Nathan is a talented athlete, and a very good student. I think he has led a very sheltered life.
His mother rented an apartment in New Haven while Nathan studied at Yale. He lived in the dormitory. She also drove him to the rink, and watched from the stands. She has controlled his every move for the majority of his life. While I really bristle at what he said, I don’t think he’s ever been given an opportunity to experience life, learn through experience (other than on the ice), and truly think for himself.
His mother belongs on the dreaded “Skating Mothers” list.
I don’t think it was the case for his freshman year. His mom only went to help him out around competition time. His mom talked to some concerned Japanese fans at usnats 2019, about her wanting to offer him more help like driving him to rinks and things like that, but I guess Nathan didn’t want that. She told the Japanese fans she would be leaving after nationals.
Nathan was plagued with sickness in 18/19 season. He had a very bad infection from cold or flu several weeks after he went to Yale fall of 2018, which he never seemed to fully recovered from. He has respiratory issues like coughing even before IdF 2018. Then He got a bad flu right after us nationals, and got another flu 2 weeks right before the worlds, which he talked about during his media call.He was sick and in very bad shape on the day of WTT skate, which he had to cancel several interview. He didn’t even go the banquet.
He still suffered respiratory issues during SOI tour. Another very concerned Japanese asked his mom about his health, mom said she always told him to pay attention not to get sick, but he always ended up with being sick. His sister git married that May, there were pictures mom was seeing her wedding dress in Nathan’s Socal apartment. So I don’t think she was always staying in New Haven.
I am not sure about his sophomore year. But I could understand if mom wanted to move there to help him out given what happened the first year. The course load was much harder than first year, Which Nathan admitted in a Russian interview that he sometime asked himself why he chose such a difficult life. Nathan doesn’t like to talk about it, but it seemed that he doesn’t have a strong immune system. He was sick on the day of 2019 SkAm FS. Per Raf, he was sick before 2019 GPF, which impacted his training. Then again, he had a really bad flu in the winter break, which Raf was so concerned about that he was much more involved with Nathan’s training after he went back school.
But I do agree that Nathan lived a somewhat sheltered life until probably the second semester of freshman year if not the sophomore year at Yale. In one of his interviews with Japanese media at the end of 2018，he mentioned something like his life was like between rinks, classrooms. He said that although he lived in a dorm, but he seldom got chance to talk to his peers at school.
