Page 2 of 2 [ 25 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2

Ron5442
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 6 Nov 2013
Age: 68
Gender: Male
Posts: 62

20 Mar 2014, 6:52 pm

I didn't do my homework because (as was discovered later) I'm dyslexic and cross dominant. I could pass the standard eye tests with flying colors and did very well with individual words; but, didn't comprehend the sentences.



Lukecash12
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Apr 2012
Age: 60
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,033

21 Mar 2014, 12:53 am

WerewolfPoet wrote:
JonAZ wrote:
School is a game for him. He manipulates teachers and jokes around in school.


Could it be that the coursework is not intellectually stimulating enough? If the work is beneath his current level of understanding, he may find it too boring and, thus, not worth his time (I've had a friend tell me that her aunt flunked the first grade because the work was unstimulating--later tests showed that she is intellectually gifted).

If this is the case, it may be possible for the teacher to assign supplementary work or to adjust the work to his skill level. The latter would also be useful is the opposite is true--that the work is becoming too challenging for him and that he feels that there is "no use" in trying because he "doesn't get it, anyways."

Burnout is also a valid hypothesis, as other posters have mentioned.


It seems I always read an awful lot more of this than comments to the effect that a child should continue doing the work expected of him/her regardless of whether or not he/she wants to do it. Yes, I understand that the situation can be exacerbated by social anxiety and whole host of other pressures that make school seem scary. But if that isn't really the case then there is no reason that someone with autism shouldn't be expected to develop a healthy work ethic just the same.

Of course I don't mean to imply that the father is failing in this regard and want to express to him my utmost respect for him and his parental decisions. He can take or leave my advice, and I very well may or may not be right about the situation. But if I am right I do feel that concessions shouldn't be so readily made if it is just a work ethic issue. While I love children, I do not think that we are doing them any favors if we don't expect them to soldier on through activities that they find unpleasant.

And of course we are talking about a fifth grader. This isn't an unusual issue for children this age and there are many acceptable methods to help such children to work. I definitely don't know the child nearly as well as his father and I'm sure his father is more qualified to come up with something specific to his son. There is a certain level of emotional maturity that oftentimes one must reach (and I say oftentimes because people who are incapable of work like disabled classic auties aren't necessarily emotionally immature, although they can be and it doesn't make them inferior) before they realize the value of "setting their nose to the grindstone", and not only do different people reach this level at different times but it doesn't necessarily indicate one's character qualities if he/she is a "late bloomer".


_________________
There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance.
Nahj ul-Balāgha by Ali bin Abu-Talib


Noetic
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Jan 2005
Age: 45
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,277
Location: UK

21 Mar 2014, 1:58 am

JonAZ wrote:
My son is a work of art. God was feeling creative on the day he made my son.
...
If I asked why he refuses to work then he would probably say, "I was not in the mood."
...
School is a game for him. He manipulates teachers and jokes around in school.

Why on earth would you NOT ask him? Sounds a bit like you've been letting him get away with way too much, he's manipulative and seemingly disrespectful to his teachers yet you think the kid is God's gift to mankind?

No wonder the kid is turning into a spoilt, manipulative brat if he can stop working in school and you don't even dare *ask* him why (never mind try to get him off his lazy backside and put some effort in!).

Kids respond differently to different people, and if you keep letting him get away with such behaviour without even asking him about them, things are only going to get worse.



JonAZ
Pileated woodpecker
Pileated woodpecker

User avatar

Joined: 27 Feb 2012
Age: 56
Gender: Male
Posts: 190

31 Mar 2014, 3:56 pm

Thank you for your thoughtful replies.

My son states that he does not like to do school work because it is boring.


_________________
My website about autism, perception, and the mind:

www.manyperceptions.org

My son has autism.


DVCal
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 4 Apr 2012
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 636

31 Mar 2014, 5:19 pm

You should punish him for not doing school work, he needs to see the consequences for not doing school work is dire.



auntblabby
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Feb 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 113,605
Location: the island of defective toy santas

31 Mar 2014, 5:29 pm

DVCal wrote:
You should punish him for not doing school work, he needs to see the consequences for not doing school work is dire.

rather than punishment, take him to skid row and have him look a good long time, then tell him if he doesn't shape up, he could be living there for a good long time.



