I’ve done the research, drafted the PS - is this normal?

[Weddedtomywashingmachine]

DS in year 12 asked me to help him research universities to apply to as his school was nagging at him to get the ball rolling. He knows what he wants to study and as it is quite niche, that narrowed it down.

I got obsessed with rather into it and have now spent many, many, many hours sifting through unis and drilling down into modules. I’ve given him a VERY detailed paper setting out the pros and cons of each course, of each uni that offers it, accommodation options and costs, travel time, graduate prospects, student satisfaction ratings and the like. I’ve also done a first draft of his personal statement and booked open days for us to go to. DS is very grateful and is looking over the paper over the course of the next few weeks.

When I mentioned this to a friend, she was horrified and said she just left her DS to it. Another friend thinks it’s wonderful and has asked me to help her DD.

Did I do the right thing? Uni is expensive and I want my DS to have the info he needs to make the right choice for him. I emphasise that where he applies to will be up to him but at least he has all the info he needs now without having to ferret around in the interstices of uni websites.

MrsBennett

Believe me I asked myself all those questions.. in some ways he was making all the big decisions - I thought a gap year would be good but he was adamant that he wanted to go straight away, I thought his insurance would be better for him but he stuck with his RG firm and is happy there.

I think for him it was a combination of:

• fear of it all, of not getting in, getting in, leaving home, not leaving home, which led to his head being firmly in the sand (so not really about lack of research skills, just a sort of paralysing fear of the consequences of using them)
• lack of maturity and independence partly due to covid
• disastrous Y12 due to covid (he went from all A*-B at GCSE to CCU mid Y12)
• consequent confidence issues and worries about whether he was clever enough
• no experience at all of the kind of life admin required for sorting out accommodation, bank account etc. He needed to be reminded to check his emails, hit various deadlines etc
• generally cautious and worried about change - he really wanted to go but also didn't want to think about his school days ending and losing his friends

A lot of it probably stems from his experience of covid, which wasn't good. Some of it was his natural instinct not to engage with scary things like leaving home and pretend it wasn't happening.

Tbh I wouldn't have been all that surprised if he had come home after the first week but I couldn't tell him 'No, I'm not helping because i don't think you're capable of doing this, I'm going to sit back and watch you fuck it all up'. I thought that if I helped and encouraged, he might get there. And luckily it seems to have worked out ok, he changed a lot in Y13 and is now much more confident, managing everything as far as I know, next year's house is all sorted without any input from me etc. So far, so good.

As a lecturer this fills me with horror. Students like this are the ones who then don't bother to go to classes and then the parents write in to tell me I'm not supporting their child enough, but still expect me to magically turn said child into a functioning adult. Please let your son take responsibility. He needs to want to go.

(Btw DS's course is not offered everywhere and he had some criteria about course structure, required grades and distance from home, so I didn't choose which to include and which to dismiss, just compiled a list - there were only about 7 realistic options in the end iirc)

I think the old cliche about boys maturing later than girls is broadly true, so assuming that boys are not capable of university based on what they are like 18 months before they are due to go is not that helpful.

DD, apart from being more mature than him at the same age, is much more up for new things - she left school and went elsewhere for sixth form, which he would never have done. They are just different characters. She was also less affected by covid. She is young for the year though, and still needs a lot of help and encouragement. Getting to grips with big decisions about what you want to study and where, aged 16, isn't easy for everyone.

Indeed!

I've tried to teach, been personal tutor to, tried to help more than a few young undergraduates (male) like this.

There is a thread on MN at the moment in which the OP is lamenting the fact that he DH thinks everything is "her job".

In a work context, I have frequently been in situations where male colleagues just assume that female workers will just do so certain tasks, like taking notes at meetings where there is no clerk, organising gifts for leavers etc.

It is hardly surprising that these men expect secretarial support from the women around them if that is what they have been brought up to expect.

