Student with disability...JAWM...need kindness not criticism

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
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My student with a disability (ADHD with really significant executive function problems) just finished her freshman year online due to the pandemic. It was a painful experience.

Last semester in one class she missed the deadline of a module because she was busy working on an exam and didn’t realize the next module was already closing. She has an accommodation of extra time but didn’t want to try to talk to the professor about it because he had shut her down when she tried to talk to him once before. But because the professor wouldn’t accept any work from the module late, she got a D. I brought up appealing the grade but she refused to face the professor again. She decided to do pass/fail to save her gpa and got no credit for the class.Meanwhile, she got a 98 on the final.

Her other grades last semester were good, with one class being saved by a professor who gave her a break when she found out that my daughter didn’t realize a different platform existed for a portion of assignments and gave her extra time to complete all the assignments from that platform.

This semester started out badly with her withdrawing from one class early on. Art history with a documented visual attention deficit was not a good idea to begin with.

Another class became a problem because the professor skipped over her in assigning group projects. The professor later acknowledged—after trying to tell my daughter she was not enrolled in the class which took nearly a week to sort out—that my daughter was one of the first students to sign up for the projects but she accidentally skipped over her in assigning projects. My daughter wound up doing two group projects on her own to try to get credit for them but then confused the due date and handed them in late. So she will get 0 credit. Meanwhile, she got a 96 on the final.

In checking her grades, we discovered she missed an exam. She thought that exam was the final and that the professor just changed the date. She should probably change that class to pass/fail to save her gpa…again.

I have no idea how to advise my child going forward. She is fine when it comes to mastering the content but everything else can be so weird and crazy due to the executive function deficit. This stuff didn’t really happen in high school because she was in class everyday with her teachers and the community of students to remind her of assignments and deadlines. Online is just awful for her. I’m hoping that next year will be better if classes are in person. But meanwhile she’s been talking about transferring into a more difficult major…

If she loses her scholarship and financial aid due to a credit shortage, we should probably talk to her about transferring to CC.

The kinds of things that happened this year I just couldn’t have imagined.

If anyone has BTDT, any encouragement or gentle, kind advice would be appreciated.

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Does your daughter have a letter from the U’s disability office about her disability? Sometimes these letters request types of assistance (e.g. 1.5 time on tests) but sometimes they just tell the prof that the student has been in contact with their office and has diagnosed ADHD. The student then emails the letter to each prof at the beginning of the semester and maybe meets with them in person for a brief introduction. The student needs to be able to remind the prof of this letter and the accommodation for extra time. “Being shut down” is not something that the prof should be doing and at the same time the student should not be too timid to remind the prof of the letter. Missing exam dates seems like a different problem - stuff like this needs to be put into calendar so the student doesn’t miss it.

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She has accommodations and informed her professors in the beginning of the semester and reminds them when things come up when she will need extra time.

She also has a planner, but I guess she isn’t using it as well as she should. I sometimes give reminders.

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An academic coach could help with planning work or meeting deadlines.

Lots of resources suggestions https://executivefunctionsummit.com/

Many of the coaches have youtube tips, etc.

Sounds like a wonderful person, making most of it, great attitude, that is priceless. Good mental health is priceless.

Some faculty don’t get how to accommodate EF. A good coach or disabilities office could help but student needs to develop self advocacy skills, too.

Protecting one’s GPA each semester is the game. Quality over quantity. Spreading courses over summer or an extra year is not unusual.

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My ADHD, EF, LD kid is at a tech school working towards an associates degree because a traditional college bachelors is not in his capabilities right now without me micromanaging him. He could get accomodations based off his neuropsych eval he had just prior to turning 18 but he’s an adult and no matter how hard I try to talk him into it, he wont talk to disability services to get something set up.

Online school was horrible for him as well. He had a mental health crisis last summer which resulted in an inpatient stay and he withdrew from a class. He tried retaking it in fall and failed. He simply cannot take a heavy lab science online because it doesnt work for his brain. He is waiting for inperson classes in fall and will take only that one class. Its slowing down his graduation trajectory by adding on a couple of years to be honest but we could not have predicted covid and we have to do what is right for him.

For your situation, if she hasnt had neuropsych testing, I would recommend it. It helped my son see that he wasn’t stupid but his brain does work differently and he has to therefore do things in other ways. I would take the summer to really push to find better solutions and strategies for her. There are books out there to help.

