Is anyone else's kid ignoring all the onboarding info?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine is in the same place, and I suspect the previous posters suggesting your child is not ready for college don't have older teens. They will get crummy housing and not their first choice of classes, and hopefully, they'll learn. It's ok and will be ok. Promise.

It will be okay... if OP possibly enjoys paying for something the is possibly going to be a big waste of money.

Those are clear red flags. Or at the very least pink flags that a serious talk needs to happen where expectations are clearly defined.

Yes, crappy housing and classes are the natural consequences of not signing up prior to the deadline. But avoiding even opening email, the simplest of tasks is also a red flag that OP's DD could be depressed. Or just not ready for college.

I have one graduating from college in a few weeks, one graduating from HS in June, and one who will be a senior in HS next year.

If my current HS senior displayed this lack of action and I was paying for his education, there's no way that would fly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't believe the previous poster. And way to many parents here need to land their helicopters. Your kids will be fine.

Why would I list the name of the school if I was lying?
Absolutely 100% true. Multiple posts from pissed off parents. I was shocked - I personally feel it’s too harsh but I started checking things a little more because my child is not the most on top of things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am in the parent group for FSU. There are multiple posts from kids who didn’t sign up for orientation as they were told to, and the university rescinded admission. Parents appealed and it was too bad, so sad.

Find it hard to believe that happened, pp. OP, make sure she has her notifications turned on for email. Between their committed school, plus the continued spam and residuals from other colleges, it's a mess. As long as deposit is in, that's the most important thing. As far as I know, housing for freshman doesn't open up this early. Orientation doesn't either, but may be earlier for a few schools.

She should go into her portal and upload her pic for school ID, start filling out the required docs for emergency contacts, IT and other departments, check for placement tests (if any).

The BIG one is she needs to assign delegates (you), fill out HIPPA and legal forms so you have access to medical proxy, and whatever else she agrees to. Parents and students have to sign. She can also add your email address to receive the same emails she's receiving.

[Anonymous]

Kids in that age don't check emails. They just don't. It's something they have to learn to do and you reminding them is part of that process. They will some snafu down the line because of not checking email that will reinforce what you said, but missing out on an important college deadline is not the snafu you want.

OP, sit her down have a come to Jesus meeting and help her get through this. You're doing fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am in the parent group for FSU. There are multiple posts from kids who didn’t sign up for orientation as they were told to, and the university rescinded admission. Parents appealed and it was too bad, so sad.

What!!! Holy moly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am in the parent group for FSU. There are multiple posts from kids who didn’t sign up for orientation as they were told to, and the university rescinded admission. Parents appealed and it was too bad, so sad.

Find it hard to believe that happened, pp. OP, make sure she has her notifications turned on for email. Between their committed school, plus the continued spam and residuals from other colleges, it's a mess. As long as deposit is in, that's the most important thing. As far as I know, housing for freshman doesn't open up this early. Orientation doesn't either, but may be earlier for a few schools.

She should go into her portal and upload her pic for school ID, start filling out the required docs for emergency contacts, IT and other departments, check for placement tests (if any).

The BIG one is she needs to assign delegates (you), fill out HIPPA and legal forms so you have access to medical proxy, and whatever else she agrees to. Parents and students have to sign. She can also add your email address to receive the same emails she's receiving.

It 100% happened. I have seen posts from panicked students on other message boards myself.

[Anonymous]

OP-- What I have done in the past is talk to my child about the importance of monitoring their email and responding timely to college requests. I offered to monitor their email for them to keep track so they don't miss anything. This has worked very well and once my child is mature enough to do it for themself, I stop the monitoring. I found that if I don't monitor, lots of important things fall through the cracks.

[Anonymous]

Maybe the better lesson was to have let something fall through the cracks 5 years ago so they could have already learned the fallout and manage it for themselves now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Maybe sign her up for an executive function crash course this summer?

NP, but my senior with ADD and executive function deficits is flailing right now. Yes, there’s anxiety to boot.

Does anyone know of an “executive function crash course” that might be available for college-bound kids? My kid has a summer job for six weeks, but it’s not full-time, so she has some flexibility. Would be grateful for any recs!

I believe The Study Pro in McLean has offered a summer course for kids on their way to college. I don’t see it on their courses for this summer, but call them and ask. My high school kid meets with an executive function coach weekly and it has been life changing. They go through my kid’s school emails together, homework, etc. and map out a to do list for the entire week with time estimates included for each task. By the time they head to college, the executive function part of the puzzle will be routine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“So I looked and sure enough, she's not checked her College X email, or opened her high school email from College X.”

