Skills Your Child Needs to have BEFORE Going Off to College
by Joanna Lilley, MA, NCC, founder of Lilley Consulting
The excitement about the upcoming move and start to college is palpable across the nation. You walk into a Target or Bed, Bath & Beyond right now and you can cut the familial excitement and anticipation around picking up Twin XL sheets, bathroom caddies, and dry erase boards with a knife. In between discussing which comforter your young adult would prefer, or whether or not to buy a printer, let’s sit down and quickly talk about the other important things that need to be checked off the to-do list before starting college.
Academically, everyone is under the accurate impression that your young adult
is "ready." Or so that's the term that school systems use to measure whether
or not a young person is capable of launching academically, socially, and
emotionally into adulthood. Sadly, most of the stuff listed below is not
necessarily something your young adult would have learned in the classroom.
In a hail mary effort to make sure they'll be able to survive in college, take
a moment to walk through these to-do items with your soon-to-be college
student!
If your child is on medication, they need to know a lot information around
this. What medication are on they on? What is the name, dosage, and
administration sequence? Have them practice filling a prescription,
picking it up, and remembering to take their medications. This is a serious
cause for concern if they can't do it alone if they're dependent on this.
This could include making a doctor appointment, seeing a therapist, or even
scheduling a car appointment. They need to know who to call, where the
appointment is and when. They need to plug it in some sort of scheduling s
ystem so they actually remember to follow through. In case something comes
up and the appointment needs to be rescheduled, they need to make the call
themselves. Just not calling or not showing up is unfortunate. And if their
was a no-show fee, they need to pay for it out-of-pocket. That would be a damn
good natural consequence and they would work hard to never miss an appointment
again.
This is a little open to interpretation and more wishful thinking as even I'm
sometimes confused about my insurance. If your young adult is going off to
school out-of-state, or out-of-area for your insurance, you need to make sure
you're setting them up for success with understanding what is and isn't covered.
They need to know if they have a co-pay and how much that'll be. They need
to know who their insurance provider is and carry an insurance card. In all
fairness, they don't need to understand the insurance policy in its entirety.
That would be like asking them to learn another language overnight.
Just make sure they know the basics and know how to speak with a
professional about their insurance in case they're being asked questions
about it.
If you are reading this and immediately went to "well, my child really struggles
because…" I'd ask you to stop right there. When they have a job down the
road, you are not the one responsible for making sure they're awake and
getting ready to go to work on time. A natural consequence for that would be
that they lose their job. That's rather unfortunate. College is a "safe"
place to learn to fail in this regard. If your child registers for an
8:00am class but they don't wake up early, they'll fail the class. It's not
your job, nor anyone from the university (no, seriously!) to make sure your
child is awake for their class each day. This is a life skill they need to
master themselves. As they're registering for classes for this upcoming
fall, ask them to reflect on a realistic time for them to be awake each
morning and regularly attend class. If the answer is noon, remember,
this is their journey.
Being able to problem solve in figuring out where to go or who to talk to is
one step. Once a young person figures out who it is they need to talk to,
there tends to be this paralysis around "what am I supposed to say?" Doing
some role playing with your young adult, or allowing them to be the only one
who talks during appointments would be beneficial to master these communication
skills. Taking it a step further and teaching them what open-ended vs.
close-ended questions can also really help facilitate growth being
conversational.
Ok, this might be silly. The reality is, moving to college the majority of
students will at-minimum have roommates. Some will be a triple, or sharing a
suite with other students. Making sure that your young adult knows the basics
of picking up after themselves, taking out the trash when it starts to smell,
cleaning out the toilet every so often, replacing the toilet paper roll,
and/or knowing how to do the laundry. These are all what we'd say are
common-courtesy, and yet nothing is truly "common" nowadays.
After you've sat down and gone through this list, if you realize your
young
adult has mastered, or is capable of mastering these skills with the last few weeks before the
semester starts, I say "congratulations" to you as a parent for really
setting your young adult up to be able to figure it out on their own.
Some of the basic skills listed above can be transferable with any situation
your young
adult may run into on campus.
Now, if you're reading these and keep telling yourself your young adult
doesn't know how to do those things or wouldn't be able to
(i.e. refill prescriptions) then I really encourage you to have a
conversation with your young adult before they head off to school.
For real. These are skills that adults need to be able to successfully
complete independently. If they are still dependent on you for all of these
to-do items, or most of them, I really charge you as a parent to have a
conversation with your young adult about deferring going to college.
These are skills truly needed before they move in. If you are continuing to do these things for them, they will never learn and it will only be postponed until post-graduation. The time to grow up and take ownership of mastering these skills is now.
Disclaimer: Internet Special Education Resources (ISER) provides this information in an effort to help parents find local special education professionals and resources. ISER does not recommend or endorse any particular special education referral source, special educational methodological bias, type of special education professional, or specific special education professional.