my name is dan richards the principal delmon high school for those who don't know me tonight it is a pleasure to introduce the first of three speaker series that we have in partnership with mclean hospital dr wiznitzer and i approach mclean hospital about two years ago about forming a partnership with belmont high school they were welcoming and boy did a long stay a large staff at this long table only two of us sat at this table thinking what did we just get ourselves into well but it certainly has been productive over the last year and a half and mclean hospital is then more than gracious with their time and with their resources to help educate our parents and our students on several topics the partnership is very unique there's no other school around that has a partnership like this and basically what we're doing is exploring as we go we've decided the really seri to speak of this year here at belmont high school got the college transition what to expect and we also have the january speaking city january twenty seventh we have the college transition embracing challenges and on april twenty seventh we also have stress and teens how can we help and again all in partnership with mclean hospital so i need to thank dr eileen wiznitzer who is our school psychologist for long efforts in playing this program together and she has worked tirelessly to make sure that this does happen over the last couple of years it's also think pauline lu from mclean hospital who has worked with eileen and they up with a speaker series that appeals to the audience what we're looking for and i communities they are also brainstorming of where we go from here so your feedback is very important where we go this year and possibly even next year and year beyond so it is a journey this is our first steps in the journey and we're excited where we're going our next person is our tenth grade student here at belmont high school who will introduce our speaker mary galston has gone here for a couple of years and whenever there's not or to need to have a student up or from the audience we absolutely take advantage of it so mary's an impact is saying in the hallway with her introductions so as part of the belmont high school in mclean hospital speaker series we are pleased to welcome this evening's two very knowledgeable presenters dr stephanie pender and kurt is a clinical psychologist and harvard medical school a structure with over twenty five years experience in college student mental health treatment administration and policy she is the founding director of mclean hospital's college mental health program serving students from over two hundred institutions of higher education the college mental health program provides student focused treatment consultation to students parents and college professionals and conduct research occurred previously served as the associate dean of students at the university of michigan where she managed counseling and psychological services sexual assault prevention and awareness disability services and critical incident management dr catherine bell is a staff psychologist at mclean hospital with approximately twenty years in the mental health field she provides direct support to students inside and outside the mclean hospital system of care helping them to strengthen their independent living and i could them excuse us and to foster a successful college experience she has expertise in the areas of bipolar and psychotic disorders personality disorders anxiety and adjustment issues please know that we will leave time for questions at the end of the talk individuals will come around with index cards and pencils so that you can jot down your questions thank you for joining us this evening bell and dr kathy will be gathering them for you and then compiling so that we're ready to go when it's time for q and a they're also going to be doing a little sorting of the questions and i'll tell you more about that in a moment  us to prepare us in a very collaborative way as principal richards was say in order to bring the series from maclean's college mental health program here to belmont high and we're thrilled to be here tonight we're going to make every effort to answer your three by five questions but i mean the questions that you put on your cards but if you do not get an answer to your question tonight then stay tuned because we going to be taking your questions home with us we're going to review them carefully and make every effort to integrate enters into our part of this two part series which i think part two is going to be in january twenty seven and that's what they refer to as a whole so you have to come back in january twenty seventh to ensure that you get all of your questions answered so welcome to the college transition what to expect tonight we're going to be discussing practical strategies and resources that you in your role as parents can employ for supporting your children through the college transition process and we're going to be approaching these issues tonight from a developmental and a mental health perspective tonight is part one of this two part series hidden tonight we've decided to focus on what you as parents can be doing now in the college pre except in spirit in part two on january twenty seventh we plan to focus on the post acceptance period of the college transition and designed these sessions to be in gauging and informative our goal here is to really encourage and empower you as parents as you approach the college transition process with confidence in support of your children so what comes to mind when you hear the words college transition thoughts risk taking ok good that was there was pretty comprehensive i think we can all agree that the college transition process is certainly going to be filled with promise whole excitement independence hopefully but we can also in to suppose that there is going to be a fair amount of inevitably some disappointment along the way some tension and stress we can anticipate that we are going to experience along with our children really the full range of emotions we know that most of you have been anticipating this day for a very long time maybe seventeen or eighteen years the images in your head may be somewhere between this and  similarly your child may be imagining something like this or this but we are ever you and your child maybe along this continuum there are three important things that we want you to remember important thing to remember number one the primary job the number one job or task of your child at this stage in his or her development and growth is to become someone said earlier more independent and self reliant essentially job number one for your child at this particular stage is to become more our thomas and to stand apart from you if you will important thing to remember number t the college transition process and all that it entails