Ann

Navigating school and academic issues with a teen who struggles with ADHD, a learning difference, or a mental health disorder…is a lot.

And all of that doesn’t end with high school if they’ve decided to continue on to college after graduation.

So, what do you and your teen need to be thinking about, discussing, or researching?

Will all colleges or universities support your kid the same way? What are they required by law to do? Will they automatically receive the same accommodations they’re currently receiving in high school?

So many questions.

Luckily, I’ve found just the person to answer these questions and more. Don’t go anywhere.

This is Speaking of Teens, the podcast that teaches you the science of parenting adolescents so you can be less stressed and more excited about having a teenager. I’m Ann Coleman, I’m an attorney turned parent educator and I’ve spent years studying the science of teen behavior and I want to help you learn how to parent your teens for the best possible outcome.

My guest, Dan Jordan, is well-equipped to answer all the questions you have about sending your kid off to college when they struggle with issues that you’ve been dealing with through an IEP or 504 in high school.

Dan’s not only a licensed professional counselor who’s worked in a university counseling services center for the past 14 years helping students thrive and succeed in college but he also spent a decade in higher education making sure kids just like yours, received the accommodations they needed.

You know what else? Dan’s own son is a college student with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia. So, he’s dealt with both sides of the issue and certainly knows what he’s talking about.

Not knowing a thing about it myself, I first asked Dan if college accommodations are like the IEPs and 504s that students have in high school or is it something different.

 

Dan Jordan

Every college that takes federal funding is covered under ADA and 504. So you have the obligation to make sure that students who are coming to your school have the access that they need. Now the difference with K through 12, they're under the IDEA and ADA and 504, but 504 is a separate section. So it's like part D and then for college it's subpart E, but they're substantively different. So if you hear other people say, well, 504 plans transfer. No, they don't at all ever.

 

And I hear that consistently, even to this day. And I've been doing that work for about 15 years. But even today, I still hear people that are associated with K through 12, coaches, teachers, that kind of stuff, that are like, yeah, I just did a presentation, or I just had a professional development kind of thing last year, and they're still saying 504 is transferred. And I'm like, no, they don't. They don't transfer at all.

 

Ann

Meaning, meaning you just take them from your high school and go, here college, here's the 504. That's what they're telling people. And that does not work.

 

Dan Jordan

Correct. Right, correct. No, no, it does not transfer, nor do IEPs, and I've heard that too. They don't transfer. The reason why is because that ends, IDEA ends at graduation. And once you get to college, now it's ADA 504. The difference there, high school under IDEA and 504, they're under the obligation of identifying students with disabilities. College.

 

No, they're not obligated to identify anyone. Students have to self -identify. So that becomes a self -advocacy piece. They're the ones that have to do, seek it out themselves. So it's not part of your application process. It's not part of your essays. It's not part of something that gets screened out. Those are all myths. They don't exist. And it's illegal to do so. And so the information is out there for students either through like when you do a tour or if you get to class, it's on the syllabus. Sometimes it's there. Sometimes there's like a resource fair when you get there and they have that. Sometimes you just have to listen to a podcast like this and know that you have to seek out that office that does that. And for every college, it's probably called something different. Usually it's the Office of Disability Services.

Office of Disability, Accessibility Office, something like that. But you can just simply sort of do a search on the tab for that college and find it. It's pretty simple to find.

 

Ann

Okay, so, God, so many questions. All right, so going back to the application process, you said that's not part of the application process. You don't talk about that in the application process, but for a student who has these issues, should it be part of the process of deciding which college, kind of going back to that which college question, should it, is there a way to know, okay, this college, is more supportive than this college or you get this kind of treatment at this college versus this college.

 

Dan Jordan

Gotcha. Ask. You have to ask. This is a lot of really good questions to ask on a college tour. Ask the students themselves. You can also ask to meet with the Office of Disability Services or Accessibility Services. You can ask to meet with them and ask those questions. What is the campus climate like for students with disabilities? Mostly it's going to be very accepting most of the time and 99 % of the time I find it hard pressed to find that one crusty you know professor who just doesn't want to do anything like you know that's I find the hard press not that they're not out there I'm sure they are in some cases but the campus climate is rather accepting and they want you to get the help instructors is why they have it on the syllabus this is why they put it on their learning management system this is why they do the resource fairs this is why they point out that office just in case on a college tour they'll say this is the building where x y and z are support services it also houses the accessibility office so if you need that that's there too you ask questions and those questions will tell you what kind of supports are out there.

