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[quote=Anonymous]

OP - So have any of these posts given you pause to consider your decision or to maybe take a step back in how you will transition DD to the college setting of at least 'your choice'?

My posts above are a compilation of personal in terms of having a very high performing daughter go off to college 20 years ago and soon be told that we had sent a 12 year old to college in terms of some emotional lack of development. She pulled out early in the semester of her sophomore year and the insurance we had saved us thousands of dollars, and the fact that she had AP credits kept her place in school.  Then later after about 1.5 years of great schooling she once again hit the wall at Thanksgiving time in her senior year with anxiety, lack of sleep etc.  and somehow was home for six weeks over Christmas and pulled  it together once again.   So from that aspect I can write about the impact on DD and on the family unit itself.  And studies were never her issue as she graduated magna cum laude - part of the "perfect girl" drive within herself. We can all laugh at it now, but looking back when she did not know how to operate her alarm clock, we should have known something was amiss.

My posts are also really from a broader context across all disabilities as a parent being interested in the issue of transition for teens with a wide array of disabilities and from knowing other families and seeing what has worked and what does not work.  You can't wish away a disability or thing that college will be a magic erase board.  Also there are times that college is simply four years away that are putting off the inevitable issue of how one will transition from the family unit to a full, independent life of one's own.  We also have a DD with Down syndrome who does reside with us and needs a level of oversight (not direct care) that will ensure she will be living with us for some time unless some magical wand of funding comes from above!!  However, in her case we knew that the college experience was not an option, and so focused on skills need to obtain a job in her high school and post high program through age 21.  She was equipped and ready to work and has held a part-time job for ten years in a college dining hall.  She also volunteers one day a week and enjoys socializing with a college aged peer (though she is 30).  In between we have a third daughter who did very well navigating life between the other two and is a wonderful pediatric physical therapist.  My point is that staying within the family structure is a need that some young adults may have, but many others will be able to move on - BUT not necessarily right at age 18 or going right off to a four year college.

I also write from the point of view of a professor's wife.     DH was the kind of professor you hoped to meet who was more than understanding based on the wide array of performance of our three daughters and the wonderful support our older daughter had gotten at her college.  ***However, to give accommodations, one has to  know about them ie from the student.

The statistics in general point out that mental health issues often occur for the first time in late teens and early 20s and often the varying pressures of college and grad school life are the pressure points that tip the balance.  Issue may have been there in high school, but with family unit. much of ADLs being taken care of by others, structure of high school and the busyness of life for a teen to get into college (school work, homework, extra-curricular activities, volunteer work or paid job etc.), there is often little time for "open time."  Then you turn around and you are literally deposited at college and "the world of open time" ahead of you for only you to decide what to do with and how to live.  And then things come crashing down.  It is this experience that you really want to try to avoid for any young adult.

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