I’m not an expert and I believe laws might vary a bit by state but I am pretty confident that the parents of college students will never be notified when their student is seeking medical or mental health care unless there is a safety issue with the student.
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Neighbor of mine had a kid who played hockey (club level) in college, and they didn’t find out until AFTER the fact that the kid had been sent to the ER and had surgery… not that the kid didn’t want to inform them. But he was 21 years old; in the hubbub of his injury he got separated from his phone; by the time he was medicated he hadn’t thought to ask a teammate to call his mom; etc. So even if your kid WANTS to keep you in the loop medically- unless the kid is proactive about it, you likely won’t find out…
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Because at age 18 they are considered adults, and their mommies and daddies don’t have to know stuff.
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It’s kind of funny - back when I was in college we always had a piece of paper or a whiteboard with important phone numbers on it by the phone. It was the ‘in case of emergency, call our boyfriend and parents’ list, and had there been an emergency one of the roommates would have called. With info on cell phones, it’s actually harder for friends to do that. It would feel weird to ask kid’s roommate, friend, or significant other to put my number in their cell, but otherwise they won’t know how to get in touch.
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My daughter and her friends did share their parents’ numbers with each other in case of emergencies. We also made sure she completed a health care power of attorney before she left for school.
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Yes, we have all the forms filled out too but the problem is that if you don’t know your student is having an issue, you don’t know you need to be giving the forms to anyone. Like if your student is at the hospital and no one tells you, you can’t send the forms there so you can get information.
Freshmen year we exchanged numbers with the roommate’s parents and roommate at move in. But after that we sort of dropped the ball and didn’t have good contact information for her roommates. We would have been able to reach each other in roundabout ways when needed, but it wouldn’t have been easy. I like that her bf can contact us now if needed.
This situation came up recently on our school’s parent Facebook page when a child had a medical issue and the parents were far away and were struggling to get information. But there was also a situation a year or so ago when a student was hospitalized for mental health issues and a parent was notified and the student was really upset. It’s a complicated situation.
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It’s important to know that once your offspring is a legal adult, parents are just another adult as far as the law is concerned. Without healthcare power of attorney, you have no input or information. We had friends whose son was in a coma after a head injury, and they had to get a court order to be part of decisions once he regained consciousness (but not cognitive operancy)
We had healthcare POA for both our adult kids , still have it for the unmarried one.
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It’s such a relief to have guardianship of our adult son. They have to tell to us and I sign all required paperwork.
Our neighbors ended up dealing with the aftermath (helping with insurance claims etc) when their D’s roommate was taken to the ER for alcohol poisoning and didn’t want to tell her parents…it made parents weekend quite awkward…
Absolutely. We have that in place too.
My kids are older now. But in the college days it was interesting to hear about the over-18 privacy laws but know that most kids were still on parents healthcare policy and would eventually see all the healthcare bills anyways. And of course be responsible for any expenses not covered.
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