 

Typically, schools will have something for academic support. Typically, they'll have the supports housed in the accessibility office, but you can ask them what kind of services do they provide specifically themselves versus the academic side, which is probably a separate office. Sometimes it's housed in the same place. It depends on the school. So you're going to have to do your research to figure out where, when, under what umbrella it kind of is for that particular school but also asking those specific questions about how accepting professors are, what's that process, is there any stigma involved in that? You want to get those questions out of the way right off the bat. That could be in an email, because sometimes email is a little bit better for some students to ask those questions. And really, it should be the student who's initiating this. That could be from their, yep, no, it should be, yeah, glad, glad we're on the same page. So it should be the student. Now, it could be,

 

Ann

That's what I was gonna ask, yeah.

 

Dan Jordan

It could be that the student's just not used to doing that. That's fine. Parent can oversee that on their student computer. So they could send that from a private email. They could send that from their school email, those types of things. Private email is probably better because then you keep that paper trail. And you just ask those questions. Where can I get information about accessibility because I have a certain thing that I'm probably going to need accommodations for?

 

Your guidance counselor for that school or the admissions counselor, probably be able to give you a link to that person, a phone number, email address, that kind of stuff, the link to the webpage, so you can find out more information for that. But if you want to speak to a particular staff person to ask those questions, more than happy to do so on a college tour, more than happy to probably set that up over Skype, they want that relationship with students and they want to make sure that you're well-informed way ahead of time.

 

Ann

Yeah, well, you know, all these questions are rolling around in my head because my son, as we said before we were recording, and I know your son too, right? They struggle with ADHD, dysgraphia, dyslexia, maybe dyscalculia, you know, all the things. So, you know, we've been, or I can only speak for myself, when he was in school, it was a constant, I was on top of it constantly, have you done this, have you done that? You know, checking the Google Classroom and all the things constantly. And then he also had supports at school and it was still a major struggle, major, major, major struggle. So, and maybe other kids are better, and I know there are degrees of ADHD because I also have ADHD and I did manage to get through school with no accommodations, but how, you know,

 

What's the, I guess the success rate of kids who have these issues that go from high school into college? Do you see a lot of them kind of falling through the cracks and not being able to do what they need to do because it's just them on their own and they're, you know, working with this office?

 

Dan Jordan

Wow, loaded question. There's a lot of different reasons for, for lack of success. There's a lot of different reasons. one is probably not knowing that you have a disability in the first place. So for students, your son's lucky, he knows his diagnosis. Now here's a statistic. I think it's from national center for learning disabilities. I could be wrong on that, but, I think their statistic, and they did this maybe 10 years ago, their statistic about college, high school graduates that have an IEP, 70 % of them no longer think they have a disability once they graduate from high school. That's a massive, yeah, totally.

 

Ann

Wow, my gosh, that's, I wonder what the mindset is there. Why they would think that.

 

Dan Jordan

I don't know. I think there's a lot of different reasons for that. Sometimes parents don't know enough about their particular student's disability. It's kind of like, hey, as long as they have that, the services are there. I meet once a year, things are moving forward, rock on, got it. And that's as far as it goes. Sometimes it's a cultural issue. Sometimes parents really don't want to stigmatize their student right off the bat.

 

I feel that stigmatizing, at least that's my opinion, that's my private opinion. You're stigmatizing your child in your own home by not telling them something. And it leaves a bad taste in my mouth for somebody not to have the information that they desperately need. Because I would love that statistic to be zero, not 70%. I'd love that to be zero. And if you're informed, then you get to make the best decision for yourself. Whatever that is, if you want to just ignore the obvious, that's great, go for it.

But as long as you have the information, there's an information gap. Parents also have the information gap, like 504s don't transfer to college and the whole thing of what we're talking about today. So that's part one. It's a little bit different if you know and your parents are involved and they say that and you have that and you're like, okay, now I have something. How do I explain it? Sometimes students don't want to do that. Sometimes they don't want to go down that road.

