Son not allowed to continue to second year at uni

[PocketSand]

DS2 has just completed his first year in an engineering degree. His results are all over the place from 1st in maths to 2:2 to required resits. He exceeded the A level grade requirements for MEng. He is autistic and has ADHD. He was un medicated prior to and during most of his first year due to shortages followed by referral to cardiology.

His DSA support didn't start til the spring term and one support worker provided 1 hour support when 30 hours was approved. He constantly tells the one he has seen that everything is fine and they believe him.

He always says everything is fine and doesn't ask for help. He has never been to the library and relies totally on lecture notes. He doesn't know what independent study is. I have always been his advocate but now he is expected to advocate for himself. No one at the uni knows these issues - he has not even contacted his personal tutor let alone disability services and just thinks he needs to work harder.

He found out today that he has failed his third submission of a lab report he initially submitted in February. He did not have DSA agreed support at that time so he didn’t have his own laptop. He borrowed another student’s at the time but when he had to resubmit no longer had access to his results and so he tried to cobble together a report using specimen (and maybe someone else’s results - not clear). He had previously received an email saying he couldn’t proceed unless he passed resubmission. I assume that’s where we are at now.

His feedback is harsh - shouldn’t study for a degree if not prepared to use feedback to improve his work. Trouble is he often doesn’t understand the feedback and he is unwilling to ask for clarification as he fears tutor’s anger. He says he doesn’t know who marked the work so doesn’t know who to talk to and seems generally clueless about most administrative issues.

I feel completely in the dark and don’t know where to go from here. Obviously I don’t want to just give up and accept his journey ends here as it seems very unfair but don’t know what I can do to try and enable him to fix this or if it can be fixed.

Can anyone who knows the system provide advice on next steps please?

Timetables and emails is how our Unis work. Not constant reminders though. They have set procedures based on need.

I understand OPs son wasn’t responding to emails.

That’s what we do. Timetabled sessions and an email reminder beforehand.

My understanding is the same as yours.

OP said DS didn’t respond to 1 email. Any disability specialist, and at some universities it is an outside provider rather than employed university staff, should be aware at least 1 follow up email should be sent to a student with EF difficulties. If they don’t, they are in the wrong job!

I'm only half way through all the posts. I'd now be worried for life after uni. How can he function in a job if he can't ask for help or to clarify what is being asked of him? This goes far wider than just academia

Yes that’s what the op said.

Has she seen his emails though? He missed some to do with setting it up, what’s to say he didn’t miss more? She also says he tells the support person he’s fine. (In her op.)

There comes a point where there’s nothing a uni can do.

This young man went to uni having been educated at home with lots of support and scaffolding. For some reason, his mum didn’t make sure she was in the loop with uni admin and he wasn’t able to manage it on his own.

He clearly didn’t communicate with her as she’s discovering now that he hadn’t managed the feedback or lack thereof on the failed item well and she seems to have a rosy view of her son on a number of levels and a less than rosy view of his peers and feels they are taking advantage of him.

At some point he is going to be an adult and be treated like one. He isn’t there yet and I’m not sure that this degree path at this time is the best one for him. He won’t cope with the M element of the MEng - and I know he has years to get there but his internal attitude would need to change and change quickly. I’m not an engineer but I know a masters level in my subject is very different to undergrad.

The op wants him to do a PhD. He can’t do self directed study. How is he going to do a PhD that is the very definition of self directed study?

Mine was at RG too.

As I said, perhaps OP will clarify. Since OP specifically said there was no follow, there presumably she knows there wasn’t a follow up.

As I also said, any disability specialist should be aware ‘OK’ doesn’t always mean everything is OK. If they don’t frankly they are not a disability specialist.

@Fetaface I'm in awe of you. My kids all have severe ld. theyll never go uni. But I've tried like your parents have to get them as fully functioning as they can be.

I have worked in a training role for parents of 'high functioning asd and adhd' kids. For some reason the parents only ever focused on qualifications and not life and social skills.

Students are normally supplied with reading lists: core reading and supplementary reading

Yip. I’ve looked them up for the course in question and I’ve given the op a link to a website that uses AI to draw a spider diagram of all the connected journal articles and books. Hopefully it will help.

Not all of them!!👋
Lots of these kids are school refusers and drop out of formal education at an early age.

It’s not just the M it’s also the Eng - engineers work together using their knowledge to solve problems and create new systems. You need to be able to make the leap from following a process to actually designing, or improving, the process.

For example,my DS studied Aerospace engineering, his Masters project was to design and build a craft to travel across the surface of the moon. So literally invent something new. The work is cutting edge, so the lecturers themselves don’t necessarily have all the answers.

I’m not certain that the Op or her DS understands this.

Not all parents do.

DS3 has EOTIS, he has more PfA/therapeutic/socialising/sport/mentoring provision in his EOTIS package than he has academic tuition.

But when parents do, it may in part be because LAs act unlawfully when it comes to PfA provision and support for socialising.

I’m a social scientist not an engineer.

