Not really many tests. Lots of writing and journal submissions, etc. There’s not a ton of work. High school was much harder and is why he finds the content easy. But he’s missing deadlines, not rewriting drafts, etc. Socially it’s been a breeze for him.
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It can be hard for someone who doesn’t struggle with EF themselves to genuinely understand why failing to turn in assignments isn’t laziness.
A trick to relate - think of something others can do naturally and you struggle with. I use my struggle with sleep. Others can do it so easily, but I can’t. I am genuinely trying; I just can’t do it well. And that sucks for me and my family.
For someone without executive functioning issues, turning in an assignment can seem like a simple, almost automatic task: you do the work, you click submit, you’re done. But for someone with executive functioning challenges, that process involves a lot of invisible steps — planning when to start, managing distractions, estimating how long it will take, remembering to come back and finish, checking that it’s complete, and then actually turning it in.
Each of those steps relies on mental skills that can be harder to coordinate when executive functioning is impaired. So even if the person really wants to get it done and is genuinely trying, their brain may struggle to organize the sequence or switch between tasks smoothly enough to finish on time.
To someone without these challenges, the delay can look like laziness or lack of motivation, because they don’t feel how much extra effort it takes just to stay on track.
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He has accomodations and they’ve been in place with the school since day one. But it’s still on him to notify the teacher x days in advance anytime he wants to use them, so he forgets. He has ADHD meds, but mostly forgets to take them too. He has an EF coach, but I see no difference. I’ve given him the resources…
If he has EF issues, and the main problem is handing things in late or missed assignments, then either he needs better accommodations or better coaching.
I don’t get the title of this thread. You don’t get better grades by paying more: that would be like bribery! He loves his school and is getting a lot for your money, it seems. He is happy and learning. B’s are fine.
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While FERPA may prevent you from contacting the disabilities staff (and you are right, HE has to follow up with his professors and to explore any other support options the school offers, you should be able to contact the EF coach. Many coaches are not licensed per se, so they may not be bound by any confidentiality issues and even if they don’t feel comfortable disclosing to you, you can speak to them about your concerns and what you have been made aware of. And finally, if you are within driving distance, go visit your kid and have this conversation face to face, over a nice dinner.
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I’m curious how he was doing these at high school (my kid has to arrange accommodations with the teacher and has to remember their daily meds. We also had a trial run with totally owning their med schedule while away at a 4 week summer program. The odd tablet gets forgotten but maybe once a month.) If he was doing these things independently at high school then he should have been well prepared to continue self advocacy/med schedules etc and it’s worth trying to figure out what put him off stride. If he wasn’t doing these at school (example: the teachers automatically gave him the accommodations, you reminded him of or put his meds out each morning - in other words he was being scaffolded) then doing this independently is part of the adjustment and the EF coach could be helping him with things like this as well, example: set a daily alarm at med time; look at the calendar and add in the x days in advance he needs to notify the profs or uses the assignment being set as the trigger to ask for the accommodation, etc. ideally over time he would get in the habit of doing these without needing the reminders.
This is hard for adhd kids.
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College professor here.
A student is not guaranteed top grades in exchange for tuition dollars.
A student is guaranteed the opportunity to learn in exchange for tuition dollars.
The end.
(Well, except for a postscript: If there are serious EF issues, grad school is most likely not an optimal idea. Grad school requires intense self-discipline. There may be a need for an uncomfortable discussion about plans and goals.)
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I’m also struggling with the title versus the actual subject matter.
I don’t have an EF kid, but we were full pay for both kids (one at an in-state public, one at an OOS public), although nowhere near $90k per year but nonetheless, I can comment on what the expectations were for us as full pay parents.
I gave each of them some grace to adjust to college life and college-level coursework. One daughter attended a notoriously rigorous college and there were some struggles early on while she got her footing. My other daughter struggled with one particular course that again, was notoriously hard at her college.
In both cases, our expectations were (and conversations were had) that they would give their best efforts. Since we were paying, they were expected to attend class, complete assignments and seek help from professors if needed. If grades began to suffer because social lives took precedence over class attendance, then we would have to revisit our agreement to pay (didn’t happen but we wanted to establish what the consequence would be).