 

for a lot of different reasons. Stigma being one. Another one is I don't want to be seen differently. Another one is I just want to try college just on my own without these kinds of supports. Not a fan of any of those, to be quite honest. Stigma doesn't exist really as much as students think on a college campus. Not that it doesn't, I'm not saying it doesn't. But if you're going to a school and everybody's new,

 

Nobody's going to know that you just missed the test. They're all focused on themselves, not focused on whoever's sitting next to them. They're just like, I got my own thing to do and I'm there. Teachers, by and large, don't stigmatize students. There might be some things there for accommodations in the classroom or whatever, but that's like a nuanced kind of thing. So stigma is kind of one of those barriers. Another barrier is they're just young.

 

And I don't mean that in a very derogatory way. I mean that in the ADHD way where Russell Barkley is saying that, hey, you're probably a third younger emotionally in terms of that development. So if you're 18, you might kind of be like 15, you know what I mean? Emotionally. So that might be the case. So in that sense, Gap year might be good. Gap year might be okay. And for that, there's a whole kind of thing for that too. But you might be just kind of not ready. Another one is you just might not know what works for you. And that's the whole self advocacy piece. You might kind of know you had an IEP, you might know you need the help, but you're not really sure how to ask for it. You're not sure where to go. You're not sure what to say. You're not sure how to do those things. And it's kind of uncomfortable. Again, young adulthood is its own developmental process of experiencing things kind of for the first time.

 

And really it should not be the first time that you've ever seen your diagnosis on a piece of paper. Really shouldn't be. But for a lot of students it is. And then it becomes a task for how do you explain that to another human being? And that comes with self -awareness. And you have to be able to explain those particular things. But you also have to know what you're good at too. And you can't shy away from the things that you're not good at. So with all of that, if you're not going to ask for accommodations, that's another barrier.

 

you success because I've seen it not work where students come in and say hey I just didn't feel like using them this semester how'd you do? Not as well as I thought. I'm like okay why don't just for kicks and giggles man just for kicks and giggles let's use the accommodations this semester and see what happens. They come back next semester like yeah that worked out a lot better. Kicking myself for not using it at first and that's kind of one of the barriers another one is not knowing the supports and knowing what you need in terms of those supports because everything is on you. It's on the student. They're the ones that have to follow their homework plan. They're the ones that have to check the LMS system to find out what assignments are due. They're the ones that have to show up for class. They're the ones that have to get up for the 8 a class because that's all that's left for freshmen, pretty much. And so you have to get up for that. You're the one who has to get the alarm clock. You're the one who has to remember to eat, which...

 

for people with ADHD is kind of difficult sometimes, just this. And you have to know when to do your homework. Time management is a huge piece of that. And those are skill sets that kind of most students kind of have. I think there was a survey put out by Inside and Higher Ed, and they surveyed, college seniors are like, what skill, what thing could you identify that would have made your college experience that much more successful? And they're like time management right off the bat. So by far time management.

 

Ann

And then that's squared for kids with ADHD and some learning issues. Yeah.

 

Dan Jordan

Right? So there's a lot of reasons why students may not succeed that may be disability related. It may not be. It may be that it's just not for them. It may be that the kind of coursework that they chose to do is not necessarily something that fits for them. It may be the style. It may be the time of year. It may be that you're just not ready. And that gets into the gap year kind of thing where.

 

You can take that extra time, go to community college, work the whole kind of thing with accommodations, figure out what works and what doesn't work for you, and work that college thing. Learn how to be a college student, basically. And that's a whole adjustment. And if your kid's not ready to do that just now in high school and they're struggling to do that, how do you get them to be a college student with the same deficits?

 

Ann

Yeah. Well, and that's what I'm sitting here thinking. What I'm hearing you say is that there needs to be a lot more preparation going on in high school for the kids that do have these deficits before they go off to college, teaching them self-advocacy, teaching them how to get things done on their own. I mean, which, you know, it's so hard when they do have these deficits to teach them how to do these things because a lot of times they're very resistant. But one of my questions is too, the accommodations that they get, you're saying advocate for yourself, go talk to them. Are there specific accommodations that are generally allowed? I mean, is there something in the law that says it's longer time on test or they get to go here in another room or whatever, or are these individually negotiated accommodations?

