Your High School Senior, Soon to Be College Freshman, with ADHD/LD
Give Up the Screaming Habit
April 17, 2014
Summer Safety for Students with ADHD: Tips to Reduce Temptation
May 12, 2014
May is here! You and your student are between two worlds. There is the excitement and satisfaction of successfully graduating from high school. Then there are the letters that you and your student are getting from the college that they will attend this August. Great! Two sets of very important paperwork and dates to keep straight.
College freshmen are usually assigned a date to register for classes and visit the campus during the summer. During that visit, you’ll want to have the student meet and register with the staff in the office of Disability Services at the University, if he has not done so already. Even if your student has no intention of accessing services, he might change his mind later. You will need to submit some type of assessment information, previous evaluation results or updated doctor’s reports. The website for the University will have that information. When your student discovers that he cannot get his first choices for class times, he may decide that priority registration through Disability Services is not a bad idea.
If you submitted evaluations to the Office of Disability Services and have not heard from them, no news is not good news. Follow up! Even if you are submitting paperwork for the third time, be pleasant. You don’t want the staff there to remember your daughter because you sounded angry, even if it is their fault. Better that they refer to you in the office as that nice lady or gentleman from Cincinnati. Practice sounding cheerful before you get on the phone. Be prepared that they may tell you that your student needs to make the call. Don’t get upset – the student is 18 and a legal adult.
At summer orientation, nearly all universities administer placement tests for math. There may be placement tests in foreign language and English. (Surprise!) How the student performs will determine whether you will be paying college tuition for a beginning level class or a remedial class that does not count toward graduation! It is worth the aggravation to encourage your high school senior to review basic Math, Spanish etc., though they have already “checked out” from academic work. Even students who tested well on the ACT’s and SAT’s may have an ongoing case of “senioritis” on the day of a placement test. Offer an incentive. Paying for a remedial math class at the college level costs a significant amount of money.
A monetary incentive for testing out of remedial math might spur them on to review division of fractions, percentages, basic algebra and geometry.The same is true for testing out of foreign language. Testing out of classes means the student will be free to sign up for other required classes.
Congratulations on your student’s graduation!
Blogger Mary Ann Mulcahey, PhD, shares her expertise in assessment and diagnosis of learning disabilities and ADHD, and the social/emotional adjustment to those issues. If you have questions, please contact Mary Ann at .
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