<p>My D is a rising sophomore and she did not make a successful transition to college life. Recently I realized that I should have supported her emotionally as well as informatively. Check this site for your D & S.</p>
<ol>
<li>Talk to your child. </li>
<li>Educate. </li>
<li>Provide reassurance. </li>
<li>Engage in open communication. </li>
<li>Be proactive. </li>
<li>Make sure your child knows that help is always available.</li>
</ol>
<p>Indicators of Difficulty with College Adjustment</p>
<ol>
<li>An expressed need for help </li>
<li>Prolonged sadness or depressed mood </li>
<li>Tearfulness, crying, and frequent emotional outbursts </li>
<li>Excessive irritability, hostility, anger, or resentment </li>
<li>Loss of interest and pleasure in activities once enjoyed </li>
<li>Withdrawal from social interactions </li>
<li>Statements of loneliness </li>
<li>Difficulty developing a social network on campus </li>
<li>Loss of energy and fatigue </li>
<li>Agitation and restlessness </li>
<li>Changes in sleep patterns </li>
<li>Trouble concentrating or making decisions </li>
<li>Missing class often </li>
<li>Falling behind in schoolwork or failing classes </li>
<li>Substantial changes in appetite, eating patterns, or weight </li>
<li>Feeling of guilt, hopelessness, or worthlessness </li>
<li>Risk taking behaviors, such as unprotected sex </li>
<li>Excessive use of alcohol or drugs </li>
<li>Hopelessness </li>
<li>Thoughts or statements of death or suicide</li>
</ol>
<p>Some parents do not talk to their students very often and sometimes students do not tell their parents what’s going on. The only sign many parents could see if the grades and sometimes it is not even shared. It is not as easy to detect those signs when students do not live at home. There are also a lot of parents on CC who believe once a student turns 18 then they should be on their own. It would be too much helicoptering to speak to them too often.</p>
<p>Yes and just like being “ready for kindergarten” encompasses social readiness and physical readiness in addition to mental readiness, being “ready for college” encompasses more than grades and test scores.</p>
<p>I don’t know how you would know about most of the 20 things on the list unless your child told you about them. </p>
<p>Problems at college may not be evident during breaks, when the student is at home, because the student is in a different environment. So parents don’t have much chance to observe the behaviors on the list. </p>
<p>You can only help if you know that there is a problem. Very often, you don’t know. I don’t think you should beat yourself up for that, unless you had put up barriers to communication (such as emphasizing that “now that you’re in college, you’re on your own”).</p>
<p>(This is not directed at the OP, or intended to be judgemental about anyone. Sometimes problems do show up without warning when kids get to college.)</p>
<p>What I have seen among my own friends, neighbors, and classmates of my kids, is that many of the “indicators of difficulty with college adjustment” show up during the high school years, and are ignored by parents, or shrugged off as typical adolescent behavior. </p>
<p>In particular, risk taking behaviors such as: excessive use of drugs and alcohol, falling behind in school work, failing classes (or just barely getting by, flying by the seat of your pants), missing classes, trouble concentrating, excessive irritability, hostility, anger… </p>
<p>When these indicators exist before kids leave for college, they don’t magically resolve themselves once the kid gets to college. If anything, the freedom kids experience in college allows all kinds of things (good and bad) to blossom. Some parents ignore these issues during high school and then are shocked when their kids have problems in college.</p>
<p>I agree with oldfort and Marian’s points of realities of the situation (and helicoptering thing) and momofthreeboys’ broader definition of difficulties over academic one. Yes, problems usaully begin during high school days just like the eastcoastcrazy’s excellent indication.</p>
<p>I agree with eastcoastcrazy that many problems in high school predict similar problems in college.</p>
<p>But maybe “irritability, hostility, anger” isn’t necessarily a predictor.</p>
<p>For some high school students, this kind of attitude reflects their unhappiness with being under the control of their parents at an age when they wish they could be more independent. They feel micromanaged, and it bugs them. This particular problem may disappear at college (and oddly, for some students, even when they come home for breaks, since they know they will go back to relative freedom in a few days or weeks).</p>
<p>One thing I did with my DS (who is at a very rigorous and highly selective college) was tell him that he did not have to stay at that school and he didn’t have to stick with his major if he found it wasn’t a good fit for him. He’s the type to worry about that type of thing, and I wanted to let him know that he needed to go where he would be happy while studying what he wanted to study. I also told him once he had his acceptances in to several public and private schools that he had to throw away the name/reputation of the schools and evaluate them based on fit.</p>
<p>I think this helped him to understand that we didn’t care about name or location, we cared about what would work for him. Kids want to succeed and if things are going wrong they don’t want to tell parents because they don’t want the parents to be “disappointed” in them. Take this off the table and hopefully it will help with discussions when there are problems. </p>
<p>I understand there are many other issues out there, but let them know that you want them to be happy and healthy and if that includes moving or leaving school if necessary, then that is OK.</p>
<p>^ So agree. We let D1 know she had the goods, judgment, skills to make it through college, that she would pick her direction. Told her we’d support her hunt with our experience and ideas, but only as needed. I did make it clear the finaid had to be right- and did that research.</p>
<p>Expressing early confidence in her gave her a sense of control that kept things smooth during the process. Just graduated from college.</p>
<p>Want to add that, just as kids grow so much between 11th and spring of 12th, they can grow a lot between college soph year and spring of senior year.</p>
