Anyone who has helped a teenager through the college selection process knows what an extraordinary stressful time it can be.  The competition among the students (and their parents!) is breathtaking.  My husband and I found it extremely difficult with our oldest son, who is a strong, “traditional” student.  But to navigate the college selection process with a special needs student is a whole different ball game with an entirely different bucket list of worries and “to-do’s.”

 I know that we are blessed that we were even able to consider college for our now 18-year-old son, because only about a third of students with disabilities attend college according to the US Department of Education in 2003 .  Whereas public high schools are required by law to provide individualized educations for students with special needs, colleges are required to make only “reasonable accommodations” for qualified students. What this means varies wildly from school to school, and there is a lack of terminology to describe support programs offered by colleges.  According to the Wall Street Journal, at a minimum, schools will offer “basic programs,” which offer only the accommodations required by law; eg, un-timed testing or note-taking help.  “Coordinated services” provide at least one trained staffer and additional supports such as study skills classes, tutors, and other services.  “Structured” or “proactive” programs charge additional fees, often involve contracts, and trained staffers who work with the students.

 In general, we found the various glossy brochures mailed out by schools fairly useless—all the students were happy, the sun always shone, etc, etc, etc.  What we did rely on, however, was the disability information published on college web sites.  We found that schools that had pretty skimpy information about disability support on the web site offered fairly skimpy services when we met with their disability offices in person.  And we met with each and every disability office at schools our son was considering.  In doing so, we were able to scratch off the list fairly quickly (though painfully) some small private schools in which our son was interested.  One office felt that they could have a staff person meet with our son every other week (wholly inadequate for a student with significant organizational deficits); at another school the disability coordinator appeared to be unfamiliar with our son’s diagnosis and unaware of what it meant for him. 

 Like every other parent/student, we purchased the different college guides that describe the various advantages and disadvantages of different schools—which schools students rated the most highly, which had the most accessible faculty, which had the best food, which had the worst dorms, best parties, you get it.  But we also purchased the K & W Guide to College for Students with Learning Disabilities, which rated different disability programs at different schools.   Given the distance and our son’s needs, we were utterly unwilling to consider a school on the East coast that our son was interested in and is now ultimately attending until we saw that it had a particularly high rating from the K & W College Guide.  

I’m sure you’ve heard tales of those mythical students who are disciplined and can get through the application process relatively on their own.  I will tell you that our older son was just such a student.  But our youngest . . . oh well . . . Actually, the hardest part of the application process was deciding whether or not our son should disclose his disability.  (Students are not required to do so; colleges are of course not allowed to discriminate against students who do identify their special needs.)  Although our high school transition coordinator recommends always disclosing, we were on a fence.  But during one particularly interminable college recruiting program (again, our students are always happy, the sun is always shining, etc), I reacted to the admission rep’s statements about respecting and seeking diversity.  I figured we would call them on it. I suggested, and my husband and son agreed, to disclose the disability.  If a school were going to be bothered by the disability, it wasn’t a school our son should be attending anyway.  Consequently, my son wrote about his diagnosis in his Common Application essay, and I’m happy to report that the schools didn’t blink. 

 Last week my husband and I drove to the East coast to drop our son off at school. My older son’s university had offered a program to the parents during freshman orientation on “Letting Go.” Parents were told that they needed to trust that they have raised their children well, that they are prepared for college, and that they will thrive.  The days of “helicopter parenting” must end.  (I told my husband that I would walk out of any similar session if offered at our younger son’s school–fortunately, it wasn’t.)  My final act of loving “helicoptering” (if that can be a noun) was to unpack and organize my son’s dorm room.  This week a co-worker, who had also just dropped off her freshman son, laughed about moms who organized their freshman’s shirts by color. Guilty as charged. And yes, my husband set up the wireless for the laptop.

 My husband and I are now home.  Our son is out East without us, and it’s up to him now to make things work. He has survived his first earthquake and his first hurricane (two events it had never occurred to me to worry about—who knew?).  He’s excited and nervous about his new adventure.  We are scared, hopeful, and proud.  And missing him, too.