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Online learning just doesn’t work for kids with executive functioning deficits. My high school senior with ADHD was late (1 hour to 1 day late) on over 30 assignments in one class alone the first semester of remote learning. She received only 50% credit for those assignments and it tanked her grade. No accommodations were necessary throughout high school until that point so she didn’t have a 504 plan in place. We rectified that for this semester but since they returned to school on a hybrid basis no assignments have been late! Even so, I’m not sure that the accommodation of an extension of 2 days “if requested” would be that helpful for her as she always thinks she’ll meet the deadline until she doesn’t…

She’s a bright kid and a hard worker but really struggles with organization and time management. I’m not sure how she will fare when she goes away to college in August but I’m hoping for the best and will try to get her 504 transferred. So, while I haven’t any advice, I do sympathize and hope the situation improves for your daughter.

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Does she take medication to help focus?

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I find a lot of helpful insights by Sarah Ward , deficits in Space , Time, Objects, People / Situational Awareness skills.
https://www.unl.edu/asdnetwork/executive-functioning-skills-stop

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I have a kid with similar issues and another one with medical issues. Both have used accommodations sparingly but effectively. As I have written many times, it is seldom the disabilities office that makes accommodations work. Instead, therapists, doctors and deans generally work together to advocate for the student with the professors. And of course skills in self-advocacy are also needed. Virtual college would make all of this difficult. (I would also add that as the parent, I would sometimes give things a nudge, but only when absolutely needed).

My kid with ADHD and other issues is almost done a continuing ed program BA at age 29. She did traditional college, then worked, then community college, then this program for non-traditional students while working. She takes two classes/semester, often one at a time. Virtual or online works for her actually.

The failure to accommodate your daughter would seem to have been illegal, particularly the professor who “shut her down.” You have a variety of options and I would not accept this situation passively as a parent. Your kid does not yet have the skills to correct these situations and probably needs intervention by parents.

You can meet with a dean to discuss the failure to accommodate and support. With the help of a professional (psychiatrist, neuropsych, therapist, MD?) She should be able to withdraw and have the entire slate of grades wiped clean, without W’s, if that is what she would prefer. Or particular courses.

I would even consider hiring a lawyer if noone at the school helps with this. And the help should be retroactive. This scenario is just plain wrong. A professor cannot “shut down” a student who has accommodations and requests extra time for something.

Many disabilities offices provide letters to the student to give to professors but do NOT list the accommodations or mention the diagnosis, so that is where the student self-advocacy comes in. However, as I wrote already, often the student needs backup from a dean and a professional to back up the request.

Again, I would not accept this situation. I am not going through each and every thing that happened but accommodations most likely would have addressed most of it. She deserves a clean transcript when the school has failed her in this manner. That said, going forward, she needs to stand up for herself and access resources, and it is okay for you to help with that for the first few years.

She can find out or the dean can tell you what resources are available for help in the future. Extra advising, tutors, coaches. Private coaches were too expensive for us. Some therapists will do time management too. Clearly she needs some help that the school is not giving, possibly due to COVID. But coaching can be done by phone or cmputer.

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Yes. It’s great for help with focus but not necessarily with planning and organizing. When she takes it, it is helpful but it’s not in her system 24 hours a day. It’s sort of like wearing glasses that way.

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@compmom Thanks so much! I didn’t realize some of those things were possible

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I am PM’ing you

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She must have a calendar in her phone. Have her enter “deadlined tasks” into it IMMEDIATELY when she hears/reads them, with a notification (one week if big), 3 days before, 1 day before, 5 hours before hour due, 1 hour before it’s due, 30mn, 5mn. 1mn. It works :muscle: and it’s easy because it takes 5mn on the spot then she can relax it’s all set for her.

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I just wanted to express my thanks to everyone who responded and shared helpful ideas. We had a phone conference yesterday which was suggested by the disability office, and the office of student affairs was included because the disability office was concerned for my daughter when they heard the whole story. It turns out, besides my daughter’s difficulties, there was a computer glitch that removed my daughter’s name from the roster of more than one class which was the start of a lot of problems. From the conversation, this isn’t the first time this has happened there. There was nothing on my daughter’s end to know this happened until she realized her name was missing from certain documents in the class relating to projects. Probably another type of student who was better at keeping track of would have realized sooner something was wrong, but otherwise everything looked normal in my daughter’s portal.

It turns out we have little choice but to wait for the grade appeal wheels to turn. One professor— who hadn’t responded to my daughter’s emails—did after she contacted the department head and a very fair resolution was reached. In the class we were very concerned about, the head of the department hasn’t responded yet and we were told it could take a couple of weeks. I think that professor won’t be so easy to deal with but at the same time there is more evidence that my daughter’s grade was impacted by the system glitch. Meanwhile, the professor’s response could be seen as being particularly harsh regarding the missed projects and my daughter’s response as showing a lot of effort and goodwill. So we will have to wait. If we don’t think the response is fair when it comes, the appeal will go higher.

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sending you a private message.