Important Reminders As Your Child Heads to College

Here are some essentials to ensure you complete when your child moves away from home to start college. As always, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.

This post contains affiliate links.

Mama Bear Legal Forms

One of the most important aspects of your child’s move to college is ensuring they have the legal paperwork in place in the event of an emergency. Once your child turns 18, doctors and health care professionals will not share any medical information with you about your child because of HIPAA laws. Even if your child is on your insurance plans, they are not required to inform you of their medical condition in an emergency. We do not like to think about these scenarios, but in the event your child is unable to verbally consent to sharing his medical information with you, no doctor will keep you informed of their hospitalization and condition.

Will you be able to help your 18-year-old in the event of an emergency?

As such the team at Mama Bear Legal Forms has created an easy, hassle-free, and comprehensive list of documents to ensure that in the case of an emergency, you will have access to your child’s doctors and hospital staff so they can keep you updated on your child’s condition.
These documents essentially serve as a power of attorney for your young adult. They include

• Health Power of Attorney Documents
• Finance Power of Attorney Documents
• HIPAA release and FERPA waiver
• Free documents for a 2nd state
• Free App for scanning and storing documents

We did these documents for my son last year, and they were fairly easy to navigate. You start by creating an account with your information and Mama Bear populates the forms that are then emailed to you. It takes less than 10 minutes to fill in everything and sign it. You do have to have the forms notarized which can be done at the local US Post office. The parents keep a copy of the forms and you send your child to college with one.

The team at Mama Bear Legal Forms was generous enough to offer my blog subscribers a 20% off discount if you use promo code anintrovertedblogger or nadia20
Please use this affiliate link to access the forms.
Mama Bear Legal Forms

LIFE 360

Life 360 is a family location-sharing app. This allows family members to share real-time locations with each other. You can also designate locations such as ‘home’ or ‘school’ so that when a family member leaves or arrives at the location, you can choose to be notified. Some other features other than location sharing that I quite like are that you are able to see the phone battery life, driving speeds, and location history of the members in your circle.

Of course, this brings peace of mind, knowing that if you haven’t heard from your child in a while, you can see that they are on campus or in their dorm room. That being said, I would not recommend messaging your child saying ‘It’s 8am. Why are you not in class yet?’.

I think it’s a good app to have so you are not worried all the time. But it is not one I would use to ‘helicopter’ your child. They are adults after all – we established that with the legal forms. If they choose to skip class- that’s on them. Also, it’s good to talk with your child about how they would feel with the Life 360 app. You don’t want them to think you are invading their privacy. Though it works both ways.

Medicine Box

If you saw my post on Dorm room essentials, you would have seen a hanging organizer that we used to store medicines. You can use a box as well. If and when your child is sick with a cold or fever, they will not want to run to the nearest CVS to pick up medication. Also, if your child is like mine and is trying out some intra-mural sports, he is bound to get injured! Here is a list of what I kept in the medicine organizer. It was all in clear plastic pockets so it was easy to spot and you didn’t have to dig through a box looking for medicines. As always, make sure your child has taken these medications before and is not trying out any new ones. Please consult a medical professional for any questions about medication. These are all OTC medications.

• Neosporin
• Thermometer
• Airborne
• Tylenol cold/flu
• Tylenol pain reliever
• Imodium (anti-diarrhea) & Electrolytes powder that can be dissolved in water such as ORS
• Band-Aid Gauze pads
• Band-Aid Gauze roll
• Nexcare gentle paper tape (to tape the gauze)
• Band-Aids variety pack (including waterproof ones)
• Ricola cough drops
• Claritin
• Vicks Vaporub
• Icepack

Roommates & Friends

Be sure to have the contact number of your child’s roommate and friends in the event you cannot reach your child. I have heard from parents who could not reach their child and did not have their child’s roommate’s phone number to send a text.
It is not always an emergency situation, but perhaps you want to surprise your child and need some help with coordinating the surprise. It is also a good idea to meet the parents of your child’s roommate and keep in touch with them.
We were lucky and our roommate’s parents were able to take some home-cooked meals for my child when they made a visit during the holidays, since we were out of the country.

Amazon Prime Student

Amazon Prime for Students is probably one of the best things to have! They can get 2nd day delivery for so many essentials without any hassles! The prices are well worth it.

Snacks

This is obviously not a ‘crucial’ one. But I thought I would add it as a reminder. A good stash of snacks is always needed when you start out. I think it’s even more important at drop-off time, as students will probably not have time to make a grocery run. It is a good idea to keep the snacks in a closed box to avoid ants and other crawlies getting into the room.
I would also suggest a good variety of snacks and some options for microwavable snacks. Having a good snack box is great to share with friends too. Here are some suggestions.

• Cookies
• Nutri Grain bars
• Ramen (extremely popular)
• Instant coffee or tea
• Mac n cheese (made in the microwave)
• Crackers
• Chocolates, sweets, gum
• Tuna cans
• Juice boxes and drinks

I hope these are useful reminders. If you want to share other necessary ones with me, please leave them in the comments below. Good luck!