 

Parents of children with special needs either love or hate Emily Perl Kingsley’s poem, “Welcome to Holland” (http://www.our-kids.org/archives/Holland.html).  Like everything else involved in raising a child with a disability, parents can find themselves in Holland, even while searching for a college.  As for my husband and me, we’re planning to go to Italy this spring—for real, this time.    

 

Marilyn Green-Rebnord

 

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/03/30/determination_paves_difficult_path_to_college/

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122160388151245179.html

 

http://www.amazon.com/Colleges-Students-Disabilities-Attention-Princeton/dp/0375762205

http://www.our-kids.org/archives/Holland.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting to Exhale—for Four Years

 

Anyone who has helped a teenager through the college selection process knows what an extraordinary stressful time it can be.  The competition among the students (and their parents!) is breathtaking.  My husband and I found it extremely difficult with our oldest son, who is a strong, “traditional” student.  But to navigate the college selection process with a special needs student is a whole different ball game with an entirely different bucket list of worries and “to-do’s.”

 

I know that we are blessed that we were even able to consider college for our now 18-year-old son, because only about a third of students with disabilities attend college according to the US Department of Education in 2003.  Whereas public high schools are required by law to provide individualized educations for students with special needs, colleges are required to make only “reasonable accommodations” for qualified students. What this means varies wildly from school to school, and there is a lack of terminology to describe support programs offered by colleges.  According to the Wall Street Journal, at a minimum, schools will offer “basic programs,” which offer only the accommodations required by law; eg, un-timed testing or note-taking help.  “Coordinated services” provide at least one trained staffer and offer additional services such as study skills classes, tutors, and other services.  “Structured” or “proactive” programs charge additional fees, often involve contracts, and trained staffers work with the students.

 

In general, we found the various glossy brochures mailed out by schools fairly useless—all the students were happy, the sun always shone, etc, etc, etc.  What we did rely on, however, was the disability information published on college web sites.  We found that schools that had pretty skimpy information about disability support on the web site offered fairly skimpy services when we met with their disability offices in person.  And we met with each and every disability office at schools our son was considering.  In doing so, we were able to scratch off the list fairly quickly (though painfully) some small private schools in which our son was interested.  One office felt that they could have a staff person meet with our son every other week (wholly inadequate for a student with significant organizational deficits); at another school the disability coordinator appeared to be unfamiliar with our son’s diagnosis and unaware of what it meant for him. 

 

Like every other parent/student, we purchased the different college guides that describe the various advantages and disadvantages of different schools—which schools students rated the most highly, which had the most accessible faculty, which had the best food, which had the worst dorms, best parties, you get it.  But we also purchased the K & W Guide to College for Students with Learning Disabilities, which rated different disability programs at different schools.   Given the distance and our son’s needs, we were utterly unwilling to consider a school on the East coast that our son was interested in and is now ultimately attending until we saw that it had a particularly high rating from the K & W College Guide.

 

I’m sure you’ve heard tales of those mythical students who are disciplined and can get through the application process relatively on their own.  I will tell you that our older son was just such a student.  But our youngest . . . oh well . . . Actually, the hardest part of the application process was deciding whether or not our son should disclose his disability.  (Students are not required to do so; colleges are of course not allowed to discriminate against students who do identify their special needs.)  Although our high school transition coordinator recommends always disclosing, we were on a fence.  But during one particularly interminable college recruiting program  (again, our students are always happy, the sun is always shining, etc), I reacted to the admission rep’s statements about respecting and seeking diversity.  I figured we would call them on it. I suggested, and my husband and son agreed, to disclose the disability.  If a school were going to be bothered by the disability, it wasn’t a school our son should be attending anyway.  Consequently, my son wrote about his diagnosis in his Common Application essay.