and by that i mean from the process of selecting schools visiting schools applying to colleges choosing a college preparing to move in actually matriculating it at a school this entire process represents multiple opportunities for your child to continue to grow in learning and it's very important to approach these tests a basically just that they are learning opportunities that are occurring during this next phase of your child's development and this particular stage is neither at the very beginning nor does it represent the grand finale rather it is yet another in a series of life long opportunities for your child to continue to stretch and grow so we really want to occur encourage you to have fun remember to enjoy the process try to relax by maintaining this perspective important thing to remember number three your child's brain is a work in progress so although your children may vote drink in many states and drive by age eighteen their brains won't actually be fully developed for another two or to six years and importantly the part of the brain that is essentially still under construction or the frontal lobe is a part of the brain that happens to be responsible for things like organizing  sequencing making decisions short term memory as well as the ability to hold back decisions which ultimately translates into becoming a little bit less impulsive so if for example as you begin to engage in this process with your child in you note that there might not be quite as organized as you would want them to be and you start to find yourself feeling frustrated invariably anxious resist the temptation to jump in and take full responsibility for the process as many as many parents do try to remember this slide take a step back and remember that you do not want to child of these precious opportunities to continue to grow and learn so they are the these are the three important facts that we are going to bear in mind from this point forward so let's pause here for a quick refresher again these three factors are going to guide you throughout the entire process so if you get stuck or frustrated or just perplexed scratching your head trying to figure out what's going on how does how is it that your child may seem to have gotten a bit off track we just want to encourage you to return to these three very basic principles for a possible course correction so question number one your child's primary  at this stage in his or her development is t child's brain is a a work in progress absolutely so again very bumpy three principles in mind we are now going to present strategies for supporting your child through the college transition process most effectively one of the most important things that you can do facts so according to research even as your child does a fact become work autonomous in more independent she will continue to look to you for health information and guidance and so this is really good news for us because it means that you have a precious opportunity to perhaps debug nets and provide your children with the guidance that they are looking for but you cannot do this if you are misinformed according to research conducted by the jet foundation who surveyed parents of high school students most parents believe that any teenager can develop a mental health problem but two thirds of parents don't think their child will so you do the math ok because this tells us that there's a real disconnect between what most parents know can happen to any teenager and what they believe the real probability is of occurrence for their own child the formal diagnosis here is the not my child syndrome and it can leave your child really woefully unprepared i contrary to this popular belief research shows that in fact emotional issues are most likely to interfere we're talking here about everything from stress and anxiety to actual conditions like major depressive disorder and eating disorders these are in fact are the leading impediments to academic success and the american college health association conducted in your health survey and in the words of college students they found that thirty two students reported that stress above all else is the single emotional issue that's most likely to interfere with college success more than fifty percent of students reported feeling stressed most or all of the time and thirty six percent of college students did not feel as if they were in control of managing the stress of day to day college life so there are two important factors that an evidently converge during the college transition process and it's important we think for parents to know what these two factors are factor number one happens to be chronological age so whether a person is in college or denied ages eighteen through twenty two are when psychiatric illnesses like major depressive disorder bipolar disorder schizophrenia and so forth are most likely to occur this is a courting to brain science research from a brain science perspective this is a window of time when these symptoms are most likely to emerge that's the first factor the second factor we just spoke about it research also tells us and this research is very consistent and compelling that again guess what stress is in fact a robust predictor so another significant contributing variable to the onset of these very same illnesses so why is college so stressful here are the typical stressors that students identify when they're surveyed we know that while a certain level of stress is healthy and can in fact be motivating we've all experienced this right except excessive stress can be problematic and in some cases even debilitating so as we go through this list of student identified common stressors it's important to think about how your child is currently handling stress how does your child handle adjustments to new environments how are they handling or how did they handle the adjustment from middle school to high school these will give you indicators of how your child is doing of the stress dimension across these variables so number one students identify academic demands or stressful we know that a lot of times the pressure to achieve and perform academically we all know this right that many times to do to report they feel additional pressure exerted by parents and teachers and others but often a lot of that pressure comes only from the student themselves relationships are identified as the second most common stressful event or continuum for students and by relationships rethinking here about it just being to living with new roommates relationships managing new relationships with the lab partners classmates teammates in some instances navigating first time in many cases intimate relationships a pivotal point in a young adult's development so we lay she shows another source of significant stress transitioning to a new environment in stressful finances this this that has been creeping