Transcript
A (0:00)
Welcome back to the Thriving Kids Podcast from the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of children and families experiencing mental health and learning disorders. I'm your host, Dr. Dave Anderson. This is the third and final episode in our series on the transition from high school to college. In the first two episodes, we explored why this transition can feel so challenging and what's happening beneath the surface when students struggle with skills like organization, time management and follow through. In this episode, you'll hear our clinicians focus on what families and students can do to prepare for college more effectively. We'll cover practical supports, routines, accommodations, and signs that a student may need additional help, along with guidance on how parents can support independence without stepping in too quickly. I'll hand it back to my colleagues, Dr. David Friedlander, Dr. Adam Zamora and Dr. Morgan Eldridge to wrap up the series.
B (0:55)
Now that we've kind of covered a lot of information on what makes college in this transition so challenging, I'd love to focus on some actionable preparation. Right. What can parents can students do now to get ready kind of practically and emotionally since we know this is a big transition. So to you Adam, let's start with support. What kind of key academic or kind of campus based resources should families be thinking about or identifying before the their student even leaves for this big transition?
C (1:30)
Yeah, well, a couple things. So I think just in general in preparing students for the transition in the first place is the last year of high school. Parents can help their kids by and teachers can also help their students by rewarding and providing more motivation towards doing things on their own. Not, you know, 100% being independent because as we said before, like not even full blown people who are adulting are 100% independent. But I think just getting them more comfortable with making more of their own decisions and reflecting upon what went well about that decision, what didn't, validating those efforts, providing encouragement and positive reinforcement that can really go a long way. And now going back to what we were talking about with students who have mental health or learning challenges, if you've been diagnosed with a learning disorder or ADHD or any other neurodevelopmental challenge, there are supports that you can be and should be utilizing in college. Most schools have some kind of service center called the Office of Disabilities or Accessibility or Learning that can assist with those supports and accommodations. And chances are if you have a pre existing diagnosis, you've had a neuropsych evaluation or some kind of psycho educational evaluation that documents your profile of strengths and weaknesses and the accommodations that you've utilized throughout high school, maybe even earlier. And those are the accommodations that you should still be utilizing in college. Those reports typically spell out, like, exactly the accommodations that you should be entitled to receive, that they're not there to like, give you a leg up on anybody. They're there to help you reach what your potential actually is. Even students in graduate school often continue to utilize accommodations for support. Colleges also have peer tutoring or writing centers or math centers that can support challenges that you might have. The services are often free on campus. If you don't know, if you don't ask, you won't know. And sometimes there's peer tutoring for specific subjects. And if you feel uncomfortable asking a peer or talking to a peer about something that you're struggling with, there are always TA sessions, office hours that the professors hold. Those are actually, like, really important. There are opportunities for the people who are actually grading your assignments to get to know you. And especially in those like, early hundred level classes where depending upon the size of school you're in, they might have 100 kids in them, they might have like 300 students in them. Your professor is not going to know who you are unless you're always raising your hand in class, unless you're showing up during office hours or sitting outside of the professor's office. I always tell my students, like, sit outside the professor's office in whatever, like the academic resource center is for that department during your professor's office hours. And that's the time when you should be doing your homework for that class. Because then you're doing the homework. If you have a question, you can just pop into the professor's office or wait until you know somebody else has come out of it since their office hours and ask that question. And the professor, the professor gets to know who you are. And that can often make the difference between getting an A minus or a B plus or passing or failing a class. Believe it or not, like, professors want to know that their students care about the work that they're doing and the subject that they're learning. For the most part, professors have chosen to specialize in an area because they're passionate about it. So they get excited when their students are passionate about that same kind of work. So I tell students that office hours are. They're mandatory, they're not optional. I also think that, as we were saying earlier, your peers, your classmates can be a really great resource for academic help in the form of putting together study groups, shared notes, and more. You know, obviously not asking your friends to do your work for you. But sometimes if you're doing the work with somebody, like somebody who you know actually does well in the subject, you can learn a lot from them about how they're approaching the topic. And sometimes there's that like one little hurdle that you're having trouble figuring out. And maybe for the kind of kid who doesn't feel comfortable going to a professor and asking them questions, you can just like poke appears brain about a question and that'll unlock your ability to be like, wait, oh, now I know how to do this. That totally makes sense now that so and so explained it to me in a way that my professor couldn't. And also, and David can talk a little more about this, but college campuses usually have counseling centers that offer mental health support weekly or as needed. But at the end of the day, what I, what I want students and their parents to understand is that the, the supports that you relied upon in high school, now's not the time to give them up. Now's the time to make sure that you're going to be getting those supports in college and that the transition from high school to college with the supports is as seamless as it can.