 

Last week my husband and I drove to the East coast to drop our son off at school. My older son’s university had offered a program to the parents during freshman orientation on “Letting Go.” Parents were told that they needed to trust that they have raised their children well, that they are prepared for college, and that they will thrive.  The days of “helicopter parenting” must end.  (I told my husband that I would walk out of any similar session if offered at our younger son’s school–fortunately, it wasn’t.)  My final act of loving “helicoptering” (if that can be a noun) was to unpack and organize my son’s dorm room.  This week a co-worker, who had also just dropped off her freshman son, laughed about moms who organized their freshman’s shirts by color. Guilty as charged. And yes, my husband set up the wireless for the laptop.

 

My husband and I are now home.  Our son is out East without us, and it’s up to him now to make things work. He has survived his first earthquake and his first hurricane (two events it had not occurred to me to worry about—who knew?).  He’s excited and nervous about his new adventure.  We are scared, hopeful, and proud.  And missing him, too.

 

Parents of children with special needs either love or hate Emily Perl Kingsley’s poem, “Welcome to Holland.”  Like everything else involved in raising a child with a disability, parents find themselves in Holland, even while searching for college.  As for my husband and me, we’re planning to go to Italy this spring—really.    

 

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/03/30/determination_paves_difficult_path_to_college/

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122160388151245179.html

 

http://www.amazon.com/Colleges-Students-Disabilities-Attention-Princeton/dp/0375762205

 

 

 

 

 Waiting to Exhale—for Four Years

 

Anyone who has helped a teenager through the college selection process knows what an extraordinary stressful time it can be.  The competition among the students (and their parents!) is breathtaking.  My husband and I found it extremely difficult with our oldest son, who is a strong, “traditional” student.  But to navigate the college selection process with a special needs student is a whole different ball game with an entirely different bucket list of worries and “to-do’s.”

 

I know that we are blessed that we were even able to consider college for our now 18-year-old son, because only about a third of students with disabilities attend college according to the US Department of Education in 2003.  Whereas public high schools are required by law to provide individualized educations for students with special needs, colleges are required to make only “reasonable accommodations” for qualified students. What this means varies wildly from school to school, and there is a lack of terminology to describe support programs offered by colleges.  According to the Wall Street Journal, at a minimum, schools will offer “basic programs,” which offer only the accommodations required by law; eg, un-timed testing or note-taking help.  “Coordinated services” provide at least one trained staffer and offer additional services such as study skills classes, tutors, and other services.  “Structured” or “proactive” programs charge additional fees, often involve contracts, and trained staffers work with the students.

 

In general, we found the various glossy brochures mailed out by schools fairly useless—all the students were happy, the sun always shone, etc, etc, etc.  What we did rely on, however, was the disability information published on college web sites.  We found that schools that had pretty skimpy information about disability support on the web site offered fairly skimpy services when we met with their disability offices in person.  And we met with each and every disability office at schools our son was considering.  In doing so, we were able to scratch off the list fairly quickly (though painfully) some small private schools in which our son was interested.  One office felt that they could have a staff person meet with our son every other week (wholly inadequate for a student with significant organizational deficits); at another school the disability coordinator appeared to be unfamiliar with our son’s diagnosis and unaware of what it meant for him. 

 

Like every other parent/student, we purchased the different college guides that describe the various advantages and disadvantages of different schools—which schools students rated the most highly, which had the most accessible faculty, which had the best food, which had the worst dorms, best parties, you get it.  But we also purchased the K & W Guide to College for Students with Learning Disabilities, which rated different disability programs at different schools.   Given the distance and our son’s needs, we were utterly unwilling to consider a school on the East coast that our son was interested in and is now ultimately attending until we saw that it had a particularly high rating from the K & W College Guide.

 

I’m sure you’ve heard tales of those mythical students who are disciplined and can get through the application process relatively on their own.  I will tell you that our older son was just such a student.  But our youngest . . . oh well . . . Actually, the hardest part of the application process was deciding whether or not our son should disclose his disability.  (Students are not required to do so; colleges are of course not allowed to discriminate against students who do identify their special needs.)  Although our high school transition coordinator recommends always disclosing, we were on a fence.  But during one particularly interminable college recruiting program  (again, our students are always happy, the sun is always shining, etc), I reacted to the admission rep’s statements about respecting and seeking diversity.  I figured we would call them on it. I suggested, and my husband and son agreed, to disclose the disability.  If a school were going to be bothered by the disability, it wasn’t a school our son should be attending anyway.  Consequently, my son wrote about his diagnosis in his Common Application essay.

