not think that parents’ deciding the student should work, go to community college for a while, get a mental health evaluation, etc. would be “micromanaging.” </p>
<p>You may not have a legal right to keep your son from returning to his school, but that has nothing to do with whether he is going to be able to change his behavior and maturity level on his own enough to recoup his losses and succeed in such a demanding program. </p>
<p>If you really believe that about the micromanaging, I think you should not approach the school about expunging failing grades or changing a D to a P. </p>
<p>Any effort to get the school to change the grades should be the responsibility of the student if parental micromanaging is a concern.</p>
<p>OP- hugs.</p>
<p>If you have a family friend who your son trusts and admires it may be worth it to arrange for the two of them to take a long walk. I am troubled by your comments that your S can’t seek help because he wants to work for the CIA. I know other young people who engage in this type of apocalyptic thinking (I have to get in to Harvard Law school or I won’t become a lawyer; I must win a Fulbright or else I’m not going to get a PhD in my field; etc.) and I must tell you that their paths seem significantly harder (on everyone- themselves and their families) than kids who can figure out Plan A, Plan B and Plan C.</p>
<p>I won’t insult you by trying to psychoanalyze why your S feels there is only one path to his interests (and that at the age of 19/20 he needs to have it all figured out) but I would encourage you to get another trusted adult involved in talking to your S.</p>
<p>There are dozens of ways to serve your country if public service is his motivator. There are dozens of private companies that subcontract to various public agencies in the area of international security, political threats, computer monitoring of terrorist networks, etc. There are dozens of non-profit organizations which hire people to develop profiles of cells and groups which are a threat to US security. And of course there is the military.</p>
<p>Your S should not be planning his entire life around the CIA since there are scores of other ways he can achieve his professional objectives. And for sure your S should not allow his concerns about security clearance to get in the way of his getting help right now. I would not be comfortable if one of my kids had an “All or Nothing” career objective given that there are so many ways why the CIA could be a bad fit for him, and that some of the alternatives might well be so much better for him.</p>
<p>I recently met someone at an accounting firm who runs a group which monitors cash disbursements from Caribbean banks which go to fund violent extremist organizations. He is considered one of the top terrorist experts in the world and consults to foreign ministries in both the developed and developing world. And he’s an accountant! who knew? What an interesting and productive and satisfying career he has!!! And both the FBI and CIA are clients of his.</p>
<p>Your son may appreciate hearing from grown ups in a variety of jobs that there are multiple paths and many ways to skin the cat.</p>
<p>^^i disagree</p>
<p>if his dream is to work for the CIA than he should pursue it! you only get one time around in life, you might as well go for it.</p>
<p>also I think it could be a problem if he has mental health items on his record. And they do interview everyone asking lots of behavior questions such as alcohol and drug use and sexual behavior. They don’t want people who can be easily blackmailed because of behavioral issues they carry forward into their adult work life.</p>
<p>Also from the guys I know, the profile is very much boy scout, very pro american, all from military families, and serious. But that’s a small sample, they can’t all be like that, can they:)</p>
<p>Big disclaimer: my view of hiring at the CIA is twenty years old, things may be very different now.</p>
<p>As someone who had his own share of problems with college I agree totally no one on here can diagnose anything, even if they are trained professionals (a trained mental health professional who ‘diagnoses’ something based on a thread online is someone to steer clear of IMO)…</p>
<p>That said, things like therapy and counseling can be valuable whether there is a mental health question or not IME. Issues like perfectionism may or may not be signs of underlying ‘real’ issues, but issues like this and not handling stress well, procrastination, etc are all things in of themselves that a therapist can help with (and again, this is just my experience/opinion, I am not trained, but have had help with working stuff out in my life along similar lines). One of the things people in these fields are there for is to provide a place to work on issues without judgement, without being told somehow the person is lacking,etc,. they also have techniques like CBT to help clear out the things blocking someone. A good one can help clear through the crap, help clear through the issues (again, not necessarily diagnosable conditions). </p>