 

Dan Jordan

Individually negotiated, nothing is written in law saying for X disability, you have to do X. There's nothing there for that. It's rather vague. There's a definition of what disability looks like for ADA in 504, right? There's a definition and it's a pretty broad one at that. So those that have mental health issues, health issues, like anything, it has to limit, it has to significantly limit one, one life area in order for you to be considered to have a disability. And that threshold is rather a low threshold. So for students with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADHD, those types of things, they have to look at what the documentation requirements really say for their school or schools that they're considering, because that can get very specific. And schools get to say what they require in terms of documentation. So they get to tell you or dyslexia or learning disability, I need X, Y, and Z. For ADHD, I need this. Some schools for ADHD want a whole neuropsych eval. Some are fine with getting, because we know sometimes your primary care physician is the one you're getting your medicines from. Sometimes that's the case. And if that is the case, and you're going to a school that just wants a neuropsych, you either have to either go to a different school or choose a different school that doesn't have that requirement or get a neuropsych eval.

 

Ann

Yeah, wow.

 

Dan Jordan

And so that's part of it. So there's nothing that really says in the law what you have to provide. You just say, it just says you have to accommodate the disability. You have to accommodate that. And I'm paraphrasing an awful lot there. But basically that's kind of what it says. You have to have access for them. And that's where it ends. So like that might be a discrepancy between somebody who's had an IEP or a 504 plan and they get to do an awful lot of other stuff in high school because that's more success oriented. So there might be some things that don't fit for college because it's just access oriented. We level the playing field and that's it, we're done. And some schools like to do more. That's cool, that's cool, that's on them. And some schools are just like, hey, we have access and that's good. You just have to do your due diligence and look at all of that.

 

And it's very specific to what that person needs. So if I see one person with ADHD, I saw one person, that's it. There's not like, you don't read off a menu like McDonald's and go for ADHD, I want menu three, you know? Like that's not what happens. It's for, because you have ADHD and if I meet with you, it could just mean that you just need distraction reduction and you're good to go. For another person with ADHD, they need extra time, they need distraction reduction, they need some of some other accommodations, they may need one question per page, right? Just to get rid of that visual clutter that's there. And so that may be it, there may be more spacing in between. And so it's very specific, that's why the self -advocacy piece, and that's why the self -awareness piece is so important, so they go into it kind of knowing what works and what doesn't work ahead of time.

 

 

Ann

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and the more you talk about this and the different types of accommodations, I'm sitting here thinking, you know, a lot of teachers in middle school and high school are very resistant to accommodations. I've seen it at least where they're like, my God, you know, yeah, we've got to do this for this kid and this for this kid and this for this kid. And I get that, I do. I'm just thinking, good Lord, professors, I can only imagine, are more resistant to that. But they, but not in your experience.

 

Dan Jordan

Not in my experience, no, I'm not speaking for every professor on every college campus. The only problem that professor would have is it may not fit for their classroom and for what they're doing. And that gets into like, why would it not be approved? Okay, well, it's probably not approved because it's fundamental alteration to that particular classroom or that particular assignment. So, and accommodations can't lower standards and requirements. So, like let's say public speaking. So we can hit both those areas of public speaking right off the bat. So, for public speaking, you may have a five -minute speech to do. Well, if you have dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADHD, whatever disability, let's say you get time and a half for a test, you get extended time. I can't do that for a five -minute presentation in public speaking. That's a fundamental alteration. You've got to do what you've got to do in five minutes and that's it.

Right? So that's kind of an example of that. So, and if you were in business and that's your major, you may have to take public speaking as a matter of the requirements for that major. So not to say that there won't be a substitute or anything else that people can ask for. Certainly ask for what you think is necessary, but also know that it may get turned down because it's lowering the requirements and standards for that particular program. So you may be

 

Dan Jordan (

You may have to take public speaking just as a matter of that particular major.

 

Ann

Gotcha. Well, so, just recently, a friend of a friend has a freshman in college. They're coming home for the summer. And the question that I heard about this was they think that their kid may have ADHD, never diagnosed in high school, never talked about before. Okay, so they'll be starting their sophomore year.

 

Dan Jordan

Okay. Yep.

 

Ann

Is this going to be a problem for them to like try to figure all this stuff out at this point rather than, okay.

 

Dan Jordan

No. In terms of getting accommodations, no. Like if you get the diagnosis of ADHD, like one, if they know what school they're going to, they have to do everything we just talked about. Find the office that deals with students with disabilities, and that's an easy search. It's an easy kind of thing that might be an email to that student's advisor because, hey, I got it. Here's the office, here's the person, here's the webpage right there they can just search for it themselves. They might be easy to navigate that kind of stuff. And so, advisor's probably the first one I would go to. And if that takes a while because the summer classes and the professor's not there, I would just go ahead and just do a search, like just scour the web page for that, like either for student services, that's an easy phone call or there might be a financial aid office or something like that. There might be an office that is like a one -stop shop. Student services are probably part of that. And they can just ask. They can email student services. There might be a way to get the office information for that. So then they can find out what are the documentation requirements for ADHD. Okay, if it's simply you need to get diagnosed by somebody who's able to diagnose that.

