My husband and I sent our oldest child, Hannah, who is twenty-two, off to college last Tuesday. Again. (Hannah approved this newsletter.) It feels to me like I am sending her off to kindergarten again, thus my choice of photo.
The first time we sent her off to college two years ago, it happened with fanfare and orientation sessions and packing and unpacking and setting up her college apartment. We were all filled with hope.
She lived in her college apartment for a week before returning home and becoming a mass-transit commuter student, although we had to pay for that apartment for the entire semester. After two years, Hannah stopped going to college entirely, defeated and miserable. I was defeated and miserable, too.
Hannah is on the autism spectrum. I looked for information on the percentage of students with autism who graduate from college, but I couldn’t find any. The only evidence I have is anecdotal, and that evidence--gathered from friends and family who also have autistic young adults--is not very positive. College is a struggle for most kids with autism and with ADD and ADHD.
After wishing her well and watching her drive away to the U of MN, I was a ball of anxiety.
This time around, Hannah is four-years older, has been through day-treatment for depression, and is on medication for anxiety. I am hopeful that this time the outcome will be different, but my stomach still hurts.
I don’t know if, unlike the last time, things will work out this time. Since the time she dropped out of college, my husband and I have done everything we can to help our daughter be successful, but, in the end, we can’t go to college for her. She has to want it enough to overcome the anxiety and stress of doing it. She has to find meaning in it for herself. Hannah wants to be independent and she wants to have a job she enjoys most of the time. Hopefully, that will drive her to keep going to college.
As you might have noticed, I am having a very hard time separating my own anxiety and stress from her anxiety and stress. (I understand that this is my problem, not hers.) I am working on letting her succeed or fail on her own, while I am also making sure she has support from the University of Minnesota’s Disability Office, from therapists and psychiatrists, and from her circle of family and friends.
For the students and parents I work with, “letting go” is the hardest part of the process. As you can tell, I’m still working on it.
While the parents want their child to succeed, the kid might not be ready for success. Brain development has a lot to do with a young person’s readiness for college. At twenty-two, my daughter’s brain--specifically that all-important frontal lobe which manages executive function (planning and due dates)--is far more developed than it was at eighteen. It will be even more developed by the time she is twenty-five.
I am very proud of Hannah for coming to this place today and of all the other kids who I have worked with who find it hard to make college work for them.
Good luck, all of you,
P.S. Mom and Dad, I am thinking of you, too. I really am.