Sweetleaf
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 34,439
Location: Somewhere in Colorado

31 Mar 2014, 5:57 pm

Or even better, see if the school could give him more challenging work.....if he is bored, that likely means he understands the material and is just sick of hearing about the same thing over and over. Maybe the school has a program where they can put the kid in higher level classes, maybe he needs to go up a grade(though the social difficulties with autism might make him too immature for that, I got held back in kindergarden because the teacher thought I was smart enough to move on but not mature enough). I don't think punishing or trying to scare him would help...he clearly just needs more to work with.

I remember back in first grade I got mad because the teacher wanted me to participate in a first grade level reading thing and I had the reading skills of at least a 3rd grader if not more....so I was frusterated about someone trying to force me to 'learn' things I already knew and was quite good at. Essentially it was boring because I could read and comprehend much more than a three word sentence which is what they were trying to teach me.


_________________
We won't go back.


kazma
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 1 Jul 2012
Age: 39
Gender: Male
Posts: 174

31 Mar 2014, 7:08 pm

school i feel is mainly for teaching you to conform and to be compliant more than anything else most of the impotent stuff i learned on my own at home eg reading in fact i found at school it was harder to learn i hated it i wish homeschooling was an option when i was a kid



Opi
Velociraptor
Velociraptor

User avatar

Joined: 23 Aug 2013
Age: 58
Gender: Female
Posts: 401
Location: East coast at the moment

01 Apr 2014, 12:06 pm

well, ya know, school is pretty damn boring, even in the gifted programs. it's regimented, it's structured, and for some of us, it pretty much takes all the fun out of learning. i love learning and am very educated and very self-educated on top of that, but i HATED school. not everyone learns best in the same ways, and if he is a creative kid, he probably doesn't fit into the mold and doesn't want to. School is in no small part about indoctrination into the social/economic fabric and he may just be resisting indoctrination. i think aspies are like that sometimes (i know i am). and stubborn too - the harder you push me in one direction the more i dig in my heels - even if it's somewhere i wanted to go!

now my parents weren't of unlimited means, and i'm not either. so i know how it goes and sometimes public school is the only option. but he might do better at some kind of non-traditional school. for instance, here in my area, there is a vocational high school, still a public school. and kids there get both the high school education AND get to learn real skills for the real world. so it's much more hands-on and much less books-on and boring rote stuff. i love hands-on stuff. it's not that i can't read or study - well i hate studying but i love reading - or that i was incapable of learning that way - i just would rather be fully engaged than sitting at a desk for hours on end. or outdoors if at all possible.

i know your son is not yet in high school but just using the example to demonstrate that sometimes there's more options out there than we take into account. the solution may not be motivating him to do well at his current school. it might be getting him into a program better suited to his wants and needs.

one of the disorders i have, which i believe is related to being on the spectrum, is dysgraphia. so handwriting actually becomes rather painful for me. there may be something like that factoring into his avoidance too.

my stepson is very, very smart and incredibly creative. but he barely made it through high school. i think he had to go to summer school every single year to make up for classes he failed during the regular terms. we encouraged him to finish high school and get his diploma but never pushed him to go further because it was clear he is just not an academic type.

he has since produced his own record album (playing all parts and vocals), paid himself to get it professionally mixed, and moved to LA to get into acting. he's 23 now and i don't know if he'll make it in hollywood but he's happy and healthy and what else matters? he's doing well. he was always an out-of-the-box thinker, coming up with questions that showed he just didn't view the world the same way everyone else does, ideas i never thought of before. i'm glad we encouraged his creativity and didn't try to force him as a round peg into a square hole. someday he may go back to school, but it will be to study something he really wants to learn, not just adhering to some expectation.

i also relate to being very internally motivated. the hardest thing for me is trying to get people who can just reason out what they "should" do and choose to do it, is that my mind really doesn't work that way, even when i want it too. if whatever that part of my brain is that makes the final decision, really doesn't want to do something, it doesn't matter how rational or logical i am, it's just not going to happen. i've given up trying to force it because it just ends up in a big hot mess of self-sabotage i don't consciously intend. now it's more a matter of lengthy internal negotiations and reminding myself what the consequences will be over and over again, and what my options really are.


_________________
161 Aspie / 51 NT - Aspie Quiz (very likely an aspie)
36 - AS Quotient
115 aloof, 123 rigid, 89 prag - Aut/BAP
24 - HSP / ADD Quiz- 41, Inattention: 24, Hyperactive/Impulsive: 17
"Odd and different is beautiful" -- Tyra Banks