Both were mostly A students in HS. We didn’t set any specific grade requirements in college because it is apples/oranges when comparing to HS. I didn’t monitor their grades, but they knew that we only agreed to pay for 4 years, so they needed to do what they had to, in order to graduate within that time frame (which was totally doable at each college) or start paying themselves.
I can only imagine what EF issues add to the mix, along with the stresses of paying such a high tuition cost. As long as your child is on track to graduate and is competitive for the desired grad program, maybe relax a little bit on the grades.
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If I understand correctly, it is your son who promised top grades and you feel like he is not living up to that promise.
If that is right, I think you are not at all alone in a general sense. As others explained, kids who attend selective colleges are likely to find themselves in a very different competitive situation from what they experienced in high school. Moreover, they may quickly learn from the example of others that top grades in college may not really be necessary for them to have good next-step opportunities. And meanwhile there are a lot of other exciting things going on.
The easy thing to say is things like this are why families should only choose colleges that are comfortably affordable. Choosing a college that is not comfortably affordable puts too much pressure on the kid to justify the financial burden. But that’s not going to help you now.
So what are your actual options?
You could obviously do what you can to make sure the EF coaching is as good as it can be, but that may only get you so far.
You could threaten to force him to transfer to a less expensive college, but that would have to be a credible threat, meaning you would actually do it if whatever conditions you set were not met.
Or you could do your best to encourage him in a positive way, and accept what happens may not be exactly what you originally hoped would happen.
I don’t know enough about you and your family to actually give you meaningful advice about what to do, but I will say I don’t think seeing this in terms of promises broken is going to help. At this point, I think it is most productive just to focus on consequences. What will it mean for him and for you if you make different choices? That to me seems like the question that you have to confront.
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yes
And I found with my 25, the amount of EF needed in college is way, way, more, not because courses are so much harder (though they are harder for them though maybe not for OP) but info is SO scattered - each prof has a different format for syllabus - some are on websites, some are in LMS…there are 3 portals to do anything and a separate webpage for the disability office from academic advising etc. Kid gets fed up trying to navigate it all. All the online tools are really designed pretty poorly and navigation is awful. (I sat and watched them try to do some things one day).
HS obviously had this challenge, to some extent, for academics, but the added burden of res life, maintenance, advising, clubs, etc., is substantial. Definitely more cumbersome than I have ever experienced.
All of that makes doing academics harder. It is annoying.
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My concern wouldn’t be the grades, it would be this from your post: there’s not much work, it’s easier than high school, and he finds the content easy. College should be challenging. If it’s not, something’s missing and learning is what’s being sacrificed.
One more thing to think about - is it possible the real issue is that an 18-year-old talked you into spending an additional $50K a year against your better judgement, and you’re not entirely comfortable with the financial situation and feeling buyer’s remorse?
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The transition to college is tough for many students! The fact that your son loves his school is already a win IMO. I remember finding classes my freshman year “easy” too in terms of being able to follow the material, but then exams, projects, papers not so much. And the curves were a hindrance, not a help.
Expecting straight As is not realistic for your son to promise, or for you to expect.
What you can expect is for him to do his best, go to office hours, join a study group and work with his coach. Even if all of that clicks, it doesn’t mean there will be straight As. And that’s totally OK!
I will echo that there would have been no guarantee that he wouldn’t have experience the same issues at a lower ranked school. It could have been even worse if there was less scaffolding for him there.
The great news is it’s only first semester. He has time to figure it out.
**
IMO, the bigger concern for me is that it sounds like your family are really stretching to make this school affordable and that this is a big stressor. Your son can take out the federal loans and you can insist that he work a full time job in the summers to help with costs. IMO, both of those things would be reasonable asks.
Some kids do better with having some financial skin in the game but it depends on how your kid is wired.
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It also may be possible to waive FERPA for discussions with the disabilities office. One of my kids has a processing disorder similar to dyslexia. To receive accommodations in college, he had to go through a two day intake with testing, etc. Can’t remember what my questions were now, but I did have some that they couldn’t answer unless my son signed a FERPA waiver, which he did.