higher and higher on the list of identified stresses first years it's important when you're considering college and we'll talk a little bit later about this concept of college fit but it's important to consider a decision that you're going to make what the financial impact is going to be not only for your child but also for your family and siblings who are remaining at home because your children pulse of have the additional financial burden of managing college is still impacting the family or the family may be miles away perfectionism frequently identified stress or perfectionism for many students can be manageable at the secondary school level but someone mentioned earlier at the college level the pace of the work and the amount of the work increases substantially so a child who has a very strong drive for perfectionism that sort of works effectively in secondary school may find themselves in a real difficult position when they get to college and   no longer achieve those perfect scores those perfect grades and exams and papers and we hear this all of the time in our work with students college students in the constant or permanent state of jetlag if you will we know that their diets are they healthy years and that stressful being exposed to alcohol and drugs for some students it will be for the first time for other students who will be navigating a culture on a particular college campus around after hall and drugs that may be very fluid and excessive and can represent a real departure from what they may have been familiar with in the home environment or in their high school environment and this is stressful for studios sexual identity and where an individual child is along the process of recognizing in coming to embrace the reality of their sexual identity and how that's going to be expressed particularly as part of this transition when they move away from home very stressful for students and we also know that the loss of support in structure this goes hand in hand with moving from of the mill your environment to an unfamiliar environment right where you essentially have been providing the resources in the structure in the rails from for your child and the most rail slip away is they moving away into college and they may had the experience of no longer being able to bounce off of the rails but managed to stay on the same path because those rails now and have to be erected internally by themselves and with some additional support on a college campus so these are some of the comments pressers that  when we consider this notion of fit really important to start thinking about this in a very serious way right now when we consider the notion a bit of a particular college for your child  to answer the question in what type of campus environment is my child most likely to thrive and when it comes to this issue of fit it's important to really push yourself to think realistically about your child's many strengths and their possible his or her possible limitations at this particular stage in his or her development so again with regard to fit here are some important factors i'm sure that you're familiar with that you should be considering of course the size of the school is it going to be a small intimate setting is it going to be a setting that's similar in size from belmont to a college setting or is it going to be the size of a mega state institution location is an important consideration for the issue of  that's the context in which location is one that we often help students grapple with when they find themselves having to step away from school and they're trying to think about you know what went well and what didn't go well during their leave of absence and this issue of location is often one that students end up reading sam meaning as at this process and whether it's going to be healthier for them to return to the original school of choice  consider a transfer because a different location might in fact provide the additional support and resources that they need during this transition the student community and ways in which the student community actually interacts and socializes here are talking about things like you think about campuses and the big ten comes to mind or we know that there is a lot of stupid in gauge myth and interaction and socializing that revolves around football season right but there are all kinds of you know there are sub communities there are communities you need to think in your to help your child to think about what type of communities are going to be important to them as they transition from their female your community in the processes through which they socialize at home when they make this transition to college certainly academics and special interests are very important to consider and opportunities for your child particularly if they're not set on a particular course and the majority of college students aren't or come to school with that complete blank in terms of knowing what their particular major is it's important to work with your child to help them to think about not only the subjects in which they might be likely to major or choose as an area of focus but what additional areas of interest spur passions are they also looking to grow in age with other students in and continue to learn whether it's in the arts or in dance or in music and what are the colleges that my pulled together say an opportunity to major in engineering and minor in visual arts those schools exist help your child to figure out what their particular set of academic and special interests might be and what schools might align most effectively with those interests finances again we talked about this a little bit earlier in terms a bit again it's considering not only is it going to be feasible for your child to matriculate to a college but are they going to be able to afford to take here  some of the extra needs it make they might have on a day to day basis in fact going back to that article that just came out a couple of days ago focusing on the jacket get foundation study and stress student in that study identified financial pressure and specifically the in village the to pay for incidentals that might come up in day to day campus living the identified that as a consistent and significant college stressor so it's important to think about this and to think about it realistically safety is another factor to consider in how you were how your child s navigate their environment currently and might make an adjustment and what safety factors might be important for your child to head in place or to know are available on campus that also speaks to the campus environment and perhaps the part of the country in which it sits the location the city are there is a dish you know is it in an urban setting with a really high crime rate is that the campus is essentially insulated like a walking he enters the centrally