 

Last week my husband and I drove to the East coast to drop our son off at school. My older son’s university had offered a program to the parents during freshman orientation on “Letting Go.” Parents were told that they needed to trust that they have raised their children well, that they are prepared for college, and that they will thrive.  The days of “helicopter parenting” must end.  (I told my husband that I would walk out of any similar session if offered at our younger son’s school–fortunately, it wasn’t.)  My final act of loving “helicoptering” (if that can be a noun) was to unpack and organize my son’s dorm room.  This week a co-worker, who had also just dropped off her freshman son, laughed about moms who organized their freshman’s shirts by color. Guilty as charged. And yes, my husband set up the wireless for the laptop.

 

My husband and I are now home.  Our son is out East without us, and it’s up to him now to make things work. He has survived his first earthquake and his first hurricane (two events it had not occurred to me to worry about—who knew?).  He’s excited and nervous about his new adventure.  We are scared, hopeful, and proud.  And missing him, too.

 

Parents of children with special needs either love or hate Emily Perl Kingsley’s poem, “Welcome to Holland.”  Like everything else involved in raising a child with a disability, parents find themselves in Holland, even while searching for college.  As for my husband and me, we’re planning to go to Italy this spring—really.    

 

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/03/30/determination_paves_difficult_path_to_college/

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122160388151245179.html

 

http://www.amazon.com/Colleges-Students-Disabilities-Attention-Princeton/dp/0375762205

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 Waiting to Exhale—for Four Years by Marilyn Green_Rebnord

 Anyone who has helped a teenager through the college selection process knows what an extraordinary stressful time it can be.  The competition among the students (and their parents!) is breathtaking.  My husband and I found it extremely difficult with our oldest son, who is a strong, “traditional” student.  But to navigate the college selection process with a special needs student is a whole different ball game with an entirely different bucket list of worries and “to-do’s.”

 I know that we are blessed that we were even able to consider college for our now 18-year-old son, because only about a third of students with disabilities attend college according to the US Department of Education in 2003 (http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/03/30/determination_paves_difficult_path_to_college/).  Whereas public high schools are required by law to provide individualized educations for students with special needs, colleges are required to make only “reasonable accommodations” for qualified students. What this means varies wildly from school to school, and there is a lack of terminology to describe support programs offered by colleges.  According to the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122160388151245179.html), at a minimum, schools will offer “basic programs,” which offer only the accommodations required by law; eg, un-timed testing or note-taking help.  “Coordinated services” provide at least one trained staffer and additional supports such as study skills classes, tutors, and other services.  “Structured” or “proactive” programs charge additional fees, often involve contracts, and trained staffers who work with the students.

 In general, we found the various glossy brochures mailed out by schools fairly useless—all the students were happy, the sun always shone, etc, etc, etc.  What we did rely on, however, was the disability information published on college web sites.  We found that schools that had pretty skimpy information about disability support on the web site offered fairly skimpy services when we met with their disability offices in person.  And we met with each and every disability office at schools our son was considering.  In doing so, we were able to scratch off the list fairly quickly (though painfully) some small private schools in which our son was interested.  One office felt that they could have a staff person meet with our son every other week (wholly inadequate for a student with significant organizational deficits); at another school the disability coordinator appeared to be unfamiliar with our son’s diagnosis and unaware of what it meant for him. 

 Like every other parent/student, we purchased the different college guides that describe the various advantages and disadvantages of different schools—which schools students rated the most highly, which had the most accessible faculty, which had the best food, which had the worst dorms, best parties, you get it.  But we also purchased the K & W Guide to College for Students with Learning Disabilities, which rated different disability programs at different schools (http://www.amazon.com/Colleges-Students-Disabilities-Attention-Princeton/dp/0375762205).   Given the distance and our son’s needs, we were utterly unwilling to consider a school on the East coast that our son was interested in and is now ultimately attending until we saw that it had a particularly high rating from the K & W College Guide.  

