Reply to kid just failed out of college, now what? and what does future look like?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Bring her home and have her start a local job.  Make an appointment with her primary care doctor, and with a therapist.  Keep trying out jobs it until she finds something that sticks, there are plenty of jobs that do not require degrees.   She can go to community college in a year or two after she matures and has her mental health under control.  This is not the end of the world.[/quote]

Completely agree with this sound advice.[/quote]

Lol I laughed hysterically at this advice.  You don’t just wind up a kid in the position of OP’s daughter, find her a job, find her a therapist etc.  You’re assuming there will be compliance and chances are there won’t be.  Then the issue is how do you handle non-compliance?  Do you throw her out?  I hardly think so.

We raised four kids, and three went straight on to the traditional successful trajectory. The fourth, who objectively is the brightest, did terrible in high school and suffered from depression, anxiety, you name it - although not ADHD.  She took a gap year, which was a waste of money, then got admitted to a respectable state college entirely because of her ridiculously high SAT score. It took her I don’t know how long to get out, seven or eight years?  But she finally did, with barely a[b] 2.0.  We never saw her grades, but continued paying tuition, because we thought it was better for all concerned if she did not live at home. 
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She floundered for quite a bit after graduation before eventually maturing, voluntarily seeing a therapist on her own initiative, and getting into - believe it or not a graduate program. She recently finished up and is now very gainfully employed and fully supporting herself in a job that really suits her and that helps others. So there is hope, but to me what is really required is a whole lot of empathy, understanding, and most of all support and patience. None of this bullshit “crack the whip” or “come up with a plan and stick with it” stuff.  It’s just going to backfire and ruin your relationship.  It’s time to accept the fact that your child is now an adult, and it is up to them, not to you, to fix them.[/quote]

You sound so kind. /s

I'm the previous poster, and what I posted helped my son when he failed out.

He needed more time. He needed support, but not to be hand held or babied. He got out of his depression and really leaned into his job. He recently started community college (age 21). He pays, then we reimburse him for Bs and As.  It's working. He has goals, a stable 40 hour a week job, and really is a different person in two years.  19 (assuming age of most college freshman) is still so young. There is plenty of time to have failures, regroup and build a great life.

I don't have enough money to pay for failing classes or paying rent for him just so that he's on his own.

If he hadn't complied with therapy and a full time job, the alternative plan was to have him move in with my brother in the Midwest. My son decided he would rather stay here.  It was his choice.  Our relationship slowly healed itself.  
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Yea different strokes for different folks.  The thing is, we never judged her or got angry at her for her situation because we knew she didn’t wish it on herself anymore than we did.  So there was no “planning” involved.  And, yes, we have money, but she was in a state school.

I will say, she never actually failed out of college.  She was on academic probation more than once, I believe, and I still remember one time I called the registrars office at the college, and while they made clear that they could not discuss her grades with me, I said to them “I am picturing a situation where a student is enrolling in five classes at the beginning of a semester, dropping one or two before the deadline, then failing one and passing two.”  And the registrar responded (probably illegally) “you know a student very well.”

So we are seriously talking about seven or eight years to get a degree, including summer school ha ha.  And we just paid the tuition and rent.

Several years later, she got herself into a graduate program (one of those programs where the prestige of the school doesn’t matter) on a provisional basis because of her checkered academic record, aced everything, graduated with honors, and started a fulfilling job at a beginning salary of nearly $80k.  The program she selected was all her doing - literally no input from us - and to make things better she even paid her own tuition thanks to the generous Covid unemployment benefits of a few years ago.  All of this with no damage to the parent /child relationship and no “healing “ required.

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