what comes to mind because i'm from philadelphia is the university of penn if you've ever visited there the university of penn sitting up obviously a big a large city surrounded by lots of activity and great concern for safety however it is not the driving campus people cannot just drive through the campus you have to park and then walk through campus in order to navigate to get from one place or another so see these are some of the variables to consider around safety campus climate and culture we're going to talk more about this a little bit later when we look at some of the resources that you can use to help your child think about what matters to them in terms of the campus culture in climate and then finally this builds on mental health and wellness speaks to you know every college campus and we know this after six years of working in developing the college mental health program that we claim we are sort of intimately familiar with this notion and it is that every  has a philosophy or an if you will towards mental health and wellness so as you think about issues of fit you want to hire to learn as much as you can supportive of them as they go through the college transition process so for example is of the college where we'll talk about strategies for figuring this out because we're going to talk about some real practical approaches but is it a campus where you know if you're walking through campus you never see mention of mental health or you can find counseling and psychological services or you don't see ads promoting health and wellness these things are sort of hidden it means it's not a part of the dialogue and the culture on that campus and it that's going to matter to your child and it's important to know how to think about that and how to help your child have campuses campus student populations have known cultures around real basic things like help seeking behavior for example and if you actually talk to students on the campus they can tell you you know how students are when it comes to issues like seeking help whether students do if they think that they might be suffering from an anxiety disorder is this something that they are comfortable talking about in the rez halls that they have lots of programming and these are words it's part of the campus culture and the campus dialogue or is it a campus culture in which students are very adverse to seeking help there are some campus  cultures just in the local area for example in which student administrators and faculty can tell you that there is actually a very strong culture of against seeking help and so these are some of the things that you want to try to begin to help your student get put their finger on the pulse of it with their particular school and this notion of  another thing that simply to consider doing right now is to make sure that you don't be afraid rather to explore the option of taking a gap year for additional academic and or personal growth  you can explore this concept with your child them with his or her guidance counselor you can search the web there is so much information available on the web right now for options that you may have never considered about how  construct an effective gap year that your child might need in which they get to say matriculate at a regional college and take a couple of college courses on campus while also maintaining say a part time job or some volunteer work but there's a wealth of information out there and it's since important one thing particularly if you have identified that some reasons why you think your child might benefit from a gap year it's important just to make sure that this is on the table as a possibility it's far better to consider taking  between high school and moving away or beginning college voluntarily or willingly with a plan and an opportunity to construct a thoughtful plan with sort of a designated if you will that child during the year maybe part of the gap year entails part of their job is going to be to take a longer period of time to explore and prepare for the college transition process to take some responsibility for doing some of this planning and this research and exploring issues of fit and so forth as i started save earlier it's far better to to think now about willingly taking a pl other things that you can do now these are some tips and resources there are some excellent resources out there for evaluating in helping you to guide your student to consider this issue a bit you don't have to go it alone one of the most helpful things you can do right now is to begin to worry yet your child to this concept of college fitness and also as you doing this really encourage your child to consider their own personal but i'm really afraid of becoming lost on such a large campus if your child says something like this it's a very appropriate role for you to be able to probe more deeply into this issue of feeling lost what does that mean to your child in this context what did they mean by a peer feeling was are they concerned about getting lost socially and not finding peers whom they can relate not finding a sense of community because in fact there are numerous ways very helpful in strategic ways that college that transitioning students can plan to actually identify assad community and a more intimate close community with in a large campus setting to help or to feel a little bit warmer and more supportive like home s done through living learning institute of residence halls it has special areas of focus special volunteer is a more of focus in international studies there are various polls that have international study of which is as the thing they're bring students together so explore this and really encourage your child to go deeper when they begin to wrestle with this issue a bit and encourage them to verbalize their preferences you are definitely going to have your preferences and it really is a fine balance of not leading with your preferences but supporting your child through the process of discovering on their own what their personal preferences are and why they prefer certain aides so this is an exercise that i think is a wonderful opportunity i encourage parents and students to do this all of the time when they're in the process of researching and considering college fitness is just to go to the campus website man i had a college just comes to mind go to your campus website and ask your child get assigned them the task and you can do this independently of your child because i do think it's helpful for periods to do this as well but not to do it but don't do it for your child so do this on your own would also assign your child the task of going to the website and sitting down in front of the website within as if tests sit down in front of the website as if they are starting to notice some symptoms of that they think they might be getting to press sit down it down and