<p>D1 leaves for college in a few short weeks. She says she is very excited to go, but my usually organized and driven D has been late with almost every form she had to submit this summer. Now a few weeks and counting she refuses to start looking for supplies, thinking about packing, or even looking at her course options for next year. I want her to have her summer, and I do not want to spend her last weeks at home nagging or fighting. Should I worry? How much should I push? Anyone else seeing this behavior in your soon-to be-first-year?</p>
<p>This happened with my son – and I think it was one of his ways of coping with the upcoming change (by minimizing and postponing dealing with it as much as possible).</p>
<p>My daughter was exactly the opposite. For her, planning, shopping, filling out forms, etc., seemed to actually be helpful in making the adjustment.</p>
<p>There are some on this board who will say that you should just let the pieces fall where they may and let your daughter pick up the pieces if she misses deadlines, gets to school without essential supplies, etc. But I’m not sure whether this is necessarily the best option (if only because it would lead to bad experiences in the first few weeks of college that might lead to her developing a negative view of the college experience or even dropping out).</p>
<p>The other alternative requires more work on your part. It involves you doing some research to find out the most essential things that she must do and insisting that she do them. For example, while putting some clean laundry in my son’s room, I found a paper from student housing on the floor. I was not ordinarily in the habit of reading his stuff, but the “student housing” heading jumped out at me. I was glad that I saw the form because it involved completing something by a deadline that had almost passed. </p>
<p>You can let the nonessentials go, I think. If your daughter gets to college and realizes that she has only three days worth of underwear and socks, for example, because she did not heed your warnings about the inconvenience of doing laundry frequently in a college dorm and therefore did not go out and buy more, I think it is OK for her to suffer the consequences.</p>
<p>And there will be some things that you can do nothing about. My son did not bother to study the course catalog, and therefore, when the time came for course registration, he ended up in the wrong chemistry course (the rigorous one for pre-meds, which he did not need because he was a computer science major who simply needed a lab science course to fill a distribution requirement). He spent more time during his first semester on that course than on the rest of his courseload combined. No amount of research on my part would have prevented this outcome, and maybe he learned something from it.</p>
<p>Don’t worry.</p>
<p>My daughter is away working at a camp this summer and two days after she gets home, she has to go to school. She’ll have almost a week at school before classes start, which is probably the best thing that could happen. She actually asked me to pick out her “dorm decor”, since she won’t have time to do it.</p>
<p>Her registration was over the summer, and even then, she spoke to the counselors and asked for help and made some great class decisions, (only one 8 am appearance once a week!). She impressed us, as she is typically disorganized.</p>
<p>So, give her a chance to figure out what she needs to do…she will probably be fine.</p>
<p>Course options? Doesn’t the college set up a meeting with her advisor for first term courses? She probably has an English requirement and some basics for her program? </p>
<p>DS packed at the last moment and was fine. Had to find some things like toothbrush and pillow that he forgot, but they had everything you could imagine at the college bookstore. They were happy to take your money for supplies your procrastinator had forgotten. Also, we used the UPS store a bunch for stuff that had to be sent from home. Wasn’t that expensive. I always err on the side of not arguing, so pick up the pieces later.</p>
<p>My mom (way back in the dark ages when I was prepping for school) set out a trunk months in advance and slowly filled it with stuff she had gathered for me. I have to admit that I did a similar thing by having a staging area in our dining room for all the junk I bought for son. Most of it he never used. =). But it made me feel better.</p>
<p>Very useful was the plastic set of three or so drawers that I filled with advil, benedryl, post it notes, and I don’t recall what all. That thing came home stuffed to the gills with all the little junk. Duct tape. Remember to pack a roll of that! Then you know your youngster will be able to handle anything.</p>
<p>All that matters is how long you, Mom, have been preparing for d’s sojourn, </p>
<p>After this first movin, you’ll discover, that packing for each return trip will take about 5 minutes. Prob less. </p>
<p>I couldn’t understand why W gave DS, 15 T’s and 15 underwear, 15 socks, 5 jeans, 10 shirts, 5 jerseys, 3 slacks, and double the toiletries (giant sized) for 3 months.<br>
Be prepared to see 15 white Tshirts be come home as 15 gray tshirts. If you are lucky, they will be pink 
for boys that is</p>
<p>OP - I think this is pretty typical behavior. I went through something similar with my older son last year. I made a checklist of what needed to be done and when it needed to be done by and posted it on the fridge. He did it - generally at the last minute - but it all got done. His explanation was that he wanted to be on his time frame - not mine - which I understood - it’s part of the process of becoming independent. </p>