Okay, cool. If it's you need an evaluation, now you have to get that evaluation. Now, can you do that? Sure, you can do that over the summer, 100%. You can also email.

 

Ann

If you can say someone, that's the problem. I mean, you know, that's the problem. Yeah.

 

Dan Jordan

Sorry if you can see somebody but sure 100 % like there's always problems with stuff but you know you got if you want accommodations you may have you have to meet that at that particular school and so that may be the requirement that they have So it's not that you can't get them. You certainly can and now you're playing catch -up. Okay, cool Not a problem. But once you do meet those requirements, whatever they are you can get the accommodations and that's moving forward. So you can't go back to the rest of your freshman year and redo everything in your freshman year. Nope, it's everything moving forward. And then it's on the student to actually use their accommodations, just like it's up to them to get their butt out of bed and go to that 8 a class. Yes, it's up to you to use them. And that's partly where students kind of, that's part of that success going back to that discussion.

 

Sometimes students just don't use them and that's the reason why. If they know they have something and they don't get them, that's kind of, that's one of the reasons why because you didn't have what you needed in order to level that playing field. So now you, it's kind of like everybody else is on the track and they have shoes and you have to run three miles, but you don't have shoes.

 

Ann

Yeah, yep, totally. Well, so another thing that comes to mind is when the parents are trying to help their kids with getting these accommodations at school, do you see issues like where parents are over involved, too involved? I mean, what kind of warnings would you give to parents about their level of involvement?

 

Dan Jordan

Yeah, got it. I've seen everything. I've seen everything from like hands off to hands on and everything in between. So the hands off people are like, student doesn't know how to discuss their disability. They've never done that self-exploration. Sometimes you ask, hey, what's your ADHD like? What's your experience with that? And they look - they look like odd because they're like, I don't know. I live with it every day. I'm not sure how to answer that question. Okay. Well, that's apparent to drop them off. And it's like, sometimes they would come and see me when I was doing that work. They would come and see me and go, my parent wanted me to come here. I'm like, okay, I'm not interested in what your parent wants. I'm interested in what you want. Do you want to be here? Because I'm not going to waste your time. And they're like, no, I'm just, you know, it's kind of, you know, I want to make sure that I have what I need.

 

Great, what is that? So, and you get into that conversation. Most of the time, students who do not have a parent with them, they're having trouble explaining it. Unless they're a student that's a transfer student, they already have done this process, or they're the lucky few. They're the one percenters that know their disability, they've explained it, they're able to speak about it, they know what their limitations are.

 

They know exactly what to say. And that's few and far between. Very few and far between. So parents should be involved upfront. And as much as trying to give them the autonomy to make their choice, but also give them the information by which to make that choice. So, and that's, they have to know their disability right off the bat. And they have to know what accommodations are. So, it's kind of like they have to know this process with their child so they can support their child in making the best decision for themselves. So yeah, you can be involved 100%. I'm not saying throw them to the wolves like the student who's sitting in my waiting room, you know, and it's like, Hey, my mom wanted me to be here. Like, no, you wouldn't throw them the keys to the car without teaching them to drive. That's the same thing here. You just would not do that. So.

 

Don't just send them in and expect them like, hey, self -advocate. Like, no, whoa, there's a lot of skills involved in that and a lot of information involved in that. Parents tend to know that stuff.

 

You gotta transfer that to your kid. You gotta be able to transfer that to them so they can make the choice for themselves. Supporting them and guiding them in that way is great. Sitting down with them, cool, that could be a source of support as well because they're like, hey, I'm just here to provide some added information just in case. You talk to her, great, got it, understood.

 

And most of the time that's exactly what I would say, hey, your mom's here, but you know, no offense, mom, but I'm just going to talk to your son or daughter. That's, they're the ones that have the information. If I need something, I'll ask. and that's great. Then it's on the student to be able to do that. Your mom's not going to be there to get you up at 8 a They shouldn't be there for this meeting either in, in a grand sense, right? In the most perfect sense should be the student walks in. Yep. I know exactly what I need, what I want.

