@2muchquan That’s OK; I’ll try harder to keep up. :-S I’m learning so much I don’t want to slow you all down.
Related question: When talking about the meningitis vaccine, DS said that he’d like some sort of “does this symptom warrant a doctor visit or should I just take an Advil” resource or training before going off to college. (He took the required semester of Health. You’d think that would be a topic covered.)
@Ynotgo That’s a really good thought. It’s hard for kids to know, and sometimes I think they either don’t realize how sick they are (brushing off something serious as a cold or the flu) or allow themselves to get worse because of dehydration, etc.
^Or they don’t know how to make a doctor’s appointment.
Our insurance plan includes a 24 on call nurse for free consultation for those types of questions as well as TeleDoc (small charge) for simple things like swimmers ear. Love it bc kids can call and be able to get an opinion wo it eating up a lot of time.
We do have a high deductible, but we also receive $1800 on a healthcare visa to cover part of it. I don’t know how other universities will consider it. Bama doesn’t ask specifics.
@Ynotgo – or the student does not think to look in the box under his bed for the meds you sent up in August when you moved him into his dorm room.
My son has definitely been more sick since starting college than he ever was at home (even while swimming through the winter) and I assume it is due to having a roommate and communal living. Nothing serious yet, but more coughing, sneezing, low fever than he ever experienced before. You feel bad but it all seems to pass.
@greeny8 Maybe by having your kids graduate one behind the other will condense the stress into a shorter period of time. I know I’ll be a bit depressed when son17 leaves, and then i have the stress of son19 for 2 years until he graduates , and then more sadness. I’m not particularly looking forward to what’s coming, even though I know I should be. I need to get better with the whole circle of life concept and embrace it.
Insurance: my kids will be staying on our family health plan. I already looked into this recently and glad we don’t have to do anything differently.
Re: Health Insurance, it has seemed to vary by school for us and has come up on tours etc as well. There was one school, and I can’t recall which one, where apparently it is rather difficult to get “their” mandated insurance waived so I plan to read the fine print wherever we end up! Our insurance has been good out of state so far but we’ve not really had much need to test it out, appointments are made when SD is home and SS went to school in town so that wasn’t an issue.
As for kids making doctors appointments…yeah. Not. SD14 really needs new glasses and is apparently incapable of going to Costco (who takes our vision insurance) while at school and placing the order, paying for it and picking them up. But of course didn’t place the order here while home for spring break as they wouldn’t be ready before she went back to school.
Sigh.
Re: Books. I realize we’ve moved on but would like to thank you all for my lack of sleep last night. Thinking about favorite authors caused me to realize a favorite had a newer release out which I downloaded to read on the plane last night on a business trip. Of course I couldn’t put it down.
YAWN
Stress is high at my house right now. I will be SO glad when this spring musical is over on Sunday. S17 is a moody wreck even by his own admission and I’m seeing it in the grades…and his weight. Med check-up 2 days ago for a dosage change on the ADHD meds and the already way too skinny and tall kid dropped 4 pounds in a month. Too busy with the musical, test prep and homework and forgets to eat. Meds impact the appetite and he hasn’t been taking the counter med (aka his “hungry pills”). Grades have slid a bit, which while normal during the show, it is junior year and it concerns me. I told him he wasn’t allowed to go out with friends this weekend after the play. He is furious that I’m restricting him both nights but my goodness…the show friday night, ACT practice test sat am, show sat night, show sunday matinee. He needs homework time and sleep and not going out at 10:30 pm. One weekend of forced slow down will not kill him.
It may kill me though, surviving this weekend (and making sure he EATS). Quite sure the moodiness is related to the non eating, the problem is that it’s during the school day when he forgets, not so bad at all at home. We’d just like to get him into the 1st percentile on the growth chart. Which does sound worse than it is, the kid keeps getting taller but not adding weight…or regressing a tad.
Lol @CT1417, my D has a meds box that we put together for college. Yet, instead of looking in the box, I will get a text asking me if she has a particular cure-all. I gave her so many sarcastic replies that now she looks first. She also has a tool box we put together. Strangely enough she looks in that before asking about a tool???
D15’s school had specific requirements for health insurance. First semester we had to pay for their plan because we were on an HMO. For the new year we switched to a PPO so we met their exemption criteria and coverage was waived after filing the required documentation.