<p>I understand the reluctance to get help, of the stigma and such, and I can understand being worried about something like the CIA and how they would view this kind of thing, but the way I would put it is if he keeps having trouble in school, that is kind of moot, if he screws up his grades the CIA more then likely won’t look at him, so what you have is a choice between the obvious (that the CIA won’t look at him with bad grades) and the potential worry (will getting help screw up his chances even if it helps his grades), seems like not much of a choice. Yeah, there is a third option, that the kid will pull it together and suddenly start flying, but to be honest, based on my own experience, that may not be so easy. If there are underlying reasons why he isn’t doing well,rather then simply getting caught up in ‘college life’, whether it is something diagnosable like depression or anxiety disorder, or other issues, it may not be so simple as pulling himself up and flying right…again, I am not a professional, I don’t claim special knowledge there, I am speaking from my own experience, for what its worth. There are a lot of people, like my own parents, who prescribed to the old ‘all the kid needs is a good swift kick’ kind of mentality, and while in some cases that may be true, in others, a lot of the time, there are other things. </p>
<p>As far as his desire to work at the CIA, besides suggesting what others have (finding out the reality of the CIA or the NSA and working for them), I also suggest maybe thinking about other paths if in face he wants to work there.One option might be gaining experience in the military, besides giving a solid background that would probably look good to places dealing with national security, there is also the path of working in military intelligence, which wouldn’t exactly hurt launching a career at the CIA I would guess. I will add it also will give a reality check about intelligence work, an acquaintance of mine had been military intelligence both on active duty and the reserve and knew a number of intelligence people from CIA and elsewhere, and he said a lot of it can be really basic, painstaking drudge work…so he would know pretty fast whether he wanted to stay with that.</p>
<p>And if he is really worried about whether having had some sort of counseling or therapy would hurt him with the CIA, there is the old direct path and send them an e-mail and ask (yeah, I know, there is the immediate ‘that could be problematic’, but I would be really surprised if they got an e-mail from someone asking ‘would having gotten counselling or been in therapy be held against me’ that they would immediately put the person on a black list or something, they probably get a lot of inquiries and I doubt they would waste time and manpower to do such a thing)…</p>
<p>I wish him well, my sympathy is with you and your child, I hope it works out and that what I wrote helps even a little bit.</p>
<p>Off topic-- but with the digression in this thread, I point out that CMU is # 1 in Computer Science - tied with Stanford and MIT.</p>
<p>CMU is generally regarded as one of the top CS schools, it is definitely regarded as being on a caliber with Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley in my experience (25 years working in IT). I have seen the kind of students they accept and the curricula, it is not an easy place, like MIT and Stanford the program tends to be accelerated (a friend of mine where I went to school had gone to MIT for a while, he said what we were doing in a year of CS at my school was about half semester at MIT). There are differences, MIT and Stanford, because of their location and because both of them were at the epicenter of much of the computer revolution back in the 60’s and 70’s and obviously have/had close ties with silicon valley and the old ‘silicon alley’ near Boston, can claim some unique differences (kind of like the ivy League schools because of their age and special ties going back a long time, having a special place among elite schools). CMU from what I know developed their computer program a bit later on, but as a program it is easily up there with those schools (among other things, when I was going through CS in the 80’s, CMU was out there in areas like robotics and robotic vision and recognition, among other things).</p>
<p>“Adjustment disorder” isn’t “psycho-babble for immaturity.” Here’s how Mayo Clinic describes it: An adjustment disorder is a type of stress-related mental illness. </p>
<p>OP, you and your husband should be in counseling for support in identifying how the two of you can proceed with this son and the issues he presents. And, for support and direction if this thing explodes.</p>
<p>You have a child whose mood shifts, who claims panic attacks, but quit counseling. He claims to hinge his dreams on a career that requires a degree, good grades and good character refs- and he spends his days playing games of various sorts. He limits you to 3 minute conversations, refuses to follow-up on his diabetes issues, refuses to seek confidential counseling at school, wings it with finals or other tests, skips massive amounts of class and on and on. You mentioned a sports injury serious enough to have hm laid up for some time. And, gawd, here we are, on a board, guessing sugar issues, ocd, bipolar, boredom, depression, need for change…</p>
<p>The posters have given great thoughts.<br>
On CC, time reveals that many parents have been through extraordinary challenges from their kids. Our D was a handful in early senior year of hs, nearly falling apart. There are no simple answers. You don’t know what it is. You don’t know. Get some professional advice. Good luck.