I do appreciate you taking the time to answer, @SoTedious, but I also find myself wondering why a 16yo would have so little experience of life admin that they were unable to manage these basic tasks for themselves. Surely there must have been other opportunities to develop these skills at an earlier stage in an age appropriate way?

Yes @MrsBennetsPoorNerves I've been joining up these dots as well. I refuse to be a secretary to my undergrads - but every year I have at least two students who seem to need constant reminders. And it's no coincidence that most of the time, these are young men.

Young women deal with their irresponsibility differently, and they at least apologise when they forget a tutorial meeting.

MrsBennet

Well for DS his inability to handle things was mostly psychological but he had never had to deal with an organisation like a university by himself before. I'm not sure if you have uni aged kids but there's just a lot of stuff. He stayed at school for A levels so that just sort of happened. He had never opened a bank account or applied for a loan or signed a contract for accommodation and had never come across some of the terminology involved. Everything at school was on moodle, so he had no idea about there being a portal for his halls, and another portal for his halls on the uni website, then one on the halls website showing how much rent was due, and another one on the uni website for actually paying it, another one for his timetable, another for choosing options etc, all with separate logins and passwords. He hadn't used email that much before and then had three separate email addresses. He had never registered for a doctor before and did not know whether there was a family history of various diseases. He has never had to budget £10k before. He had no idea that you have to have your loan paid into your student account, but that you can't open a student account until months after applying for finance, so you have to go back in and change the destination account for the money. There were a hundred small but important things like that. Plus the uni website is terrible - it took me ages to work out how to pay his accommodation deposit, there were a few parents on a thread figuring it out together, he would have really struggled with it.

He was about to do his GCSEs when covid came and then hardly left the house for months on end, so missed out on a lot of growing up type experiences like getting a job. DD has at least been through the application process for sixth form college and we have very little contact with them so that's good. But the other day she asked if I would help her start selling stuff on Vinted because she has never done it before and I think that's ok.

He has learnt a lot and has needed very little support since he went, I think maybe one text about whether his grey tracksuit bottoms were darks or lights, and one about whether it was ok to reheat something. He cooks for himself and does his laundry, made a load of friends and joined the gym. He is in the top half of the year academically and sorted out his 2nd year house by himself. I don't think there's anything wrong with needing help the first time you are faced with a load of new stuff, as long as it means you know what to do next time.

Ah maybe my kids got lucky then.

Of course, it's fine for them to ask for help if they need it. Nobody is suggesting otherwise. It's just that there is a difference between supporting kids to do stuff for themselves and taking over and doing everything for them.

My dd is Year 13 and she hasn't done many of these things before either, but she is fairly self sufficient and capable of learning what she doesn't know. Of course I'm happy to help her if required, but she is very aware of the fact that uni is, at least in part, about becoming more independent and doing stuff for herself.

I worked in HE for years, and I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of kids are dealing with independent living for the first time, but most of them get on and do a great job of it while others flounder. I can't help but wonder if many of those who don't manage the transition so well are the ones who haven't been supported to do stuff by themselves before getting to university, because they simply haven't had the practice and the opportunities to build up their own confidence.

Obviously, you have said that it was mostly psychological for your ds, and I do understand that he may have had significant mental health problems that got in the way of him doing stuff independently , and that's fair enough if he wasn't able to function normally - most of us would probably end up doing more for our kids in that situation, quite understandably. However, that is an exceptional situation. For the majority of kids, most of whom are not seriously held back by mental health issues, I really don't think the parents are doing them any favours by being overly involved.

It's just that there is a difference between supporting kids to do stuff for themselves and taking over and doing everything for them.

I mean, I'm sure there are parents that take over, but I never said I did everything for him, I said I helped him and that he needed a lot of help, especially with the post results admin. This was not a mental health issue (that was more relevant to head in the sand Y12 DS who simultaneously wanted to go to uni but couldn't think about it).