We also purchased insurance that included damage or theft of her phone, computer, personal belongings and her long board (which is her primary transportation mode around her large, flat campus and was not cheap). The cost was very reasonable (~$80?) and was worth it for complete peace of mind.
@eandesmom I think I would make the same restriction, but it is hard when they don’t see it our way. Hang in there.
@mtrosemom LOL. Now that D14 has moved off campus, I have gone from knowing absolutely nothing to being the source of all knowledge. I got a call a couple of days ago – “How do I change the ink in my printer?” She’s 5 hours away and bought the printer used there. I don’t even know (or care) what brand it is. I thought everyone knew about Google.
@eandesmom Hang in there. Hoping all the stress is manageable. The show must go on! Your restrictions sound quite reasonable given his schedule.
Insurance: I meant to say earlier, (thanks for reminding me @jmek15 ) consider dorm/rental insurance for your kids’ possessions. I think we paid a very small annual premium to add it to our homeowner insurance policy, which cover the same types of theft/loss as @jmek15 mentions.
Health insurance: One effect of Obamacare is that children can continue to be covered by parental health insurance up to age 26, even if they are married and/or financially independent. So we’re not worried on that score. (And it isn’t a financial difference for us, either, since we have younger kids on our insurance, thus requiring no additional cost to keep the oldest on.) And out insurance is good enough that it should fulfill any school’s requirements.
The interesting question is our 15-year-old, who’s absolutely in love with a couple programs at Canadian universities that merge industrial engineering and design in really interesting ways. I haven’t built up the courage to look at what happens with insurance across national borders yet, though.
I’m aggravated by this-the college I attend does this to me as a commuter student, and I already have really expensive health insurance through my husband’s work. I swear it’s just another way to gouge people.
The kids can be covered on our insurance through age 26 if they’re full-time students. We plan on keeping them on the plan for as long as they need to. That’s not something I’ll cut off (like cell phones, lol) when they fly the coop :).
For about a year I’ve been telling the girls to look in the linen closet for a specific medicine-they’ll tell me the symptoms and 99% of the time I’m like, take an advil. They carry their own pamprin.
So far nobody has confused the X-Lax with the Advil.
Last day of school for three of my four kids today—let the Summer Of Insanity begin!
(One of them is in a school that started late due to construction delays at their new building, so she’s in for an extra two weeks.)
Kids can stay on your insurance until 26 regardless bc of the healthcare law. We have 2 adult kids who both work full time and have their own insurance and they are still on our plan, so they have double coverage.(we are on a family plan, so the cost is the same whether 7 are on our plan, like there are currently, or only 1.)
Some universities have strict policy requirements and those will require their plans for a lot of students.
Congrats to your D16, @greeny8! We’ll all be with you for next year so don’t think too far ahead, if you can help it. It’s hard though… Good luck at SciOly @srk2017! Let us know how it goes. I helped with one of our middle school events this year. SciOly is fairly new to our school district. We are excited to get a few regional medals! Insurance: great comments from you all. I had not given it any thought yet and assumed (you know what they say about that) our family coverage would be adequate. But I’m going to write myself a note to check into the details for wherever D ends up. Also, the renters type insurance is a good idea! @eandesmom, break a leg to your son for the musical. Your plan is very reasonable and I would do the same thing!
Any Naviance people out there: Does your Naviance “List of Schools I’m Applying To” sync with your “My Colleges” tab in the Common App?? Or do you manually have to update lists on both sides? I guess I use to think Naviance and CA worked together, but a lot of it seems manual. For instance, why do I have to tell Naviance that I applied to a school, if CA already has that information?
@dfbdfb Yes. I’d never heard of Naviance before I came here, and I’m still not sure of all it can do. It sounds like you can plug in your kid’s stats and see how other kids from your school fared at different colleges, but is there more?
Health insurance: we are on the state insurance plan, which puts our kids automatically on Medicaid 
. They get good coverage, don’t get me wrong, and we’re grateful for that, but it still feels awkward because we feel middle class, regardless of what the income tables say. For DD’14 and DS’15, their in-state school has an agreement with the state that gives them coverage jointly with the school. For DS’17, we’ll have to see what happens. I don’t think his current coverage would go out-of-state so we’ll have to research that very carefully if he applies to out-of-state schools.