 

Boom, takes like 15 minutes to get that done. In an ideal setting, right? But you gotta prepare them for that, and that's up front. But in preparing them, guess what? The parents are preparing themselves. You gotta take a step back. So I know if I'm preparing you to step into those, into that shoe of being your own advocate, you have to prepare them for all the stuff that you already know. You've gotta be able to give that to them so they know exactly what to expect and what not to expect and how to advocate for that. What if there's a problem? Okay, we have to know that. well, if you're taking medicine for ADHD, okay, it just doesn't magically appear in your medicine inbox in your pill case, just doesn't magically appear. How do you do that? How do you do that on the regular? And how do you do that to keep it safe if you're staying on campus versus commuting, which commuting is a viable option for a lot of students, who just otherwise would not be successful on a college campus if they stayed in residence hall 1 ,500 miles away. Okay, fine, let's just kind of go for success. What's gonna set you up for success versus failure at that point? So that's every student's a little bit different, but you have to give them the brains. Parents have to give them, they have to give them the skills, gotta give them the information. You also have to give them the autonomy to make that choice. And it may not be a choice that you like,

 

But as long as you give them the information, as long as you did that, then the problem solving comes. You can validate what that experience is like. Hey, you didn't use your accommodations for that test. Guess what? You can't go backwards. You gotta move forward. What are you gonna do moving forward for this particular class, right? Great kind of question. And so that puts it on the student, but also supports their own autonomy. And mistakes, they're gonna happen. They're gonna happen.

 

 

And I know it's fear. Been there myself. Sucks. Hate it. Didn't really kind of like it. But I also know that I get to give you the autonomy to do those things yourself. No matter in whatever capacity that student can, I know you got to be able to do that. And students just need to be prepared to have accommodations or make that choice, an informed choice not to. I always say, get them anyway because you always have the right you always have the right not to use them

 

Ann

Exactly. Well, what I'm hearing you say really is what we need to do as parents while they are still living with us at home is to get them more prepared for doing these things on their own. And I would think that, you know, because we all have the, you know, IEP meetings and the 504 meetings or whatever we have to have getting your kid to do more of their own advocacy in those meetings even would be probably really good practice, right? And learning what to ask for and what to say. And, you know, so maybe by the time they do go off to college, we can sit there in the office with them in your office, but they would be able to speak for themselves and say what they need more.

 

Dan Jordan

Yeah and that should be something that they they've participated in already in middle school anyway. Like there's an argument to be made like hey maybe grade school not so much middle school probably depending on the student most likely you should never get to be a freshman in high school and this is your first IEP meeting like that's hey we've been meeting for about you for years and like what is this I have no idea what this is it's a little intimidating they should know that information ahead of time.

 

And that helps them to know what is this who are these people? What do we do? How do we do it? What's the benefit for me? What's in it for me? And what's my role in that whole thing because you get to you you get a say and you get to speak up But it's not just having a voice It's about what you're speaking up about and that becomes the self -awareness and the whole that's where the information of the background comes Like you just can't just start talking and

 

It's about what you're talking about and you kind of have to have the information and self -awareness in order to know what to talk about. And that's hard to do, especially even as a freshman, that's hard to do. But if you have the background, you've been to a couple IEP meetings already, old hat, you're just in there going, yeah, this is my disabilities is what works. You know what, can we try something new this year? Because this just kind of doesn't seem to work like in middle school. Can we do something different? And then that becomes a different conversation.

 

Ann

Yeah. Yeah, that is such a huge skill to tackle, to try to teach a kid to do. I mean, I'm just sitting here thinking, even myself, you know, it's hard when you go to the doctor or when you, you know, as an adult, when you go in somewhere, you know, it's so hard. So to ask a kid who, number one, you know, has all these issues and they're still a child, basically, they're still an adolescent, to do this stuff, I mean, that is kind of a big leap, but such an important thing. That's why it's so important for us to start teaching them early on to do these things and go to these meetings and talk to their teachers and advocate for them. Instead of us jumping in and emailing the teacher or calling the so and so or whatever, start going, you know what, this is something you need to take care of. This is something that, you know, and if you have an issue with it, you can't take care of it. Then come back to me and we'll see what else we can do. Right.