I’m sure you’ve heard tales of those mythical students who are disciplined and can get through the application process relatively on their own.  I will tell you that our older son was just such a student.  But our youngest . . . oh well . . . Actually, the hardest part of the application process was deciding whether or not our son should disclose his disability.  (Students are not required to do so; colleges are of course not allowed to discriminate against students who do identify their special needs.)  Although our high school transition coordinator recommends always disclosing, we were on a fence.  But during one particularly interminable college recruiting program (again, our students are always happy, the sun is always shining, etc), I reacted to the admission rep’s statements about respecting and seeking diversity.  I figured we would call them on it. I suggested, and my husband and son agreed, to disclose the disability.  If a school were going to be bothered by the disability, it wasn’t a school our son should be attending anyway.  Consequently, my son wrote about his diagnosis in his Common Application essay, and I’m happy to report that the schools didn’t blink. 

 Last week my husband and I drove to the East coast to drop our son off at school. My older son’s university had offered a program to the parents during freshman orientation on “Letting Go.” Parents were told that they needed to trust that they have raised their children well, that they are prepared for college, and that they will thrive.  The days of “helicopter parenting” must end.  (I told my husband that I would walk out of any similar session if offered at our younger son’s school–fortunately, it wasn’t.)  My final act of loving “helicoptering” (if that can be a noun) was to unpack and organize my son’s dorm room.  This week a co-worker, who had also just dropped off her freshman son, laughed about moms who organized their freshman’s shirts by color. Guilty as charged. And yes, my husband set up the wireless for the laptop.

 My husband and I are now home.  Our son is out East without us, and it’s up to him now to make things work. He has survived his first earthquake and his first hurricane (two events it had never occurred to me to worry about—who knew?).  He’s excited and nervous about his new adventure.  We are scared, hopeful, and proud.  And missing him, too.

 

Parents of children with special needs either love or hate Emily Perl Kingsley’s poem, “Welcome to Holland” (http://www.our-kids.org/archives/Holland.html).  Like everything else involved in raising a child with a disability, parents can find themselves in Holland, even while searching for a college.  As for my husband and me, we’re planning to go to Italy this spring—for real, this time.    

 

Marilyn Green-Rebnord

 

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/03/30/determination_paves_difficult_path_to_college/

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122160388151245179.html

 

http://www.amazon.com/Colleges-Students-Disabilities-Attention-Princeton/dp/0375762205

http://www.our-kids.org/archives/Holland.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waiting to Exhale—for Four Years

 

Anyone who has helped a teenager through the college selection process knows what an extraordinary stressful time it can be.  The competition among the students (and their parents!) is breathtaking.  My husband and I found it extremely difficult with our oldest son, who is a strong, “traditional” student.  But to navigate the college selection process with a special needs student is a whole different ball game with an entirely different bucket list of worries and “to-do’s.”

 

I know that we are blessed that we were even able to consider college for our now 18-year-old son, because only about a third of students with disabilities attend college according to the US Department of Education in 2003.  Whereas public high schools are required by law to provide individualized educations for students with special needs, colleges are required to make only “reasonable accommodations” for qualified students. What this means varies wildly from school to school, and there is a lack of terminology to describe support programs offered by colleges.  According to the Wall Street Journal, at a minimum, schools will offer “basic programs,” which offer only the accommodations required by law; eg, un-timed testing or note-taking help.  “Coordinated services” provide at least one trained staffer and offer additional services such as study skills classes, tutors, and other services.  “Structured” or “proactive” programs charge additional fees, often involve contracts, and trained staffers work with the students.

 

In general, we found the various glossy brochures mailed out by schools fairly useless—all the students were happy, the sun always shone, etc, etc, etc.  What we did rely on, however, was the disability information published on college web sites.  We found that schools that had pretty skimpy information about disability support on the web site offered fairly skimpy services when we met with their disability offices in person.  And we met with each and every disability office at schools our son was considering.  In doing so, we were able to scratch off the list fairly quickly (though painfully) some small private schools in which our son was interested.  One office felt that they could have a staff person meet with our son every other week (wholly inadequate for a student with significant organizational deficits); at another school the disability coordinator appeared to be unfamiliar with our son’s diagnosis and unaware of what it meant for him. 

