I agree with counseling, but wanted to add an anecdote about light at the end of the tunnel. A friend’s daughter was a good student, private high school, went to college for engineering and flamed out. Came back home and went to beauty school. Is now taking Engineering courses at a local college. It’s going to be a harder and longer path to the degree than if she had gone straight through, but there was a certain amount of maturing she needed to do to be ready.
I was kicked out of school for flaming out. I took time off and got a job and saved up. It was great returning to school with a nice nest egg so I wasn’t being held hostage to my parents purse strings though they did continue to pay my tuition I payed most of my rent and all my other expenses so I felt like I’d be ok with or without their financial support and that made me feel like school was something I was choosing to do and I had control of my life.
Looking back I realize it wasn’t academic stress, or even much to do with overbearing parents although I was probably trying to do too much at once. I was mostly being drained by too many people. I was miserable in the dorms with room mates and no privacy. The best time to recharge myself was when everyone else was out at class (which was usually when I was supposed to be in class, too).
Living off campus gave me more privacy (my own space and a solitary commute). Other ways I adapted; no large lectures by getting those credits in summer session, evening classes or at a branch off main campus. And more recently the option of online classes. Some people are energized by large crowds and some are drained. Some wither in solitude or small groups and others bloom.
It may not be a hidden tragedy or sudden collapse of academic talent or interest as much as a struggle to figure out in what kind of an environment one can flourish. What worked in the past may not work in the future as she matures and begins to reveal her identity. It’s something I had to figure out on my own by listening to myself very carefully. Starting out it is possible to keep up appearances and fake it to meet other people’s expectations, but eventually it’s simply too exhausting.
When I left school my mom was pretty quiet about it all, didn’t ask too many questions and that made it a good respite to be home with her. I worked and saved, then put my toe in the water by going part-time and finally moving out to an apartment and returning to a full time class load. I made all those decisions by myself with no time lines or grief from my parents. Other than reporting the tuition bill and asking if they wanted to reimburse me for any of it which they did, I shared no grades, attendance reports or other minutia with them. We made it through, all the way to graduation and I hope you and your daughter will, too.
One thing in addition to the above good comments, I know you are likely disappointed in your daughter. Imagine how disappointed in herself that she probably is.
@TempeMom I know my daughter is disappointed in herself … I wish she would use that to take action of some sort but she is instead stuck in a cycle of blaming me and accusing me of being disappointed. I mean would it even ring true if I said I wasn’t?? She blew through $20,000 in college savings and has a $5000 loan to pay back with zilch to show for it and each time telling me if I just let her do it HER way things would be different. They never were.
It is hard especially at a young age to be introspective I guess.
Toomany- you are now letting her do it her way. She gets to decide when she’s ready to go back to school. Kudos to you for backing off but still supporting her.
Great story, @calla1 . Not all kids are going to get through college in four years. There are a lot of students who need to do things in their own time, in their own way. A good friend’s daughter had a similar experience to your son. She is now set to graduate from college at the age of 25. She worked a series of bad, low-paying jobs, and that woke her up. She finally realized that for her to have the kind of life she wanted, she needed to get a degree.
I myself was put on academic probation while in community college, which was the wake-up I needed. It took me six years to graduate. Luckily, my parents never pressured me, but I simply didn’t get serious about it until I realized that I wouldn’t get a degree if I didn’t shape up. I do think it has to come from the kid, with support from the parents, of course.
I have a friend who has several kids. One finished graduate school and has a high-paying job now. The other dropped out of college after a couple of years and went through a period of being “lost,” not knowing what she wanted to do. She tried various jobs, including working with kids for a while, and eventually discovered she loves hair. She went through training to become a hair stylist and works at a hair salon. I wonder if working will help your daughter find a path that either leads her to a career that doesn’t require the four-year degree, or leads her to be more focused on what she can gain out of a degree to motivate her to go back with more energy and determination.
Oh, I feel for your daughter. Your write, “The question is what is the next step for a student like this.”
Take her to a professional, NOW, and have her evaluated. She’s obviously struggling. Hopefully it’s just a blip, but you need to get to the bottom of things. If it’s something serious, you don’t want to look back in five years and say, “If only…”
@blossom - not an easy task at all!! Thanks for kudos sometimes parenting is so thankless LOL
You are paying for an expensive private school. We made it very clear to our kids that they needed to get grades of C or better…or they would not be returning to their private universities.
You already have taken that step.
NOW…be supportive of your daughter doing something beside attending college. A job would be good. If there is a community college nearby, or a four year school within a short commute…perhaps,she can work…,and take one class…at some point in the future.
But first…I agree…get her a good counselor. Someone who worked with young adults. Your daughter needs a road map to success…which first involves figuring out what derailed her…twice. Then move on…slowly,
College completion isn’t a race…it’s a journey. And for some it’s a bumpier ride than for others.
To the OP, I know you are worried and disappointed but I hope you can find the strength to welcome your daughter back in the midst of her troubles.
I have been in your position and can assure you that if you treat it like an opportunity, not a disaster, things may go better. Counseling will help.
Just want to say that there are a lot of zigs and zags with a scenario like this but turnarounds happen all the time. Some of the kids who get off the track a bit end up being interesting kids with compassion for others.
These days there are many ways to do college: part-time, online, distance, extension/continuing ed/adult learner. I am a huge fan of NOLS too.
