So do you have any suggestions or leads of where we can go to get that kind of help?

I mean, I think one of the – things I would suggest that I always suggest to parents is maybe going back to the basics, right? So I don't know about you, but I used to sit with my family at night and we would work on things together, right? Like I would be doing my homework at the table and my parents would be doing whatever they were doing, right? There was no cell phones at that time.

There was nothing like that.

And I always say maybe going back to the basics of, you know, that... sitting at the table.

The students are working on their homework.

So you're kind of managing them.

And they can also work on the self-advocacy of, hey, mom, I don't understand this.

What about for students who go into college and find that it's just too much for them personally, and maybe they want to shift gears? What do we do about that as parents? How do we transition yet again and still support our kids in their decision?

Oh.

And they were like, "Hey, you're gonna be a TA for this class." And so I started teaching right away, right after I had graduated in May, August, oh, I'm a teacher.

So from there, I really was working with different kinds of students, and I had never really heard of accommodations or, well, you know, what that meant for college students.

And just seeing that a lot of students learn in different ways and that maybe we aren't capturing that all the time in a classroom, and how to figure out if a student is really confused by just writing it, how else do I explain it? What examples do I use? Can they get visual? Can it be more auditory? Can we, even with the technology 20 years ago, like can we pull up something, a model, right? Or even a model that we can hold in our hand.

So really just learning about that and being in a classroom, and then I was internationally in a PhD program, so then I got to work with people from all over the world and still seeing these challenges.

And from there, when I was in my own classroom as a professor, same thing.

I really started diving into why is the transition to college so hard for all of us? And thinking about when I went to college, I was from a very small town in Florida, went to Florida State University, and not only are you having these big social shocks and culture shocks and moving away and losing your maybe support system that you see every day, but also, like, school is so much harder, right? Like, you had maybe exams, and that was it, and you were used to having other work and things like that.

Mm-hmm.

But what do you think that they're missing, and what would you say true readiness really looks like?

I mean, I'd say one of the things I think is missing is self-advocacy, which I think now we're really learning.

I know even as an adult who's 43, I'm still learning how to self-advocate because that's something that's, that's new and wonderful, and I think this generation does really well.

But I think that that piece is missing from maybe parents always wanting to help and having the best of intentions, but then students don't really learn to have a voice, which they're going to have to have in college.

So I think that that is a, a big sort of missing point that, that we can work on in middle school and high school in terms of, hey, you're gonna go on vacation.

Let's have the student tell the teacher, "Hey, I'm gonna be gone.

What can I do to make up my work beforehand? What do I need to do to prepare? What documentation do I need?" Just things like that, or if there is an issue, instead of having the parents send an email, let's teach the students to work on how to send an email so that they can say, "Hey, this is happening," or, um, "I messed up.

It's like that now that we have to just, you know, bite down on everything that we feel that we wanna, you know, jump in and, and know that that might be doing more of a disservice than we think.

How do you suggest parents navigate those very murky waters?

Yeah.

I mean, I think first thing is a lot of parents don't relinquish that control and still want to be on the portal and want to do these things without thinking about how, you know, FERPA is, now basically saying your student has to sign off for you to be able to be able to access those things.

And then if you have a student that needs accommodations or that's had an IEP or 504, then I would say first thing first, make sure they're signing up for their accommodations in the summer before.

Those offices, if you wait until August, they are going to be booked until October.

Right.

So the first thing I always tell parents is please make sure that they are looking at that once they know where they're going to school.

What would you say is, aside from time management, which I would imagine, you know, the high school structure, day to day, would you say is one of the greatest challenges for college students in their first semester?

[laughs]

So now we have...

Exactly, so now we have this, this issue of like, what do we do? Um, and, uh, we have all different kinds of due dates now.

We have some people have homework, some people just have tests.

Who gives feedback? So to me, I think it's, it's going from one personality to a lot, right? And then also, um, as we talked about, the social, right? We're now thinking about maybe things we didn't think about before in terms of-You know, is there allowance of social media, right? That's a big topic always.

Um, and then if there is screen time, like how is, how is that regulated by the parent? And then I think you also have some parents who let the students, who let their kids use it and some who don't.

So then there's another issue.

What's happening in the brain at that time?

Where do I begin? How do you work with families?

I mean, we start in that transition in middle school.

And then I think it's just, A, dissecting that every student's different.

And so, like I said, seeing those rewards, seeing them, like what reward systems they choose, like what keeps them from doing work.

And students are really honest a lot of the time about what keeps them from doing work.

And then sort of as much as we can, getting all their assignments that are due ahead of time together so we can start planning.

So we're not waiting until the end of the semester.

I

Can you explain to everyone listening what that means?

Yeah, I mean, I think in our realm it... well, in anybody's realm, I guess, but in the realm of education, it means learning how to say, A, I need help.

Maybe I need help with an assignment, or I need help signing up for something, or I wanna use my accommodations, like double time, testing center, note takers, preferred seating, whatever that accommodation may be.

And I think in younger years, so in the K-12, when you have an IEP, and maybe you have the meeting with the parent at the beginning of the semester, or maybe you even have a great relationship with the teachers already, and then when we go on to college, there's no-- those relationships aren't there.

Yeah

... out this summer on some tips and tricks and just stories of my own in education, and then some case studies of neurodivergent college students that I worked with, where they were and then where they are now.

So sort of seeing that full circle transformation.

So that'll be linked on my website when it comes out.