i had a college's website and begin navigating the website looking for help for symptoms of depression and that's it that's all you want to tell your child to sit down to or you can substitute you know maybe you're feeling anxious maybe you're really overwhelmed with the workload and you realize if you need some additional support with navigating study in time management you can make up the test ideally make it try to make it one that your child can really resonate and connect with then just continuum there of course but it'll give you a lot of first hand information and again a little window into the culture on the college campus around help seeking is a college that makes it really user friendly and really is outspoken you spoke in reaching out to students making it easy for them to say hey if you're getting behind in your studies this is the place to come for help if you're really stressed and overwhelmed this is a place to come to help how easy or difficult is it to find that information is just one of many ways to do this kind of research reading pick up the the c newspapers again you can find them typically the link to the web sites but when you're going about your college campus visits grab those newspapers it'll really give you an idea of what's on the minds of students because typically students are responsible anything in writing and contributing to the newspaper also give you an idea of what some of the issues have been on campus where there's been perhaps a disconnect between the student body in the administration these are things that you can sort of get to learn more about the campus culture of sort of off of the guided tour so to speak and then these are some additional resources the jet you can go to you may already be familiar with this transition year that org website it is just a wonderful resource it really is broken up into an area for students as well as a specific area dedicated to  parents with just a wealth of information one of my favorite things at this website is the right fit work see you can download and print this worksheet and your child can begin compiling information and looking at these issues of fitness sort of with each college that they are considering so it's a wonderful resource very accessible of these resources that are free there is college wiki which will give you  some information about the colleges philosophy and policy concerning mental health and wellness is what programs exist what services and resources exist we have a college state a base of our own at at mclean that we have developed that has similar information about that they're all resources that individual schools and then the lifeline or for campus health information is another resource that you can turn to that will specifically give you more specific information as it relates to campus so lots of this if you will resources are very accessible another important thing that you can be do begin doing right now is to gradually increase your child's responsibility and i see this is bias in many places i think it can be stated often enough consider doing things ally allowing your child if they're not doing this already well let's see a show up here it's how many of your children currently monitor their own cell  no one ok how many of your children are responsible for paying a portion or all of their cell phone we've got one here and so this is an example right a potential area of growth this is a great time to allow your child to assume some additional responsibility again students are reporting that they're really feeling unprepared for managing these basic skills in day to day tasks and it again is one of the number one contributors to feeling stress the so that's a way you might consider allowing your child to manage a student debit card i'm not you know promoting this side just learned in the past couple of years that there are banks that have really cool stir businesses that are oriented they're very different from the banks you know when when you might have been a school certainly way back when i was in school where the banks were still allowed to go to college campuses and sign students up or for credit cards i'm not talking about that that's a legal impact at this point but i'm talking about there are banks that have wonderful like transitional i think of them as college transitional debit cards and they are debit that i get through with your child can begin to establish if they haven't done this already a personal relationship with the baby had them go into the bank i did this to my nephew when he arrived here for college this was like i know you do everything on the way we're going to actually go into the pain and meet with a bank professional and ask that person some of the questions that you have he was like are you kidding me but he did it and  these are things that you can begin doing now and as i mentioned they had the student debit cards that have great limits so it's not possible for your child to you know incurring lots of overage charges there are wonderful limits that can be set in place but at the same time allowing your child to really become a little bit more independent and more familiar with how to manage their finances there is a question that help them encourage them to do their laundry you don't have to trust them with your laundry but by all means give them an opportunity how many of your children currently do their own mind three ok so about a quarter  that people need so these are some ways kolker plan a meal mail a package i cannot tell you how many students do not know how to mail a package and we're not going to even say anything about mailing a letter right what is that and where do you put this stand where do you put the return address i am not making this stuff up this is a great time to give your child some of these tasks give them the task the holidays are coming perhaps you have a few packages you don't want to stand in the dreadful line at the post office give them a few chores a few assignments with getting some of those packages mail for you encourage your child now  utilizing school resources in navigating things like the guidance counselor again it's sort of this idea of giving them an as if assignment it really doesn't matter if they really need  like they're in desperate need of an answer to a question just let them think about something that they might typically just come to you and you know you can answer this off the tip of your head but suggest you know that sounds like a really good question for you to home with all kinds of support for them to take that next step and be in getting more comfortable with navigating some of these campus resources and doing it now while they have your support at home and all of the wonderful familiar support of being here at belmont high that can i tell you how many students are absolutely paralyzed by having to