<p>Like hugcheck, we had a staging area in the dining room for his stuff - I will admit I did most of the shopping and packing and was working on it weeks in advance - I think in retrospect it was simply a concrete way for me to help him and help myself through this stage of the process. This year - we packed together and it took about an hour!</p>
<p>It’s a tricky balancing act between hovering and letting them do it themselves and I understand completely that you don’t want something important to fall through the cracks. Perhaps a brief meeting together to go over what needs to be done and when/how she plans to do it. It may be that she has some of this planned out mentally and has just not had the time to act on it yet. I have generally found that “friendly reminders” work much better than constant nagging - at least - that’s what I tell myself! Good luck!</p>
<p>I would supervise important things like registration, vaccinations, etc. that could be a real problem/expense if they are botched (it is my money, after all). But packing, supplies, etc. I would let fall to the student, with whatever consequences result.</p>
<p>And I agree that this procrastination may be a form of denial.</p>
<p>It can help to shoulder some of the distress by saying “Look, there’s some stuff that is making your parent nuts here. I am freaking out and it doesn’t matter whether or not you have it under control. Do me a favor and get my top three worries addressed so I can quit hyperventilating.”</p>
<p>So, your list probably is closer to two dozen items – but get the kid to address the top three, go for a walk and give it a rest for a week. Then rinse and repeat. Think of all of this like batting averages. Nobody bats one thousand. Don’t even try for perfection here. Avoid disaster and call it good.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about it. Like others have said, this isn’t unusual.</p>
<p>If she doesn’t purchase supplies beforehand then she can purchase them when she gets to school but it may be less convenient for her and would end up being a lesson. If you’re concerned about cost tell her you’ll pay for the supplies if she goes with you beforehand but she’s on her own paying for supplies once she gets to school.</p>
<p>If she doesn’t pack (and there’s no way I’d pack weeks before anything), then worst case, she ends up with no clothing, etc. when she arrives. Again - her problem, but this is unlikely to happen. If she doesn’t get around to it until midnight the night before she leaves, she’ll be the one losing sleep and forgetting things.</p>
<p>For course options, she’ll get this figured out as well. The main point on this is for her to be aware of deadlines for signing up for courses and she needs to realize that if she misses the deadlines she might not get into the courses she wants. </p>
<p>So you’re probably better off using this as an opportunity - an opportunity for you to learn how to refrain from nagging or fighting and being as controlling as you’re perhaps used to needing to be while she was in K-12, and an opportunity for her to learn that the ball’s in her court to take the initiative now - without the parental control she’s been used to (which is probably something she’s been campaigning for and looking forward to). Let her feel the consequences of her inaction in areas that aren’t really that big of a deal like the shopping and packing. In a few weeks she’ll need to take the initiative regardless since you won’t be there to direct her. (Note - I know this is all easier said than done )</p>
<p>It is with guilty pleasure that I read someone else is worrying about this too. I go on the college site here and see all these other kids asking questions about their registration, and yet my son just tells me his advisor will help him when he shows up in a few weeks. I guess therein lies the difference between us: I want to be first in line so I don’t miss anything, and he’s relaxed and carefree. If he misses out, oh-well.</p>
<p>I did make a list of all the things he HAD to do: the placement exams, the drug free test. I included “contact your roommates”, but I think he did that without my nagging. It annoys me that he assumes everything falls into order without taking charge, but in some cases, he’s right. I know there’s a happy medium. His bedsheets are ordered. He figures out classes when he gets there. He took the placement tests and had a physical recently. If there was something else, I think the school will tell me. Launch date is in two weeks.</p>
<p>S-1 didn’t return his freshman housing form promptly and got the worst possible freshman dorm placement imaginable. He was miserable. By second term he had figured out how to transfer to a different room, and never missed a housing deadline after that. He also became the chief advisor to younger sibs to never miss a college housing-related deadline. They goofed up on other forms, but never housing.</p>
<p>Let something go wrong for a change. Nobody will perish and the kid will take the lumps and improve on her own time.</p>
<p>Or ask yourself, “what’s the worst thing that can happen here?” If the answer is something like: she’ll have a terrible schedule first term, or she’ll be up all night packing the night before we leave… realize that neither she nor you will perish from that. Then you’ll be calmer and she’ll realize it’s more on her shoulders. She might not realize that until November, but if you know that’s the dynamic you won’t be as upset now.</p>
