Parenting question

My daughter is in her second year of college. She's extremely bright but is doing just so-so grade wise. She's mildly ADD but stop taking meds after high school. Here is what I think is part of her problem. She constantly texts and is on Facebook all the time. I told my wife she'd do a lot better if she didn't have those two distractions. My wife says she's bright, she'll figure it out on her own. I say, at 18 grand a year (or whatever tuition up to) we should get more assertive about it. How would you handle a situation like this?

pulled him out and put him to work in oil field. did it for 6 months, went back to school, paid his way all the way thru a masters.

i dont let boys do facebook, nor texting and twittering.... for a handful of reasons.

your situation.... it is all yours. i dont know. best of luck to you on it.

I'm not a big fan of medication, and I will always default to non-chemical solutions. But if she actually needed the medication in HS, she won't magically stop needing it once she is in college.

Toughlove? Perhaps. She may well figure it out on her own, but 18 grand is 18 grand. This is what we would do with our college sophomore.

encourage return to meds and diminish use of distractions.

My similarly situated daughter has left college, 1 year before end of her term in 5-year teaching program. Social stuff appears to have been the reason.

She was on them for several years and felt she could concentrate without them.

If side effects are an issue, she should see her doctor and get an adjustment.

If she were going to screw around in college, there was no way we could afford that much cash for her to come home with "C" grades. She knew it. While she's always been my "good girl" and gotten straight A's anyway, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that your daughter get sufficient grades to warrant that kind of expense.

YMMV. Good luck.

Some had gone through very tough prep school programs and they were bored and just plain weary of school. All of them went back to college and finished...and believe that they worked harder when they got back because they really came to understand why they were there.
Of course, it isn't for everyone, but a year off can put things in perspective, sometimes.

Extremely bright and had all the tools to do fine at college, but dropped out before her junior year and had middling to horrible grades until then. She also quit taking her Adderall before she started college and I think that was part of the problem. It was just too hard to deal with the distractions of the new environment. Do you have a plan on how to eliminate or reduce the texting and Facebook? If she lives at home it will be hard, but if she lives on campus it will be impossible.

Is it possible she doesn't know what she wants to do? My daughter has been out of school and working for 2 years now, and it looks like she is getting ready to try school again soon, because now she knows what she does (and doesn't) want to do with her life. My husband (also with ADD) dropped out of high school and worked for 6 years before he was ready to try school again, then he sailed through college and law school.

My advice-giving credentials are thus: I have ADD that went undiagnosed until college (when I started medication, and my GPA increased markedly) because I was not disruptive and I had been smart enough to pay no attention and get mostly Bs until then. I also have a brother, father, mother, and partner with ADD (which expresses itself very differently with all of us) in various places on the leave-it-alone-vs.-treat-it continuum. Below are some questions and suggestions.

Does she see her distraction and/or grades as a problem? If she doesn't, the "tough love" some posters have suggested may be appropriate. If she does, though, the problem isn't motivation, so "tough love" is a lot less likely to accomplish anything except possibly fueling resentment.

Is she taking classes in what she's actually interested in? My major classes in college were great, but I didn't do nearly as well in the core requirements, so maybe her grades will improve when she's finished the core stuff (probably next year).

Is she drinking much caffeine? If she drinks a lot, it can have similar effects to stimulant medications, possibly without the side effects that bothered her. Also, has she tried another type of stimulant medication? My brother hated Ritalin, but hates Adderall significantly less.

Suggest that she study in the library with hardworking friends. Being in the library enforces a certain level of quiet, and if your friend is writing a paper and you're d*cking around on facebook, you feel like an @$$. I know I would not have gotten the grades I did in college without this. (Thanks to my friend Meg, who practically lived in the library with me.)

Lifehacker.com often has recommendations for free anti-distraction software...maybe you could email her a link to one or two and suggest that you found them helpful, and she might too.

Can she take meds sometimes? Some ADD people I knew in college took adderall before a big test or when they needed to focus on a paper, but not on an everyday basis.

Is she having social trouble? It's possible facebook and twitter are her way of keeping in touch with her friends because she doesn't feel like she really connects with people at her school. If she's having relationship problems, this could also be a cause.

Has she tried asking the school's disabilities office for accommodations like a notetaker, etc.? Some of my friends with ADD found that really helpful. (Also, not to plug or anything, but OMG was a livescribe smartpen useful in grad school. Google it.)

Does she know why she's there? Does she have a strong idea of where she's going? Is it possible she'd benefit from taking a leave of absence and doing a "gap year" kind of deal, despite the fact that she's mid-college? Some people find it much easier to focus when they have a more concrete end goal in mind in terms of career, etc.

Just in case, you might want to talk to her about whether she's exhibiting signs of clinical depression, which commonly first appears in college and can make focusing even harder for those of us with attentional difficulties.

Sorry to write such a long post. :) I hope this is helpful.

:thumbsup:

As usual, some great minds post here--The DU Lounge never lets me down! I'll let you know how things work out.

... except talk.

She may listen, she may not. Quit writing the checks and she may end up hating you while staying in school anyways, but with a much larger loan burden. Or she'll quit.

If her grades are too low won't the college suspend her? Or do colleges now keep sucking money even when their students are floundering?

I got kicked out of college twice, not for low grades, but because I was whack. Meds were primitive then. By my own perseverance and the support of some professors who thought I might be worth the effort, I did eventually graduate.

Later when meds got better I was less whack.

It's mostly her loans. She was on academic probation for part of last year but she's turning it around. She actually has a B- average which isn't bad. But she's definitely capable of much better grades. I think the best thing is to encourage her and give her advice from time to time. She definitely doesn't need tough love. My dad actually called her and told her how disappointed he was in her low grades. She was shocked and devastated. Not the kind of talk she needed to hear. She's pretty hard on herself as it is. Anyway, things will work out.

Does she really, truly have interest in what she is majoring in, or studying? Toward the end of last year my daughter was really struggling with morale. Then this year she changed her major (from education to art) and is really having a ball -- she is enthused about her classes and is enjoying them immensely. I don't think I've ever heard her so positive about classwork. Maybe she needs to reassess her path...

She started out working towards getting into vet school. But she wasn't wild about her classes. She witched to being a Psychology Major and now she's taking more enjoyable classes. Plus she can now take art history and other "fun" classes. I think it will make a difference in the long run.