I don't think he could have navigated it all through learning by himself without any help but they are all different I guess. I certainly wasn't going to say no.

In any case it doesn't seem to have affected his transition to university so I'm comfortable that it was the right approach for him. Horses for courses. The key thing is probably to be led by them. Making it all about you and not letting them do things for themselves is quite different from helping them when they can't.

Well, I agree with being led by them to a certain extent, but if they are "leading" to a position where the parent is doing most of the work - either because of genuine helplessness or simply being too lazy to do it themselves if there is a parent willing to step in - then I think it is the parent's role to gently nudge them towards taking responsibility for themselves. It's great that your ds has made the transition to managing stuff for himself at university, but not all kids do make that transition effectively so I think we owe it to our kids to help them develop these skills before they leave home. Admittedly, I have come to this realisation largely as a result of having seen plenty of kids at university unable to manage basic things competently for themselves, and this has definitely impacted on how I have raised dd.

As for taking over, I was referring really to the OP rather than anyone else - it doesn't look like she is coming back to the thread anyway, but from what she has said, it seems abundantly clear that she did take over, even writing a draft personal statement for her ds. I'm sure you didn't go to such lengths, but personally, I think that level of parental interference is positively unhelpful as it sends a clear message to the child that the parent does not consider him competent to do this basic stuff for himself without her input. That is not a message that I would ever want to send to my dd.

@SoTedious Have you considered that now he’s actually gone to university, without you, he’s suddenly become capable because you are NOT there. He’s had to grow up or come home. What a surprise he has got himself organised.

My DDs went to boarding school. They had bank accounts at 13. They both went to South Africa on a school exchange for a term. Without us. They flew there without us. At 13. They used emails. They organised their university loans. They accepted offers. They applied for housing. They just understood mum and dad did not do everything and they had the tools to sort out university admin. So, in fact, did their male friends. Most of the boarding ones didn’t get taken to open days either. They went on the train. Boys are not helpless idiots unless you allow them to be.

Have you considered that now he’s actually gone to university, without you, he’s suddenly become capable because you are NOT there. He’s had to grow up

Yes, exactly 👍
This was my hope and it has worked out. It doesn't mean he could have done all the admin stuff by himself last year though - he couldn't / didn't, hence asking for help. I must admit it didn't cross my mind to refuse to help my child with something that I knew about and he didn't yet.

Boys are not helpless idiots unless you allow them to be.

Some boys are not helpless idiots, but immature, inexperienced, worried about doing things wrong. Your girls have done really well and obviously there are much younger children all over the world coping with even greater challenges, but children and circumstances are all different. He's not helpless or an idiot, he went overseas on school trips and on holidays with his friends (although I wouldn't consider that a huge achievement), he's looking after himself and doing well at his RG university, what does it matter that he needed help to set up his bank account and loan? He won't next time and it's really not a competition.

I really liked the uni visits, we enjoy each other's company and had a lot of fun. Likewise on the day he moved to uni, I gave him a lift then too. I don't think it impeded his development too much though. He seems to manage travelling around the country to visit his school friends ok so all is well in that department.

I think all Dc need guidance when they are at school to help them move towards adulthood. I see no reason why a Dc cannot have a bank account at 16. Put an allowance in it for them if they don’t work. Get them to budget by agreeing what the allowance has to cover. I’m all for guidance but not doing everything for them. I was countering the argument that boys are incapable by saying some boys didn’t go with parents to university open days. We did take our DDs but didn’t hover. Some boys do have hands off parents and organise themselves. I agree they need confidence but parents have to try strategies to build this up. However it’s great that university and travel are now organised by him.

I see no reason why a Dc cannot have a bank account at 16. Put an allowance in it for them if they don’t work. Get them to budget by agreeing what the allowance has to cover.

