<p>OK, I went back and read the other posts. It sounds from this latest that Marquette will let him come back for the spring?</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Assuming that everyone agrees that going to school next semester is the right choice, what does your son think he needs in the way of structural support to help him be successful? Is he in “spring semester will be different and I need no help from anyone to make it so” denial / magical thinking? Has he / can he come up with a list of specific things he’ll do differently in the spring? Can he identify what he’ll do when he doesn’t accomplish something on that list? For example, if the list includes “go to every class session,” what positive thing will he do to get himself back on track when he does miss a class, where “I don’t need to worry about that, because I won’t miss a class” is a very worrying answer. </p></li>
<li><p>IMHO the “commuting doesn’t leave me enough time to study” (and the argument I see coming, “cleaning up after myself doesn’t leave me enough time to study”) are protective arguments. If spring term doesn’t go well, he can point to them and say, “see, I told you that doing it your way won’t work.” It looks like Marquette permits part-time attendance - is there any way that would be an acceptable-to-everyone option? Less pressure, fewer opportunities to fall behind / give up, more time to work on personal issues.</p></li>
<li><p>As far as standards of acceptable behavior at home, I think it’ll be more successful if he comes up with the rules and you agree to them (with or without negotiated modification) than if you come up with the rules and foist them upon him. Unless you’re prepared to kick him out, you’ve got minimal ability to enforce them anyhow. If he needs some structure to go by, draw up an outline for him to fill in, leaving a couple of fall-back options for each item. “I plan to be in the house for the night by [X] on weeknights and [Y] on weekends. If I’m not going to make that time, I want to [call Z minutes before with a new ETA], so my family won’t worry about me. If I forget to call, I think I should [respond promptly to calls or texts], so my parents know I’m OK. If my phone is lost / has a dead battery / has no bars, I can [borrow a friend’s phone / go into a business and ask to use the phone / hit the OnStar button in the car and ask them to contact my family].” Let him fill in the bracketed parts - the idea is to get him thinking about what he’d ideally like to have happen, and to identify how to get back on track when that’s not what does happen.</p></li>
<li><p>Have him come up with similar plans for school. “I plan to attend every class session, even if I’m unprepared or find the lecture uninteresting. If I miss a class, I’ll get back on track by…” Missing class is such a vicious cycle - you get anxious about class, so you decide to skip just this once. Or you subconsciously decide, by setting yourself up so that it wasn’t your fault - you stay up late studying (“See how virtuous I am!”) and then oversleep (“But not my fault, because it was virtuousness that led to it!”). Then you’re embarrassed that you missed class, and every time you think about the class, you get more anxious because it brings up the embarrassment, and so you avoid thinking about the class - which means no doing the homework, no reading, no going to the next class session. And then you flunk. Missing a class is not the end of the world, unless you let it be. IMHO without a plan for getting back on track, there’s a good chance of you seeing him get up and walk towards the bus stop every day, and not knowing that he wasn’t going to class when he got to campus. “I hadn’t done the reading / homework, so I couldn’t go to class.” “I never learn anything from the lecture anyhow, so I went to the library to study instead.” There’s always a reason that sounds good at the time.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Good luck. And if it doesn’t work out well, try not to take it too personally. Even really smart kids can have a hard time transitioning to increased independence. And the fact that someone else’s kid appears to have handled the transition more easily does not mean they were superior parents. There is a lot more beyond our control than people like to think.</p>