It seems a little absurd to me to require somebody with executive functioning disability to have to notify a professor in advance to take advantage of his accommodations when that sort of notification deadline is something that is exceedingly difficult for this disability and is the sort of thing that needs to be accommodated. I would want an explanation for that and see if there’s some sort of work around given the missed assignments, etc..
I don’t have a kid with an EF disability, but missing assignments would be a real issue for me too. I understand that’s part of the disability, but it is also low hanging fruit. I had multiple discussions with my kids about not leaving free money on the table. Do the extra credit. Turn things in on time. Don’t miss assignments. The EF coach needs to put enough guard rails/safety nets/study plans/reminders in place so this doesn’t happen and the student can learn to do this himself.
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My kid already has to do this in high school, fyi. And for some accommodations it can’t be “waived”, example if an accommodation is to be able to take tests in a quiet room this has to be set up in advance with the disability center to ensure space and a proctor.
Agree strongly on this - this should be part of what the coach does anyway.
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A couple of thoughts:
- Re your post title, yes it’s unfair on several levels. If he hadn’t had straight As in high school (or if he struggled for them) then it’s just plain silly to expect his grades to jump in college, especially with the difficulties you described.
- You can set expectations for behaviors – turning in assignments, etc. I am, though, a little stuck on the degree to which you know he has missing assignments. Is he telling you about them, or are you checking his grades online? Have you considered backing off a little bit, not checking his grades/assignments, and letting him learn from natural consequences what happens when he doesn’t do what he needs to do?
- I assume at this point you’re asking if you can decide not to pay for school any more if your kid doesn’t act the way you want him to. And yes, you can. But think carefully through what that can cost both you and him.
An anecdote: My (very, very controlling) parents “let” me go to college on the condition that I, a 3.3 GPA high school student, get straight As. They contributed 30% of the costs of my first semester of college – the rest came out of money I’d saved up and my merit scholarship. After an escalating series of antics over the course of that semester, they pulled me out of school when ended up with 3 As and 2 B+s; literally the best academic semester I had ever had. I ended up leaving home for good two weeks later and found a job, a home, and a way to get back to school. In short, I was fine, but my relationship with my parents never recovered and we remained mostly estranged until their deaths.
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Yes, FERPA can be waived in virtually any circumstance, IIRC, but I made the assumption that it had not been in this case.
How could giving a professor advanced notice of a required accommodation possibly be considered “absurd”? How else is the professor to know that she should reserve the exam room for time and a half? How else is a professor to know that he should reserve a separate room for testing for a student who needs to test alone? How else is a professor to know that a student will require any number of various accommodations that require advanced planning? Asking a professor to keep track of the multiple, multiple students in multiple classes all requiring different and often changing/updated accommodations, almost all of which require advanced preparation (reserving an extra room, etc.), would be “unreasonable” if not impossible.
Although it may be difficult for a student with an EF disability to remember to notify a professor in advance that she needs an accommodation, not notifying the professor in advance is the thing that would be absurd. Professors should be understanding and flexible and helpful in working with students with EF disabilities. But it is not absurd to ask students with EF disabilities to notify their professors of the supports that they need. If they can’t remember to do this on their own, the college disability office should be able to support the student to make sure the accommodations are requested in advance.
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It can be waived, but at my kids’ colleges, even if waived parents can only see final grades, so I assume this parent is using the student’s log in information.
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And in fact, that’s a pretty widespread practice.
One note about FERPA waivers, though: They allow individuals at a university to disclose information to parents. They do not require such disclosures.
So even with a FERPA waiver, it doesn’t mean you will automatically have access to everything. (And sometimes that’s IMO a good thing—I once had a student tell me they’d signed their FERPA waiver under duress, basically a parent saying to sign it or there would be no money for college forthcoming. No, I most definitely refused to disclose how that student was performing in class the multiple times their parent called my office, no matter how much legal action they threatened.)
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No, I don’t think it is fair to expect straight A’s. Even the best surgeons have a patient die on the table every now and then.
I think its fair to note you will not pay to retake classes. I think its fair to remind the kid you will not allow him to live at home after college graduation and that they need to become financially independent.
I do think it is okay for the kids dreams and goals to change. I do not think a B or a C is a failing grade.
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