Thank you - mine have done this from the age of about 13 or so. But you can't set up your own bank account by yourself at that age and it's a different process to opening a student account - as I remember I had to be there with them for a very tedious couple of hours in person at the bank. So not much relevant experience gained there. They are used to budgeting their allowance, have bought their own clothes for years and anything else that doesn't count as "essentials" ie food, toiletries and stuff for school. But again that is quite different from handling £10k per year.

No you've just done the work for him. He will arrive at Uni and probably drop out by the end of the first year.

I see so many young men start Uni that have got so used to others stepping in to help them that they just can't handle all that's required at Uni.

forgive time difference. OP here hopping back on to thank all posters, even the privileged and judgemental ones. I identify with @sotediousthe most. Absolutely no way my inexperienced DC (y12 now) will be able to juggle all the admin that comes with uni offers. Yes I have overstepped (not with uni research but with PS) but I will need to help him with application admin in y13. I’d rather he focused on getting AAA and I do the admin heavy lifting. He will learn those skills over next 18 months and I regard it as my role in the meantime to help him

That's a lot of pressure on him to get the AAA grades.

@mathanxiety nope, no extra pressure whatsoever - I am not asking for anything in return FGS. This thread getting ridiculous. He will have an insurance option too ofc

I think you are infantilising him

98% of students manage their university applications without their parents taking over. They fill in the form, make the choices, arrange the open days, arrange the finance, manage the offers, sort of the accommodation, apply for the overdraft, plan their budget, look for work

not only write their personal statement, but spend the 18 months before hand making sure they have something to write about in their personal statement.

parents role is sounding board, sign the finance application, agree with trepidation to be guarantor.

If he can't juggle the admin that comes with university offers, then he is not university material

and if you are making decisions for him, or influence his decisions in any way, he could well resent you for the rest of his life

I have many sixth form students without parents, who are orphans/care leavers/lone refugees/ estranged from family

How do you think your son is going to fare at university compared to these students? He is going to be like a toddler among young adults.

But OP, helping is one thing but stepping in to present him with the complete package before most teenagers will even have thought of starting undermines his chances of becoming proactive rather than passive.

Absolutely no way my inexperienced DC (y12 now) will be able to juggle all the admin that comes with uni offers

Perhaps you are right, and there really is no way that your dc would be able to juggle this by himself. You know your child best. However, if that is really true, then I think you need to be asking yourself how on earth you have got to this point? How on earth can an intelligent young person, apparently capable of getting AAA at A-level and a university degree, and mature enough to consider going off to university next year, have grown up to be so incompetent that he isn't able to manage basic admin in relation to his own future? It strongly suggests that he hasn't been given enough opportunities before now to develop essential life skills. Personally, I think that is on his parents.

Absolutely no way my inexperienced DC (y12 now) will be able to juggle all the admin that comes with uni offer

Really?
Assume he has some competence
He can go on student room or ask

Come on op it is your job to teach him talk him thru the process if he asks
Not do it for him
Aaa material???
Give him some life skills too

However much help the applicant's school does / doesn't give them, they have to at least find their way onto the UCAS website in order to submit their application.

And there, lo and behold, they will find sections entitled 'Filling in your application' and 'Writing your personal statement', amongst other helpful information and advice.

These things are literally there in front of them. Advice on writing a personal statement is also on most, if not all, university websites. (And on sites such as The Student Room, but finding and engaging with those is, of course, purely optional, whereas it is impossible to get anywhere without finding and engaging with UCAS and surely even those who only 'know' that completing their UCAS application involves naming the Top Five Name universities have to have a quick squint at said universities' websites, if only for the course code?).

I've not read the full thread, but have got the general gist of the responses you have received and think some are harsh to be honest.

At the end of the day, all you have done is helped. You've enjoyed helping and your DS is grateful. Your DS will attend the open days and choose from there!

I think as a parent it's nice to be part of the process. I find it odd that some parents are happy to leave their children to it, with hardly any input, saying well it's their application, let them get on with it. It's a decision that can affect the rest of their lives!