OP, this is a huge red flag to me. Why do you even have access to your DD’s high school email or college email? Did you regularly check her emails during high school? Having passwords and checking your kid’s email is a huge invasion of privacy and is not appropriate. Does your DD have ADHD? Maybe sign her up for an executive function crash course this summer?

NP-I respectfully disagree. Every family is different. In our family if a minor child has an email account the parents have full access to it. We don't read every email but we are able to. When our dd was a junior in high school we created a completely new email account for her to be used for college applications. I would regularly check that email account to see if there were any time sensitive emails. Then I would remind her that she needed to check her emails more often. It is a lot for high school seniors to handle. She got better at it. As she got better at it I faded out. I want my teens to learn how to be independent but it doesn't need to be an all or nothing situation. Once she had picked a school we reminded her how to unsubscribe from other school emails systems so that she would not get flooded by junk email. When she was 18 and leaving for college we talked about her changing her password and that we no longer needed access. She said she was fine with us having it and that it was nice to know we were able to get in in an emergency. And it has come in handy. This past week she was on a school trip with no electronics. Before she left she asked me to check her email daily in case anything came in that needed to be dealt with before she got back. It did. The company that the school uses for fridge rentals emailed her and she had 48 hours to reply or we would lose our security deposit. This set up works for our family.

We did the same with our DD but it started sophomore year because she was going through athletic recruiting and had to me constantly emailing coaches etc. It also became her college application email. My husband and I had it on our phones so we would check it at least every few days and my daughter was really happy to have us involved. She has pretty much taken over everything at this point but it was a good system for our family.

For the OP, I wanted to say that being an ED student potentially contributes to this because I saw it a bit with my DD who go into her ED school in December when there was nothing going on for months in her portal. It just fell off her radar even while she was on the group email chain getting to know classmates. I nudged her to check a few weeks ago and she filled out her housing forms which were now (months later) on the portal. No emergency, just that she is really busy with sports, end of senior year etc. She does also have ADD but she has been working on this for years and has figured out how to manage things.

Everyone will have a different path so the reactions from some parents are foreign to others. Our way may not work for other families but it seems to be working for us. Good luck OP!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Maybe sign her up for an executive function crash course this summer?

NP, but my senior with ADD and executive function deficits is flailing right now. Yes, there’s anxiety to boot.

Does anyone know of an “executive function crash course” that might be available for college-bound kids? My kid has a summer job for six weeks, but it’s not full-time, so she has some flexibility. Would be grateful for any recs!

I believe The Study Pro in McLean has offered a summer course for kids on their way to college. I don’t see it on their courses for this summer, but call them and ask. My high school kid meets with an executive function coach weekly and it has been life changing. They go through my kid’s school emails together, homework, etc. and map out a to do list for the entire week with time estimates included for each task. By the time they head to college, the executive function part of the puzzle will be routine.

Thank you, I’ll contact them!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am in the parent group for FSU. There are multiple posts from kids who didn’t sign up for orientation as they were told to, and the university rescinded admission. Parents appealed and it was too bad, so sad.

Yup. This did happen to an acquaintance of ours. They didn’t take the deadline seriously and now the son is going to community college in the fall. He’s devastated. Hard lesson to learn.

[Anonymous]

My senior needed some nagging at the start. I have a couple times sat down with him to look at the school's to-do list and make sure he's done the things on the list. Some of the school communications are really confusing so it was helpful to be there to help him trouble shoot as he went through the first big task of setting up his school account, school email, link it into gmail so he can see it on his phone, and then access the housing portal, sign the housing contract, understand the different LLC options and fill out that application.

He does seem to be getting better and signed up for orientation without me nagging. But now I need to follow up to be sure he also signed up for the separate orientation for his major, which include advisor meeting and class selection. He's going to a big state school and it does seem like a lot of balls to juggle and easy for things to fall through the cracks.

[Anonymous]

OP, I would not panic, but might sit her down and let her explain why she is not checking the emails, etc.

I think that it is totally natural for a second semester senior to just want to blow off some responsibilities and I also think they are anxious about the future.

I will say one thing to look for - some kids (I can think of some I know well) looked at the college acceptance as the achievement - they felt like once they were accepted to a school their work was done and everyone should congratulate them. These are the kids who need to be reminded that the acceptance is just the beginning - that now starts both the hard work and the adventure.

[Anonymous]

I definitely think some anxiety is normal. DS really didn't want to engage with anything after he committed to a school in February. He wanted to just wait until senior year was over to start thinking about college. I had to sit him down and explain that XYZ has to happen now unless you really want to be in the crappiest dorm and not get any classes that you want.