Illness/ self-care/ developing resilience - do they get better at it?

[CornflakeMum]

Not sure what I want from this thread other than to rant a bit and get some reassurance/ other POVs!

DS is in his second term at uni. He is ill again for what seems the umpteenth time since he went to uni. Always some variation of sore throat/ swollen glands/ cold/ headache etc. Also had covid again earlier this term.

He messaged me at 6.30 this morning saying he was 'scared' as his throat was swollen and he hadn't been able to sleep 'all night'.
When I woke up I rang him and established he'd actually slept for 6 hours and hadn't yet taken any painkillers or ibuprofen etc. Although he was clearly a bit unwell, I judged it not to be something urgent/ an emergency.

As his mum, I can recognise how this all happens - he overschedules himself, doesn't get enough sleep, probably drinks a bit too much, has a shit diet etc - normal student stuff.
When he's ill I always end up on the receiving end of an angry rant from him about how it 'isn't fair' that he's ill / can't get to see a GP/ nobody cares etc. However if I try to make helpful suggestions (the local walk-on clinic) or try to explain that he needs to make the link between self-care/ lifestyle and getting ill he just accuses me of 'blaming' him.

He has a number of ASD traits and dyslexia which I think don't help (e.g. navigating healthcare systems is a challenge).
Of course I love him and I always want to help him, but I don't appreciate him expecting me to somehow wave a magic wand from afar when he won't do anything to help himself.

Is this all part of the being away from home for the first time? Do they get better at managing it all eventually?

This seems a bit more than average in terms of helplessness and also illness - students have shit lifestyles but they also young and bouncy.

Is it long Covid do you think? Or is he unhappy in some way, as it’s unusual to be ringing home so much.

What specifically is he struggling with in terms of navigating the health system? It doesn’t sound like he’s been very ill so it shouldn’t be too hard.

Hi,OP -

I was hoping you would get more responses from parents of uni aged children, a group that does not include me. But I have been the personal tutor/academic advisor for many of them.

At the risk of generalisation, boys are a bit slower to mature than girls. A lot of this is actually about their brains. So keep that in mind. The ASD traits you mentioned may well be making the adjustment of your DS to uni harder. Year after year one sees that the students having a harder adjustment are genuinely more prone to ill health. Which makes them miss home …. It is a vicious circle.

But I wondered about your comments regarding walk in health centres etc. Unless your DS’s uni provides medical care for its students, if you are in the U.K. he should register with a GP at his university address.

If he ever needs to submit a Mitigating Circumstances petition for reasons if health, which doesn’t sound completely unlikely, this could become important. (A small number of unis have restrictions on the GP practices approved for such letters. These restrictions are well advertised. He should check.)

This is also important for mental health as the local GP is typically the first port of call. Frankly short of a suicide risk, where liability rears its ugly head, the majority of university counselling services involve very long waits for very few sessions. I am sure there must be some exceptions to that statement but gossip with colleagues has not revealed them. I would send my child or tutee to the GP.

I haven’t answered your question directly. TBH it sounds like you have a somewhat insecure child whose body is saying what he isn’t expressing more directly. Sorry, that sounds very goopy. Would you believe I am in STEM?

I don't think it is that unusual. I sent my daughter off to University with a medical kit with all the usually over the counter stuff so that if and when she got unwell, she would have it all to hand. She's usually fairly stoical when ill anyway but can have her moments, especially in the first few months!

Your son's message sounds a bit dramatic but self care can be a steep learning, next time I'm sure he'll take 4-6 hourly pain killers with plenty of fluids!

Did he have a gap year or go straight to uni? Presumably he was at home for a lot of his 6th form so he didn't even have the 'normal' experience of developing independence at school.

It sounds like he's not quite ready. He'll either develop the independence he needs quickly or he won't. If he doesn't he might need some time to work and (if it becomes do-able) travel a bit to develop some independent living skills before trying again.

I was old in the school year and had a gap year abroad but still wasn't quite ready for university and struggled a bit in the first year. My DS is young in his school year and I hope he will have AT LEAST one gap year before he goes, doing something useful where he has to organise and look after himself.

Thanks for replies!
He did have a gap year, but given it was during covid he didn't really get a chance to develop many independent skills, so yes, that is a factor.
He's not unhappy at uni, but there's no doubt he has found it challenging at times and sometimes it just tips him over the edge when he gets ill/ stressed etc. We know this and knew we would probably have to support him more that perhaps your average NT student, but I guess I wasn't ready for how much!

Anyway it seems it was more serious than I thought and he has really bad tonsilitis so he's actually come for a few days so he can fully rest away from his noisy flatmates and we can look after him a bit!

He IS registered with the GP at his uni town but they seem quite inaccessible - impossible to get appointments within a week, seem to dismiss everything as 'freshers flu' via receptionist triage etc. Even if registered, most of the students seem to find the walk in centre provides a better service.

This is a long term. With the benefit of hindsight I think he should probably have come home for a weekend mid-term, but he's been so busy.

I am sorry to hear about the tonsillitis and the situation at the GP.

Does your DS have good rapport with his personal tutor? At most unis there are termly 121s with Y1 students. A struggling students should feel free to reach out a bit more often. But students with ASD traits may retreat from the scheduled meetings, never mind reaching out.

Perhaps if your DS felt that he had adult support at uni (PT, student support officer, etc) the situation would ease in various ways