 

Dan Jordan

Exactly. Exactly. And I, I encourage parents to use a model that I can't even tell you where I got it from, but it's, it's not mine. probably we'll say it and people go, I know exactly what that is. It's self -explanatory. I do, we do, you do. So for that junior in high school, who's thinking about college and they need to make a doctor appointment, they may not have ever been able to do that. Well, great.

 

Cool. I'll do it first. You sit here with me. Next time I'll walk you through it. And then next time I'll be there and you do it. And I want to see that. And if you need to make a follow up appointment or it could be something simple like you've never ordered pizza over the phone. You know what I mean? Could be that simple. Here, here's the number. I'll show you how to do it. Here it is. And it could be something that helps out just with the family organization logistically on whatever particular night, hey, I know I can point to my son who's 15 and say, hey, you can order pizza, you can do this, here's the menu, just call, get it done, and just let me know that it's done. And that's an easy thing to do, right? It could be something like, okay, you need to make your next psychiatric appointment because that's where you're getting your meds from. You need to be able to talk to the pharmacist about your medicines, and how many people actually ask questions?

 

I encourage all my students and all my clients, ask questions. It doesn't matter what the information is, it just matters that you asked. Because they're legally obligated to give you that information if you ask for it. And you should, so you should know about what foods to take with, what foods to avoid, what stuff to, like alcohol. All right, so if you're going to a college campus, know that certain ADHD medicines or certain medicines are gonna interact. Not so great with alcohol, you're gonna need to know that.

 

And so talking to the pharmacist is a great way of knowing that when should I when's the best time for me to take it? Take it with what? Can I take it on an empty stomach if I've missed breakfast because I forgot right and I'm not used to eating breakfast which I never advise people to do I just advise people to eat breakfast because it's such a for the rest of the day But let's say you did and I take it on an empty stomach and if I do what's the what's the consequence of that?

 

 

So asking questions all along, and if you're gonna fill your pill case, I do, we do, you do, right? I'm gonna watch you do it a couple of times. You're gonna get it down, and it might just be annoying. But once I let you do that, I'll check it afterwards to make sure that it's done, because that's something you're gonna have to do on your own anyway at some point. And it might as well be under my roof, and it might as well be under my guidance, so we can figure that out, we can problem solve, we can do that, I can prompt you.

 

Ann

Yeah, you know, it's just, it's kind of mind blowing that we don't, we, as parents, it's hard, what it was for me, maybe not for everyone, but to think about these things when the kids are living with us, how important it is, just like you said, to be able to call and make your own doctor's appointment, or even go to the doctor by yourself, or fill your pill case, or do these things, you know, obviously getting yourself out of bed in the morning on your own. All of these things that we need to be working on because we need to keep in our mind that, we're not always going to be there. And you know, when they leave our home, they need to be able to do these things. And for some of us, it's so much easier to just do it yourself. You know, we just were just used to it. So, we just hop in there and we do it. But we are, you know, I hate to say we're setting them up for failure, but we're certainly doing them a disservice by doing too much for them when they live with us because it's basically throwing them to the wolves as soon as they leave your home.

 

Dan Jordan

Correct. Correct. And one of the big things is you want to make sure that they can navigate things independently. Well, they can't do that unless you're allowing them the space to make that mistake. You're allowing them to make that mistake when there's some guidance right there with you. And you want to have that be validated. I'm afraid to make that appointment. I'm afraid to make that phone call. I'm like, I missed it and like now what happened? Okay, let me walk you through it. It's okay and have that be just that life lesson that happens in it most likely it's gonna be a one -and -done and It's just they missed the doctor's appointment now. They have to you got to pay the copay cool All right, we can work that off. No problem, but let's call and reschedule that kind of thing. Here's what you say Here's how you do that. Let's do that right now and that's an easy kind of thing to do versus getting a frantic phone call and at whatever time, like, I don't know what to do. What do I do? Not the best thing, especially to take care of your own fear and your own concerns as a parent, setting them up, but having that be very unconditional and validating that experience being very brand new. Because we all went through those new things. We all had to figure out everything that we kind of take for granted that we already know. We've had to learn. We've had to do that. We've had to stumble. We've had to fall. We've had do that kind of stuff. So when you're taking the reins off a little bit and giving them space to make their own mistakes, failure is part of the program. Letting them fail.

 

Ann

Yep, yep. And I love the, I do, we do, you do. And I think I may have heard that before, I don't know, but I'm gonna start repeating that. I do, we do, you do. I mean, that's a perfect thing. And that's what we need to be doing the whole time they're living with us. I do, we do, you do. Love that.