 

Like every other parent/student, we purchased the different college guides that describe the various advantages and disadvantages of different schools—which schools students rated the most highly, which had the most accessible faculty, which had the best food, which had the worst dorms, best parties, you get it.  But we also purchased the K & W Guide to College for Students with Learning Disabilities, which rated different disability programs at different schools.   Given the distance and our son’s needs, we were utterly unwilling to consider a school on the East coast that our son was interested in and is now ultimately attending until we saw that it had a particularly high rating from the K & W College Guide.

 

I’m sure you’ve heard tales of those mythical students who are disciplined and can get through the application process relatively on their own.  I will tell you that our older son was just such a student.  But our youngest . . . oh well . . . Actually, the hardest part of the application process was deciding whether or not our son should disclose his disability.  (Students are not required to do so; colleges are of course not allowed to discriminate against students who do identify their special needs.)  Although our high school transition coordinator recommends always disclosing, we were on a fence.  But during one particularly interminable college recruiting program  (again, our students are always happy, the sun is always shining, etc), I reacted to the admission rep’s statements about respecting and seeking diversity.  I figured we would call them on it. I suggested, and my husband and son agreed, to disclose the disability.  If a school were going to be bothered by the disability, it wasn’t a school our son should be attending anyway.  Consequently, my son wrote about his diagnosis in his Common Application essay.

 

Last week my husband and I drove to the East coast to drop our son off at school. My older son’s university had offered a program to the parents during freshman orientation on “Letting Go.” Parents were told that they needed to trust that they have raised their children well, that they are prepared for college, and that they will thrive.  The days of “helicopter parenting” must end.  (I told my husband that I would walk out of any similar session if offered at our younger son’s school–fortunately, it wasn’t.)  My final act of loving “helicoptering” (if that can be a noun) was to unpack and organize my son’s dorm room.  This week a co-worker, who had also just dropped off her freshman son, laughed about moms who organized their freshman’s shirts by color. Guilty as charged. And yes, my husband set up the wireless for the laptop.

 

My husband and I are now home.  Our son is out East without us, and it’s up to him now to make things work. He has survived his first earthquake and his first hurricane (two events it had not occurred to me to worry about—who knew?).  He’s excited and nervous about his new adventure.  We are scared, hopeful, and proud.  And missing him, too.

 

Parents of children with special needs either love or hate Emily Perl Kingsley’s poem, “Welcome to Holland.”  Like everything else involved in raising a child with a disability, parents find themselves in Holland, even while searching for college.  As for my husband and me, we’re planning to go to Italy this spring—really.    

 

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/03/30/determination_paves_difficult_path_to_college/

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122160388151245179.html

 

http://www.amazon.com/Colleges-Students-Disabilities-Attention-Princeton/dp/0375762205

 

 

 

 

 Waiting to Exhale—for Four Years

 

Anyone who has helped a teenager through the college selection process knows what an extraordinary stressful time it can be.  The competition among the students (and their parents!) is breathtaking.  My husband and I found it extremely difficult with our oldest son, who is a strong, “traditional” student.  But to navigate the college selection process with a special needs student is a whole different ball game with an entirely different bucket list of worries and “to-do’s.”

 

I know that we are blessed that we were even able to consider college for our now 18-year-old son, because only about a third of students with disabilities attend college according to the US Department of Education in 2003.  Whereas public high schools are required by law to provide individualized educations for students with special needs, colleges are required to make only “reasonable accommodations” for qualified students. What this means varies wildly from school to school, and there is a lack of terminology to describe support programs offered by colleges.  According to the Wall Street Journal, at a minimum, schools will offer “basic programs,” which offer only the accommodations required by law; eg, un-timed testing or note-taking help.  “Coordinated services” provide at least one trained staffer and offer additional services such as study skills classes, tutors, and other services.  “Structured” or “proactive” programs charge additional fees, often involve contracts, and trained staffers work with the students.