<a href=“http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/adjustment-disorders/DS00584[/url]”>http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/adjustment-disorders/DS00584</a></p>
<p>Short of dragging him against his will, not many options left.</p>
<p>Appreciate all your advice.</p>
<p>He’s not talking at this point to H or myself.</p>
<p>Happy New Years everyone.</p>
<p>Update
He returned to school.
He told us he would be fine and never had any conversation other than that he found a summer internship, selected appropriate classes and he would figure out the finances.
He’s on his own financially-- didn’t even want to discuss his plans in that arena as well. (reality- he’ll max out the federal unsub loan and use up a few hundred in personal savings)
We reached out to the school-- he’s already on their radar but unless he takes steps to seek academic or psych services, their hands are tied. I am just waiting for the next phone call. But there wasn’t any of those last semester either.</p>
<p>It breaks my heart to see him go without so much as a solid conversation – a sad, angry, confused and arrogant young man. </p>
<p>Well, bookmark me…I hope to be back with good news in a few months.
Also my heartfelt best wishes to the other posters with freshman who tanked for assorted reasons.</p>
<p>Good luck.<br>
Do think about speaking with a professional- to help yourself through all this. No, you can’t drag him in. But, you can personally benefit- a good counselor can help you make decisions and stay solid.</p>
<p>For all of you kind enough to offer advice and to those of you with a high school senior at home that mirrors this profile-- follow your gut-- I should have.</p>
<p>So the update-- S returned to school as I noted in my post in January. Lasted 4 weeks and called to say he was taking a Leave of Absence. Thankful he had the courage to do so-- shouldn’t have returned-- but at least he didn’t rot out a second semester miserable and realized he needed to leave. He’s home.</p>
<p>He’s been home - -getting therapy once a week, still refuses the blood work up everyone suggested here on CC a year ago, not working, not volunteering, not taking any classes and not doing anything productive. His days are spent online. Claims he is resting and should have never attended college a year early and will return with his buddies from his high school who were accepted and join him in the fall. He’s delusional.
Like my posts when he was a high school student-- H is useless. (I filed for divorce last week. H accepted all the terms uncontested-- lawyer is preparing the paperwork. He will be moving out with S).</p>
<p>My advice-- if your high school senior shuts down with a severe case of senioritus-- it’s not senioritus, but potentially signs of an emerging mental illness or other physical problems. Your S or D needs medical attention and should not go to college under these circumstances. We knew this, but had no hold on him – he had all the financials covered through financial aid, and generous internal and external merit/scholarships (the kids profile was amazing). Those external scholarships are now all gone. The school has him on probation -so these will hold for one more semester if he returns. Our EFC is huge-- and he will not be returning on our dime.</p>
<p>Don’t even ask how I’m doing emotionally- just send your cyber hugs. I hope it never gets to the point to have to tell you worse news than this.</p>
<p>thanks to everyone
I don’t have any solutions – I cannot get my son to help himself</p>
<p>I decided to post b/c I hope anyone who is facing similar issues with a high school senior will take more action than I did. If one parent will no act- do what your gut tells you is necessary how ever painful. </p>
<p>Best to everyone.</p>
<p>I’m so sorry!!! I hope it gets better for you and your son. Please take time to care for yourself and your healing…</p>