So is there anything else that you think is important that we have not discussed that parents need to know if they do have a child with these hidden disabilities before they go off to college?

 

Dan Jordan

Wow, okay. Well, there's an open -ended question that's got like a thousand answers to it. Let me see what I can do. Let me see what I can do. Cool. Let me narrow it down. Probably, probably there's, there's probably two things. One, as a parent with someone who's going into that next phase. And here's the thing. It's not just college. This is any kind of post -secondary training. So if they're going into plumbing school, HVAC, carpentry school, whatever.

 

There are accommodations that can be made for students with disabilities, no matter where they're going. So whatever they're doing for that next phase, know that as a parent, you have to regulate your own stuff. You have got to take care of that fear. You have got to take care of that stuff that may just get in the way. Because look, we all want to protect our kid. We all want to do that. But there's overprotection that gets in the way of them learning and gets in the way of them being able to do stuff. Like the classic example of, hey, you didn't learn to walk because you just kind of got up one day and started doing it. No, you learned because you fell down a thousand times. And that's kind of the same thing with some other stuff. And 99 % of the time, we think worst case scenario, worst case scenario is probably not going to happen. It's, you know, it's.

 

We go the WebMD route where we look up like a headache and it becomes a brain tumor that we're going to die in three days, right? That's not where we want to be. We want to take care of that fear so it doesn't impact on our child learning what they need to learn in order to be independent, whatever that may be. That could be as easy as they just put in a new red sweatshirt with their whites and everything turned out pink. Okay, cool. Lesson learned. We've all been there, done that - all been there done that. We know what that's like. Great. Just don't put it in the dryer. Right. So we kind of know this, but you have to be able to do that. And then it becomes something that's kind of a learning experience because really you're moving from being that, that protector into guiding them to protect themselves, which means, okay, for the next generation, for your grandkids, they're going to take on that role and they're going to be just as afraid when their kid, you're going to be sitting there and wondering, yup, been there, done that. Yup, and they're going to go, how did you do that? And then it becomes a whole other discussion. So know that you have to take care of yourself. Know that your spouse is going through that too, or the father or the mother, take care of each other. Whatever that is, I'm not interested in your marital status, I'm interested in you taking care of yourselves and taking care of the other because they're going through that too. And they have a rule to play as well. So, everybody that can be involved should be involved and should be on the same page However that happens because when they transfer over to that next phase of life guess what it's not about you It's not about you It's about what you did and it's about how you did it so that your kid can thrive as much as they can and They have the skill sets to problem -solving do all that kind of stuff So that's one that's one thing to do because it's not just about your kid. It's about you, too but you gotta step back and take care of your stuff so it doesn't get in the way of their stuff.

 

Ann

Yeah, I think that is wonderful. I think that's wonderful advice to end on because a lot of us have stuff that we need to take care of so that we don't pass it on to future generations. So that's wonderful, Dan. I really appreciate it. We could talk for hours about this. But I think this has been absolutely wonderful and very informative. And I'm going to let you go ahead and tell everyone how they can find you, what you do, and you know, where they can contact you.

 

Dan Jordan

Cool, what I do is exactly what we kinda talked about. I help parents kind of transfer all that advocacy stuff to their kid. So self-advocacy is kinda my game, it just is. I fill in that gap so that we can get prepared for college, so parents can get prepared, transfer all that stuff over. You can find information about me at accessingcollege.com. It's accessing college on Facebook and...accessing underscore college on Instagram so you can find me there.

 

Ann

Dan also has a podcast called After the IEP: College Transition and Success Tips for parents of students with ADHD, learning disabilities and mental health conditions. He also has courses for both parents and students and a free college accommodations checklist.

I‘ll have to links to everything in the episode description where you’re listening.

Okay, that’s a wrap on another Speaking of Teens. I’m so glad you were here with us today and I hope you learned something that you didn’t already know. Please be sure and share the episode with someone else you think could benefit from it. The objective is to help as many people as possible so I would really appreciate your help in doing that!

If you need help parenting your teen, you don’t have time to sort through the podcast, would like to spend time with me, other experts and community members learning to parent your teen with less conflict and more connection, be sure to check out Parent Camp – the link is in the episode description along with the link to our free Facebook Group – and I’m in there every day as well, answering questions. Come join us.

Alright, until next time, remember, a little change goes a long way.