<p>I felt it was important for my sons to learn to say no to other people, and I let them learn that skill by sometimes letting them successfully say no to me.</p>
<p>I am not talking about “just say no to drugs.” I am talking about learning to sometimes put themselves and their needs first and how to express that appropriately.</p>
<p>Every year there are so many threads about room mate “transgressions” which are not so awful but become a big deal because the students don’t know how to communicate with each other effectively.</p>
<p>Students also have to learn that, because not every one has the same schedule, the same work/test dates/due dates/professors/academic talents, they each need to figure out what they need to do, and when and how they need to do it–which may be quite different than a friend’s or a room mates modus operandi. And to learn to be comfortable doing what they need to do, and to be able to tell friends “no” without fear of being thought of as a weenie.</p>
<p>They also need to learn that the world does not revolve around them alone, and that they need to learn to thrive where they are planted, even if not every aspect is ideal. Delicate snowflakes need to toughen up. They need to learn that other people also have their own needs, their own styles etc. and that sometimes live and let live is a necessary compromise. They need to be able to discover an alternative, and how to make it work, when the first choice isn’t working (eg., maybe you always want to study in the room? But sometimes the room mate wants to have a friend over to watch a movie while the whole rest of the floor is watching ESPN in the lounge/wants to sleep early /wants to skype with a friend from home, etc. So you need to learn to sometimes go study in a study lounge, or the library,etc.)</p>
<p>So many times these things get in the way of a student being successful. They let small stumbling blocks become massive mountains blocking their way to success.</p>
<p>Agree with VAMom2015 and lookingforward’s point that parents’ role is supporting DS to find their paths for themselves and communicating with them only when asked. Also agree with boyssx3’s point, but D yet to ask me. I am just wating.</p>
<p>One thing not mentioned is teaching our kids to be their own advocates, including regarding health issues. This is especially if they have chronic health conditions. Agree our kids can fool us and not share when they are struggling. All each of us can do is our best and keep lines of communication as open as possible.</p>
<p>Any further observations, from experienced parents, of the traits that are displayed in 11th grade and 12th grade (academic and personal) by the kids who will “sink” in college, and those who will “swim”? </p>
<p>I also think there’s a difference between commuting to college and living in a dorm, in terms of adjustment and success. Dorm living requires a heightened level of self-discipline, in order to survive academically, and especially so if academics don’t come easily. If a kid is weak academically, poorly self-disciplined, and not too concerned with the outcome, odds of success in a dorm seem slim.</p>
<p>The UCLA HERI (“Higher Ed Research Institute”) has an online calculator, predicting the odds of degree completion for various slices of the undergrad cohort. The completion rates are soberingly low, for many. The calculator does not indicate why the kids did not finish. The kids who run out of money, the kids who flunk, and the kids who decide they’d rather be chefs are all lumped together.</p>
<p>We talked about the transition in our home before sending D off to school. I also found books really helpful. The Naked Roommate is a humorous look at the transition to college. I gave it as a gift to many high school grads. It addresses so many issues with college life, dorms, classes, building a community, using health services, to have or not to have sex, etc. There is companion book for parents too.</p>
<p>I found both books insightful and helpful. --Much like the folks here. :)</p>
<p>That was me when I was a HS student and factored into my angry rebelliousness from 13-15 and why my HS GPA was in the toilet. Plenty of other HS kids are like that as well due to personality conflicts with parents, getting fed up with micromanaging/helicoptering parents, or just adolescent/teen hormones. </p>
<p>Ended up graduating with highly respectable college grades…which were a near polar opposite of my HS transcript.</p>
<p>I don’t think parents should constantly bug their kids who are at college, but a parent can certainly take the initiative in bringing up a topic.</p>
<p>Big issue in my opinion is that parents manage the college process for THEIR egos, beliefs, fears, etc. and not the situation of their student. For some reason, we have distorted the purpose and reasons to even attend college. When I was growing up in lower middle class/blue collar America, the goal of becoming an adult was to be self supporting in whatever way made sense for you. An unemployed gender studies graduate would not have the social status of a successful Plumber. </p>
<p>So, why is you S or D even going to college? Without a clear answer that makes financial sense, you are wasting you money and setting you kids up for failure. </p>
<p>If the purpose is to simply be ‘educated’ then there are libraries (books), Internet learning (Coursera, Edex, Kahn Academy (all free)), and low cost community colleges.</p>
<p>I agree that there are indicators of how well a student will transition before he or she ever sets foot on a college campus, but they’re not always as obvious as risk-taking behavior and failing or barely passing classes. Consider things like how much “help” does your child need with homework or with managing his or her schedule? If she’s fairly dependent on outside support for these things, there are likely academic bumps in the future. How social is your child/how easily does he or she make NEW friends? And finally, and perhaps most importantly, how much emotional control does your child have? </p>
<p>When we look for these indicators, it’s important to step back and try to look objectively and not through eyes clouded with a parents love. They’re all great kids, but no matter the grades/test scores/success at rigorous high schools, they’re not all ready to go away to college</p>