Some kids don’t go back either, and that’s okay. Help her find some interests. Perhaps she can do an internship or volunteer or take an art or dance class while she is healing and getting counseling.
Your requirements are not “basic.” They are for a kid you don’t trust, with good reason. Education is the least of your worries. Mental health should be first. Is she depressed? Anxious? Is there an undiagnosed learning difficulty? Could she be addicted to video games or drugs? I’d start with the psychiatrist who prescribed her ADHD meds and have her evaluated for other issues before letting her go back to college.
You have a child who was successful for 3 semesters and then was a complete failure. To me this reads as if something happened to derail her success.
It could be drugs, alcohol, failure to take meds, sexual assault, mental illness, or something completely different. Before you can worry about what comes next I think you need to figure out what happened to her to derail her academic success. Once you figure it out you can make a plan for a return to school (or not).
If she is capable have her get a job so she has something to do and get some counseling for her (and the family). I am sorry you are having these problems but it isn’t the end of the world if a child does not finish college.
Our son, who had uneven grades in a competitive magnet program but very high test scores stopped going to classes both semesters last year without telling us anything was wrong until the end of the second semester. He just couldn’t get it together to write papers. We had him tested over the summer, and he tested low enough
in written expression for it to be considered a disability. No wonder he seldom turned in papers during high school. Even be thought it was laziness. It must have been confusing to have things come easy and suddenly hit a wall. I’m sure your D and our S will turn the corner even if it isn’t as soon as we’d like.
Regarding counseling, I would ask your daughter if she would be willing to try it. Don’t force her to go.
Sounds like some time off would benefit her. I wouldn’t criticize her for dropping out or pressure her to go back.
Sure you could do counseling if you like but you ask “what next” and if I were in your shoes what next would be to work for a couple years and then see if she still wants to make a third attempt. I would turn over that process to her. We had two families that went through the 2x thing and ultimately both those kids after being on their own for a couple years went back to college and did very, very well but both sets of parents took a big hands off position with the kid’s.
How do you know all of this given the school’s privacy rules? Can you disclose sources and methods?
If true she’s obviously not well.
How are you going to broach the subject with her without further alienation. You have been spying on her, which she will certainly view as a betrayal, and will likely at least make her more careful.
More logistically, If you’ve already paid the semester, exactly how are you going to remove her from school short of obtaining a guardianship order if she doesn’t agree with your conclusion.
You’ve received great advice about what your daughter needs. However, I think that you need therapy too in order to get professional advice about how to guide your daughter into productive therapy while doing minimal damage. I think you need this most urgently.
I should add that a number of years ago, in a local HS, there was a girl who committed suicide while her parents were in the guidance office trying to figure out why the official transcript didn’t match the grade reports they were getting. The grade reports apparently had been doctored by the student. The girl obviously couldn’t face her parents.
I would want professional help in case your D is depressed and potentially feels that she can’t face you.
Good luck.
It may not be the case, but I couldn’t help but wonder if family issues are involved. I also burned out in college and went into the military after my sophomore year. Much of that was due to overly-controlling, overly-critical parents that I needed to get away from. Of course, they thought they were perfect parents, and were furious with me for dropping out. When I got out of the service, I was more mature, disciplined, and itching to go back to school. Maybe the most important factor was that I was totally independent, and I was going back to school because I wanted to, not because other people expected me to.
My daughter didn’t get her degree until she was 29. She went to art school right after HS. It was pretty clear she hated it, so it was no surprise that she dropped out after a year. She bummed around at odd jobs for a few years, got married, and eventually ended up working part-time and going to school part-time until she graduated. (Not sure her post-degree job is any better than her pre-degree job, though.) Sometimes people need to do things in their own sweet time.
I would not presume she is “not well” I think having her talk to a therapist if nothing more than for her to have someone to talk to about why she doesn’t want to be in college right now.
Rereading this thread, there is something that looked familiar and something that @blossom said that seems to be on the right track:
“You need a conversation (with a family therapist in the room if you need a neutral party) to ask her what she wants and how she plans to get there.”
I think that this is entirely right except that she might not know yet what she wants.
To me, in high school kids seem to think about colleges as largely abstract dream-like entities. “Yale”, “Wellesley” and such are names which are bandied about as great places. However, a high school kid is not necessarily going to understand what it really is like being at university; the day to day reality of dealing with laundry, doing homework, taking tests (often very difficult tests), dealing with some nice and some arrogant classmates, having piles of homework that you have put off and don’t get to until the last minute, having to get yourself to class on time (it is not like high school where classes are back to back), and so on. Also, they don’t necessarily know what is that it really means to major in “x”. Their hopes and dreams will be affected by expectations from parents and peers and might not be realistic.
At some point some kids run into a wall when they realize that they don’t like what they are doing, and they don’t want to do it.
Someone I know who went to a very demanding university said: “You have to want to do it”. I have said similarly about very demanding schools: “You have to know why you are doing it”.
My personal reaction when hitting this wall was to have a terrible semester, get really scared, work very hard for three or four semesters to graduate, then work at a job for a couple of years to figure out what I actually really wanted to do, then go back to school and finally do really well.
I am wondering whether your daughter might have hit the same wall. If so, the best approach is probably for her to relax for a while, then see a bit of counseling and work at an okay job for a while (maybe even a year or two). At some point she will figure out what she wants to do, and will most likely do it very well (whatever “it” is). This will probably at some point imply a return to university or college with a much better sense of why she is there.