figure out this issue and the next one speaking to a professor about anything email that's one thing you're ok with the e mail right but there are so many students who are really just desperately lacking in these skills i can tell you we do you all kinds of modules in group sessions in vivo opportunities for students to practice the skills frequently when students are taking a leave of absence for health or mental health reasons these are some of the skills that they're lacking in and it's amazing when they get the encouragement and the support to do this how powerful and have of themselves when they feel they feel when they're actually able to go up to a professor and have a face to face interaction ask a question make a special request and so forth many students are lacking in the skills and it's important now that you encourage them while they have the support infrastructure another thing you can do is help your child to problem solve a transportation issue while they're at home familiar seventy years of wonderful system to practice with wait until winter when there are few additional strategies and you're trying to figure out how they get from all right and also encourage your child to manage a part time job or volunteer position this is one of the last slides that we're going to cover before we come to questions and answers and it's really if you don't remember anything else from tonight it's been that one of the most important things that you can be doing there and this final factor may seem intuitive but studies show us that most parents are less comfortable talking with children about mental health than about any other health topic so what we want to encourage you to do is to be in having these discussions now begin talking at home if you're not already doing this about emotional health of the concept of emotional health there are some key messages here in these are important helpful key messages to insert as part of this dialog illnesses like depression attention deficit hyperactivity disorder anxiety disorder these things are real they are treatable and they are medical conditions basic message that so many students go off to college without this basic knowledge and certainly without having this dialogue at home with their parents can they trust these illnesses are common and if you happen to notice  are experiencing significant symptoms of anxiety or panic attacks it's no one's fault no one is to blame it's important if these symptoms surface during college and especially while being away from home to see help at the first signs of trouble and it's helpful to be in as part of this dialogue to know what the common signs are so let's just step away from this for a second income back to it here are some co common signs of emotional stress that you can begin talking with your children and encouraging lead these common signs that we're about to go through we're so excited when we find this when we visit campuses the other day we were visiting mit's campus for example we were partly with the student organization to staff the or depression screening day a depression to green day on campus by the way is a beautiful example of what's the campus culture around these issues they have a national depression screening day they head there are very welcoming non statement ties and you know if students could care less about the depression screening they are coming to see those ion on this campus we know that it is a very common treatable illness and come in here and get a screening and learn where you might be if you're alone these dimensions  signs of concern if you will when i started to say is there encouragingly college students are frequently able to recognize these as symptoms of emotional distress and that's great news we're so excited about there but often what they fail to understand is how long they should actually endure some of these symptoms before seeking help the length of time two weeks so these are just common signs of emotional distress that you can begin having a dialogue with your children now returning to the final what you want to do here is to if if you don't already have this to take this opportunity to begin to create a family culture that implies we talk about our mental health in this family we can talk about it in practice we can talk about it in dinner we might chatted out when we're on our way to football practice this is not a taboo topic in our home we take care of our mental health we're proud of the fact that we're knowledgeable about these things and we are familiar with signs of concern and if and when those signs of concern service we take them seriously we take action and we do something about it that's the kind of family culture and dialogue that you can begin creating now that will serve your child so well not only for the remainder of this year but certainly as they prepare to continue  along their college trajectory it can be less intimidating to bridge some of these topics sort of on a one person removed basis so if your child tends to shut down around some of these issues  free to use yourself as an example and don't forget to take the opportunity to talk with your child about do they know what they might do if a best friend were to show some of these signs what would they do if they go to campus and their roommate because when you're talking about twenty five percent of college students it's going to affect your student's life at some point so you can approach some of these issues in a one person removed and it can feel a little bit easier for the child who is reluctant to engage finally don't miss opportunities that present themselves in the media to also stimulate dialogue around these common issues as parents we really just want to leave you with this thought that as parents you have the power every single one of you has the power to make a profound difference in your child's life by beginning this very important dialogue today for the timing we understand there's a meeting at eight fifteen how many people are planning to leave in the next fifteen minutes or so ok so a decent number of people so we're going to try to be sensitive to the questions that period but i am going to invite dr painter america to contribute if she'd like to do so because i just can't resist collaborating that's kind of how we operate on the college mental health program what i did was to take your questions and coal ate them you'd be surprised how often folks have questions that are a like most people are concerned about issues of readiness and assessing their their child's maturity level and readiness to go to school take on challenges and readiness to be invested in as a college student and what to do if that student isn't necessarily seeming ready but is begging to be invested in and begging to leave for college and you know that's a huge financial commitment so there are sort of a