My PhD broke new ground - I had to invent the rules.

Don't get me wrong. I loved it. I still love my subject and I still write on it. But. You can’t do a PhD if you don’t understand how to research and study. And the ops son has had years at school where he’s coasted and now he’s gone to uni and for whatever reason he hasn’t engaged and he hasn’t got the self study skills he needs even for undergrad. How is he going to do a PhD in maths from Oxbridge?

I think it’s a bit of a pipe dream for the op. I worry how he’s going to cope if he ends up working in Lotus as an engineer. He won’t have the team work skills and he won’t be able to think round corners to come up with an innovative solution.

edit to say. I don’t say that about my PhD to sound like a wanker.

But. You can’t do a PhD if you don’t understand how to research and study.

But he didn’t understand how to research and study, how to use the library etc, because he was in first year, just out of school. It was all different and he wasn’t told explicitly what he needed to do. Or if he was, the explanations weren’t as clear as he needed them to be.
He was expected to pick things up like the others.

I wouldn’t write him off yet! He definitely needs more support but once he understands what he needs to do things may work out? OP seems to think so and she knows him best.

@PocketSandyou have the patience of saint explaining over and over again how many ND need specify support to function in a system that is stacked so heavily against them. I assume these folk wouldn’t expect someone without arms to just try harder rather than being provided with appropriate speech to text software plus the time and training for it to learn to be used to its full capacity.

Annoying I can’t add photos from the app but I so want to add the Equality Equity Reality poster.

I entirely agree. Being the parent of a ND child is often isolating, exhausting and challenging - as the result of other people more than anything. I applaud any parent who has raised a child with ASD, ADHD or other ND challenges. You have had to advocate more, love more, nurture and encourage more than anything parent of a NT child can even begin to appreciate.

Of course the op wants the best for her son and he wants to continue with his course so she is going to try and make that happen.
it does sound that he will need significant support which she is happy to provide.
I think some thing else to consider is that if that even if the ds manages to get through but is likely to fail each summer in the non Maths subject and resit his degree will likely be capped at a pass degree and he won't be eligible to do a masters or phd in most courses. I'd definitely look into the breakdown year by year before he makes a decision.
it does sound like for many reasons a pure maths course might suit him better.

DS2 did not want to authorise me from the start. He wants not to need support. It was absolutely essential to let him ‘suck it and see’ and crash and get slightly burnt in the first year so that he realised for himself that he needed to change the way that he works now he’s at uni, ask for help and support and engage with it and that whether he likes it not sometimes he does need my support to help him learn to advocate for himself. I can’t keep advocating for him forever. He needs to learn skills of independence and sometimes that means initially doing the wrong thing and being able to taste failure before admitting that you need support.

He’s very stubborn and has some odd ideas. Hence him rejecting all my attempts to buy him a laptop for the start of his first year. It’s not as if he’s some kind of technophobe - he built his own gaming computer when he was 15.

Still, onwards and upwards.

DS2 didn’t respond to 1 email from DSA to arrange an assessment. I asked him multiple times if he had heard because I thought it was odd. In the end I stood over him and made him go through all his emails and then when it was located to make contact to book an assessment. He then had to wait for the assessment, report and contact from providers. One tutor contacted him and support started in the spring term. He went to his weekly support sessions and booked for the following week. He was not forthcoming at the sessions about what support he needed and the tutor just accepted his word for it that all was fine. The second tutor never made contact and I supported him to send multiple emails chasing and moving up the chain of command. A sole session was finally booked in the final term. He has never refused to attend but minimises during support sessions.

After he failed to follow up 1 email I insisted all emails are forwarded to me. I regularly check all his emails so I know he’s not accidentally on purpose missed any more.

Thanks for the link.

This is my experience too. My DP's masters was at a former poly, his ND support was brilliant, but he's now at a Russell Group doing his medical doctorate and the support was non-existent until he had a breakdown and I contacted the disability support service. He didn't even know who his personal tutor was, and they would change two or three times a year without any personal interaction in that time. Just a name on paper it would seem.

Thanks for the link. On ‘interrogation’ it turns out reading lists were provided but DS2 had convinced himself they were somehow optional! I think he needs support to be comfortable with accessing the library. All three of the unis I attended provide tours and classes but maybe he needs more tailored support and disability services or his support workers can help with this. I’d do it myself but entry is usually restricted Ime.

The disability staff can ask library staff to do a longer induction with him in September about all the things you can do in the library. Some universities do this with all students identified as disabled at the start of the year so that they know all it has to offer. Again if they aren't told they don't know or pick it up, so it can be very important for them. I recommend asking disability team to email the library team to include him in it or do it 1-1. He can email disability advisor to get library staff to do so or you can email as well. It may have happened and he didn't attend or didn't see the emails about it.

@FastForward2 thanks for your post - how would your son have reacted to you telling him you think he should do something different to what he wanted to do? Did you discuss this with him and if so why didn’t he change course? Crucially, how are things for him now?