<p>Same problem here. I took Olymom’s approach because I felt that I was spending the summer nagging and to little avail. I can’t say the list plan worked flawlessly, but it worked better than my previous approach. Before that, I had demanded a schedule of when she was going to get certain crucial tasks accomplished, since she was always telling me she’d get to it and that it didn’t have to be done right now. While she complied in writing out a schedule for one weekend (because I wouldn’t let her go out that Thursday night until she did), she didn’t end up completing the sheduled tasks–not even close. That proved the very point I had been making all along, which is that these things take longer than you think they will, and so waiting until the last minute will be disastrous. Indeed, there have been quite a few time-consuming snafus already.</p>
<p>The basic underlying dynamic is that D feels that this summer is “supposed to be” nothing but fun–her last summer of childhood so to speak. Unfortunately, though, we’re not living in a fairy tale in which she’s the pampered princess. She has to work (we need the money for her incidentals and also her financial aid package includes a summer earnings requirement) and also she is training for her sport. That leaves little time for other things, but what time there is she has been spending going out with friends. It’s fine that she goes out sometimes, but there were things that had to be done that I knew about, and others that I learned about on her school’s CC forum. Meanhwile, her future classmates were excitedly planning their full year schedules in detail as well as discussing all aspects of their plans for colllege. Sigh.</p>
<p>Just a few minutes ago there was another blowout. The funny thing is that she IS going out tonight to a graduation party, yet she complained at length to me about not being able to go out. I lost my patience with her whining, since I’ve been shouldering the lion’s share of HER college shopping and other preparations. But this incident tonight suggests she is probably rebelling against growing up and taking responsibility for herself. This clashes with my need for her to pull her own weight for a change.</p>
<p>^ PS. I should add that the preparations are somewhat complicated because she is going to school on the opposite coast. This means we’ve had to determine what she’s bringing along on the plane with her, what if anything will be shipped, what will be ordered online and what will be bought in person once there. In addition, she will be going to training camp with her college team for about 2 weeks first, which requires an additional packing job. Lastly, she just had a growth spurt, which is necessitating new athletic clothes and regular clothes. Worst of all, that shopping has to be done on a shoestring and bargain shopping is always more time consuming. </p>
<p>Thanks for this thread. I’m at my wit’s end and am glad for the company.</p>
<p>Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. My S will be a senior and I just decided to move the control reins of the admissions process to him. He has been doing all the work this year identifying and researching schools, studying for tests and has even written solid drafts of many of his essays. We met each Sunday during the past year to make sure he was on track and to discuss any issues that needed it. </p>
<p>Now it is his turn to ask for the meetings, control the ‘to do’ list (or toss it) and get everything done on time. It will tough for me to relinquish control as it was for all of you espec since my S will procrastinate if he can. Wish me luck.</p>
<p>I agree with most of what others advise, but would jump on course registration if she needs to register this summer. Some classes fill up fast and you do not want to end up paying for an additional semester or summer classes later on because she is out of sequence or missed getting into a required class. Sounds like some schools have the freshman wait til they get to school for registration, so maybe this isn’t a big concern.</p>
<p>1012mom-
Read my thread from 2 years ago <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/548296-when-will-he-start-pack.html?[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/548296-when-will-he-start-pack.html?</a> We were in the exact same boat. They do pull it together. Just not on our timeframe…</p>
<p>1012mom–I was in your shoes last year, but wasn’t suprised because my S’s always been a procrastinator. I stayed on top of school mandated forms, but didn’t obsess about packing which my son (we) did the weekend before we left.</p>
<p>Try to remember to breathe deeply and keep things in perspective–there are many parents who would love to have this as their biggest problem. Also, you don’t want your last few weeks together to be needlessly fussy, so pick your battles and try to laugh as much as you can. With everyone under stress, it’s easy to obsess on some meaningless task or detail. </p>
<p>Good luck!!</p>
<p>Try not to worry too much… underpacking is better than overpacking.</p>
<p>You could always say "OK, I am going to put aside $$$ for your winter holiday (Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice . . ) present. I will deduct money from that for anything I have to buy after Labor Day and have to ship to you . Yeah, I’ll deduct the shipping costs too. Anything we buy for you before Aug XX is free and clear to you. " </p>
<p>And stick to it. The kid can play that any way she wants. You will respect her choices and stick by yours.</p>
<p>Depending on the college, there may be shopping accessible so that the kid can do the legwork for any needed items. I preach that “less is more” philosophy since the dorm rooms get clutterred. For “maybe” items, it could be better to purchase the few you determine are really needed rather than bring a bunch of 'maybe" items.</p>