readiness and maturity dimension that we're going to talk about just a little bit there's also  some question about support and what kind of support exists on a college campus some of this we're going to cover in great detail in our january presentation we're not going to make you wait until january for every little bit of information but just know that it will be covered in a far more robust way in january and then another question involved assessing colleges for services which dr peter ever did cover actually quite well in terms of how  can a student or a parent or both ideally approach a college with questions in mind as to its suitability as fit right so those are the major areas we're going to address  now how is this accomplished college is all i have disability services they call them by different names they call them student support services they call the learning centers there often  there's often an effort to remove the word disability from the situation but each college has an office for students with disabilities and exam is just one no i'm just going to say that's sort of a local example better a little example would be awesome for example they do a really interesting job with how they promote they have a wonderful disability support services but they call it disability is the name actually are sort of clearly marked and the ross center is somewhat more discreet so that's another way that campuses sort of approach the issue to try to make it less o if your student is on and i p or a five for plan the quality of the help is the main difference in the quality of the help is that the student has to know to go and get it what is students in high school the administrators the student support folks will keep tabs on that student will provide the help to that student things are sort of ours are more structured and a student moves from class to class and a much can be arranged for a student without the student actively participating when a student gets to college it's really necessary for that student to approach disability services even if everything is arranged in advance just to make an appointment once an appointment is made the disability services staff w talk with the student to figure out what exactly are the needs so in those needs can range from everything everything from learning disabilities to mental health issues to physical disability  really the whole gamut is covered just like it is in high school and the disability services folks are going to help the student with accommodations and class so for examples of many of our students that  mclean and then return to school arrange to have no takers of illiberal so that if they're having difficulty concentrating because they're dealing with things i hear depression there's going to be somebody who's going to take notes in the class in the student can get to class and sort of limit the burden on them to make sure that the class is captured in their notes and then that tends to help students when they're studying and and making sure that they're getting all the information that they should another accommodation that we often discuss and students tend to resist a little bit but when it's needed it's a great thing is the option of taking a reduced course load but remember you can sit continuing to be considered a full time student so students need to be able to access dorm life they need to be able to access the health insurance and oftentimes they need to be able to have access to sports clubs extracurriculars etc student  all kinds of student organizations that activities and in many cases the disability services office can help a student to take either a two course load like credits or a three course load as opposed to the typical four course load and that enables the student to take some time to focus on mental health and accommodate the business of taking care of mental health while also remain so these are a couple of important accommodations to think about  key element in approaching these types of services you know before and during the application process number one just like dr pender amoco mentioned navigate to the disability services site on the college site and just look try to figure out about accessibility have your student identify who to call and how to do it in many cases in large university students can email and just get an appointment that way students can use disability services for part of the time that they're there all of the time that they're there as needed but the important thing is that students will have to access that themselves and so often that's where students turn out to have needed more preparation before approaching school an important thing to know about texas seeing disability services is that when you find the site in the navigate the web page at the particular college many times the actual forms  they're right there on the site and these are things that your child can do in many schools will in fact encourage children to begin this process during the summer so that it's not yet another task they're faced with when they're actually navigating additional stressors and beginning courses and you can look at those forums and see right now at this point what documentation what it information might  need to help your child gather announce that they can get registered something that we encourage students around navigating disability services a lot of times we work with students who are very resistant to the idea of major depression disorder and these are issues that we help them to come to terms with a lot of times when students are in we'll work with them and encourage them to register for the accommodation to have them available and they can decide to use them or not but better to have those accommodations in place many students will do that and just having that additional bit of support knowing that there's a backup plan there's a whole office have additional resources and support services that they can access that fingertip ready they don't have to start from point a will be enough to give them the confidence to sort of manage through the semester so a lot of times we'll enco and those who haven't used disability services so often kind of shake their heads and go no no no no no i'm not doing that ones who have often say it's the best thing i did i'm so glad i use them and i did i almost never talk to them i just knew they were there in some cases they use the minute they use them really well but that's just it's a great resource that so few students know about there are there were a similarly i guess i want to address the question of we get this question often which ones are the best for students who already know that they're dealing with depression and anxiety or who have in the past had depression and anxiety i'll tell you why i don't answer that question with here's college a here's college be here