parenting a young adult with mental health challenges

I am parenting an adult child with mental health issues. Take my advice with a grain of salt because we handled it very badly. At one point while in school (our child is no longer is school, did not finish), when more than one day of school was missed--I would pester our child about going back then after a while--my H became angry/lectured our child. It resulted in our child laying around for a week then when the teachers were contacted (according to our child)--they all said it was too late to fix it (failing grades in all classes). That this child focussed on the angry outburst in this way was likely evidence of a mental health issue but, unfortunately , we did not see it that way. As far as contacting the school with a letter from a therapist--I have read that schools will make an accommodation for a disability but, unfortunately, in my experience, your child will have to take the initiative to contact the school. Getting our children to take the initiative was a challenge for us when they were in school (for example, they would sleep through initial registration then they would not be able to get some of their required classes ).

What made it even harder to manage was that when your child turns 18, the schools our children attended would not talk to us about anything--they wouldn't even tell us our children's grades even though we were paying for school (though they would accept payments ). So we did not feel good about continuing to pay for school unless our children could show they were at least mostly getting passing grades (and one our our children scored so high on the SAT that college credit was received for the score plus that child had 24 advanced placement college credits but was not going to class nor wanted to continue to go to school. ). Again, we handled it all very badly but eventually, we have to pass the responsibility to our children and go on with our lives . We are willing to pay for psychiatrists and therapists if our child is willing.

Sorry if this is not that encouraging. I do understand how heartbreaking all of this is.

Thank you TunedOut for sharing your experience, I am sorry your child is no longer in school, at least for now, there is only this much a parent can do for a child once they turn 18.

My week starts and ends with her therapy session, hoping that one day she will reach the point where she has enough energy to contact her school. We are also paying for school and, at this point, I am more concerned about her mental health and her transcript than about tuition fees since we realized that she will most likely have to repeat the year, either she withdraws or fails her courses. Based on the advice I received from other contributors on PC and what I read, it takes time to see improvements and I do trust she will feel better in a few months and then we will discuss finances for next year.

We tried really hard not to lecture my daughter but during the few and brief conversations we had about school, there were sentences that came across as not supportive or lacking understanding. In hindsight, they were, and for this reason we basically refrain from asking follow up questions, at least for now. I keep reading other threads and see if I can somehow learn communication skills that will help me talk to her about inconvenient topics while being supportive.

For now I am grateful she looks forward to her therapy sessions and we can afford to pay for therapy.


Thank you again, PC contributors

It really depends on the university and what they will accept as proof your daughter is in some sort of treatment which you can't find out until the school is contacted.


You may need a psychiatrist, or even a GP to sign off of the letter for school.


Depending on the drop dates for the classes, she may end up with incompletes which have to be completed I believe the next semester or they turn into F's. She may need to withdraw from the classes if it is still within the time to do so.


Taking the term off may result in you having to start paying back the student loans, assuming you have any, for her tuition etc. Just something to think about. But if she flunks out of college you will have to start repaying them back anyway. It's better to withdraw then to flunk out.


I don't know how you can approach your daughter into getting her to contact the school. One thing I am thinking is if you are a cosigner on the loans you may be able to contact the school yourself to get the information needed. There are a few college professors that I know of that are on these forums so hopefully one of them will see your post and respond to you with more information. But the best thing is to go straight to the school and find out what is needed for an accommodation or a withdraw.


Glad to hear your daughter is doing a bit better.

HUGS Kit

Thank you Kit, the info is useful even if it is general. I am hoping that this year universities will be more flexible with medical leaves/ withdrawals given that the pandemic and the lockdowns affected the mental health of so many young adults. I am also hoping that this topic is part of the conversations with her therapist because it is a significant source of stress which could be easily eliminated.
Fingers crossed!