 

In general, we found the various glossy brochures mailed out by schools fairly useless—all the students were happy, the sun always shone, etc, etc, etc.  What we did rely on, however, was the disability information published on college web sites.  We found that schools that had pretty skimpy information about disability support on the web site offered fairly skimpy services when we met with their disability offices in person.  And we met with each and every disability office at schools our son was considering.  In doing so, we were able to scratch off the list fairly quickly (though painfully) some small private schools in which our son was interested.  One office felt that they could have a staff person meet with our son every other week (wholly inadequate for a student with significant organizational deficits); at another school the disability coordinator appeared to be unfamiliar with our son’s diagnosis and unaware of what it meant for him. 

 

Like every other parent/student, we purchased the different college guides that describe the various advantages and disadvantages of different schools—which schools students rated the most highly, which had the most accessible faculty, which had the best food, which had the worst dorms, best parties, you get it.  But we also purchased the K & W Guide to College for Students with Learning Disabilities, which rated different disability programs at different schools.   Given the distance and our son’s needs, we were utterly unwilling to consider a school on the East coast that our son was interested in and is now ultimately attending until we saw that it had a particularly high rating from the K & W College Guide.

 

I’m sure you’ve heard tales of those mythical students who are disciplined and can get through the application process relatively on their own.  I will tell you that our older son was just such a student.  But our youngest . . . oh well . . . Actually, the hardest part of the application process was deciding whether or not our son should disclose his disability.  (Students are not required to do so; colleges are of course not allowed to discriminate against students who do identify their special needs.)  Although our high school transition coordinator recommends always disclosing, we were on a fence.  But during one particularly interminable college recruiting program  (again, our students are always happy, the sun is always shining, etc), I reacted to the admission rep’s statements about respecting and seeking diversity.  I figured we would call them on it. I suggested, and my husband and son agreed, to disclose the disability.  If a school were going to be bothered by the disability, it wasn’t a school our son should be attending anyway.  Consequently, my son wrote about his diagnosis in his Common Application essay.

 

Last week my husband and I drove to the East coast to drop our son off at school. My older son’s university had offered a program to the parents during freshman orientation on “Letting Go.” Parents were told that they needed to trust that they have raised their children well, that they are prepared for college, and that they will thrive.  The days of “helicopter parenting” must end.  (I told my husband that I would walk out of any similar session if offered at our younger son’s school–fortunately, it wasn’t.)  My final act of loving “helicoptering” (if that can be a noun) was to unpack and organize my son’s dorm room.  This week a co-worker, who had also just dropped off her freshman son, laughed about moms who organized their freshman’s shirts by color. Guilty as charged. And yes, my husband set up the wireless for the laptop.

 

My husband and I are now home.  Our son is out East without us, and it’s up to him now to make things work. He has survived his first earthquake and his first hurricane (two events it had not occurred to me to worry about—who knew?).  He’s excited and nervous about his new adventure.  We are scared, hopeful, and proud.  And missing him, too.

 

Parents of children with special needs either love or hate Emily Perl Kingsley’s poem, “Welcome to Holland.”  Like everything else involved in raising a child with a disability, parents find themselves in Holland, even while searching for college.  As for my husband and me, we’re planning to go to Italy this spring—really.    

 

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/03/30/determination_paves_difficult_path_to_college/

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122160388151245179.html

 

http://www.amazon.com/Colleges-Students-Disabilities-Attention-Princeton/dp/0375762205

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A number of year ago I represented Matt as he fought for reimbursement and payment for PACE, a high quality transition program, run by the teaching university at National Louis in Skokie.  While we won a partial victory at hearing, Matt's and his family's dedication and his winning personality has allowed him to accomplish great things, as the video clip below shows. He is managing a local deli, has lots of friends, is an integral part of the community. He is even in a position to hire other students with special needs and has done so. What a  wonderful world when  all the pieces come together, in spite of the school system that had a very unformed and limited concept of transition programming. Hurrah for Matt, his family and all the dedicated staff at PACE that made this great outcome a reality! Here is a link for the video.