is college  because a lot of other factors go into it certain colleges for example a few of the really high achieving colleges in the area have excellent mental health services but what i want your student to go there if they are a free spirit in an artist and not necessarily highly academically motivated no because all of the mental health services in the world are not necessarily going to do the job what i advise you to do rather is to identify which colleges are potentially the best fit based on what doctorate and amaka presented today in terms of areas of interest in terms of available support services and then you and your student hopefully collaborative can make a few calls can make calls to the disability services center and say you know i'm looking at applying at this school even to give your name i'm looking at applying at this school and these are the accommodations i may need what is the process like fo securing those accommodations same thing with the counseling center what type of environment i once did a project for a particular family calling around to different schools and just identifying what type of environment what type of atmosphere of stigma is there what's the help seeking attitude and college a college counseling centers will readily answer this question they'll say how many sessions they can give to students they'll say you know what they think about providing the kinds of services that your student will need it again no need to reveal your identity there's no need to to sort of set yourself up in that way to have to answer questions on behalf of your student for their mental health but it's a great way to find out if you're kind of in the ballpark of what type of college you and your student choosing does that make sense like it does i have a further question and this was sort of a set of questions and i think it spans a category that i like to think of as readiness and the question of readiness has to do with such things as current behaviors that are problematic current potential behaviors that are problematic which i think all parents are deeply in touch with and then also the question of a gap year like how do you know if it's time to take a gap year and how much influence should you have over whether to take a gap year and then what should the powerhouse of the parent contribute during the gap year what's the parents role during the gap year these are all areas that have to do with your individual students maturity and what tasks are needed on the way to being mature enough to attend college so dr printer editor did a lovely job of covering some of those questions of readiness right the questions of how do you you know if your student can access services independently how do you know if when your student is experiencing symptoms he or she can ask for help appropriately to know how to navigate if th ose are the gaps that you're seeing or if the gaps that you're seeing have to do with kind of if the judgment around peers things like that then that goes into your bank of data about how mature your son or daughter is and you know it's tricky because you have been on point to be the gate keeper for your son or daughter's whole life experience up until now and suddenly college is this decision where there's a lot of independence associated with even making the decision right what school i'm going to go to what's called who i want to go to and it's hard to know kind of how much you should or could contribute to that decision but i think that you can use the rubric of knowing what is going to be expected of your student when he or she goes to school and asking yourself how close are they to being able to do it now right so a lot of times in our college mental health groups we brainstorm about readiness we talk about what are the kinds of things that you have to be able to do when you're in school so i want to ask you folks now what do you have to be able to do when you're in school just if you're going to go to college like what how do you how do you remain mentally healthy and be in school what are some basics excellent manage your time while lot of high school students are great at that summer other are inviting behaviors that don't work out well so for example if your student has gotten in trouble quite a bit and is now headed for college where they want to go to a party school  what do we think about that yeah how how good are they at resisting peer pressure and in the end i mean it's a family decision and i think that's where your your contribution matters a lot you know it's really hard to  cosign something that you know for sure your student isn't ready for and i think that's totally appropriate i think a gap here is a great opportunity for the student to practice there even gap year programs that you can take advantage of which we can provide to the folks here to send out but whatever the whatever the developmental task is let's say that it's time management let's say that it's in depend motional independence independent problem solving let's say that it's managing peer issues  what kind of gap year experience might be suitable to help a person manage some time students do take a gap year and work and pay rent sometimes students take a gap year and travel to colombia and teach  english it's really it's really different from one student to the next but it all has to do with whatever developmental tasks are needed and i think that can be an anchor for you as you think about what needs to happen during the gap year and obviously the last you are are constrain every move the more your student gets a chance to practice however if that's not going to happen without some prodding from you then there's your opportunity right i mean in some ways your instincts are right on already  so we've covered sort of in some way the questions are we addressed the categories of questions that we've gotten so far we may have a little more time how are we doing do we have any more time we should stop well we're going to present in late january we would love to see you again we're going to talk about when challenges arise in racing moving through them and having a lot more knowledge about how to approach all the different things that can come up with college students thank you so much for being here great thank you for coming out tonight and thank you for speaker says evening again this is the first of two series and if i were to give you some advice this evening to walk away with a lot of parents tandoori students even  tend to compare to the neighbors or to the kids in their class and just because they're dated manufacturing is the same it doesn't mean you should be comparing them the same they're all very different and they're all very unique and they're all prepared on different levels so please ignore that data manufacturing thank you very much and we look forward to seeing you in january