Odd problem? What to do?

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My son went through a phase like this, and I think phase is the right word. One thing he told us later was that he found it difficult to reconcile what he was being told in pragmatic speech (don't go on and on) with what we were saying he needed to do in writing assignments. Among other things, his natural instinct was exactly opposite: if someone wants more information on something you wrote, they would just ask you, wouldn't they? To him, speech is the natural venue for lots of information, not writing.

One thing that seemed to help was talking about what is expected in different situations as social rules. Business writing is brief, like what he was being taught about "doing business" verbally. Academic writing is overly wordy, taking two pages to say what could be said in half a page. And so on. My son doesn't expect anything that is a social rule to be logical to him; he has learned to basically just go with it (although he certainly will try to get a logical reason out of us ).

You don't usually go wrong giving too much in a homework writing assignment but kids have a difficult time understanding that and reconciling it with all the other messages they are given. But time and experience should fix that; I wouldn't worry too much about it, although it is certainly good to keep up these conversations and fill in at home the gaps in his learning you see.

Weird how some people react isnt it, my mother in law insists my daughter is lovely, which of course she is, but you can still have an ASD and be lovely cant you....!??! Thats her main defence, it always comes back to that. I have never said shes not lovely, in fact being my daughter Im always saying how lovely she is!

Aspie 1, I get your general point and I do not feel there is any way that I can convince you that I am not subjecting my kid to unrealistic demands. Good grades may not get you your dream job, but if all of your dream jobs require a college education, good grades are important.

Anyone who talks to my son for any given amount of time will be able to tell how bright he is (not genius bright or anything like that), but you can tell that his mind is working hard. Last year when he was new to the school district, one of his new teachers explained to me that at first he thought my son was just an "average" kid as a result of his classroom participation and classwork. But one day he played chess with him and he said he was floored because he said the discrepancy between his chess game and his classroom performance was huge. My son hardly ever even plays chess. His science teacher this year said the questions he asks shows that he understands a lot of what he is learning at a level equal to or deeper than the A students.

You may find it cruel to push him, but I find it cruel to give up on him and treat him as if he isn't capable, or to give him the idea that if something is hard, it's reason not to try. I'm not going to allow him to be constrained. He has serious disabilities, but none of them are intellectual in nature. I am going to support him and--yes--push him so that he can be his best self. I am sorry you had such a bad experience growing up and I appreciate that you are hoping to prevent the same thing from happening to some other poor kid. But it is possible to hold your kid to high standards without overwhelming them with unreasonable expectations. To assume that I am blindly unaware of my kid's capabilities is really not fair. If I was blindly unaware, I would simply say "I know his IQ and it correlates to straight A's, therefore he must get straight A's or he is a failure." That is not what I am saying at all. What I am saying is that I expect his grades to reflect his knowledge, not his disability. That means he must learn to overcome some barriers that he has and that means his teachers and I need to find ways to help him.

And FWIW, my home is not a punitive one. He is not punished for bad grades. He is actually very rarely punished at all because he does very little to warrant punishment. I do have expectations, but for the most part, they are mutually agreed upon. There are consequences for not meeting them. But they are not harsh. Homework not finished? No screen time, but he can read (something else he likes to do for relaxation). Bad grade on a test? We correct it.

I do get what you are saying. I don't want you to feel like I don't. I appreciate that adults on the spectrum take the time to try to keep parents from repeating mistakes that happened to them. That's one reason why I am here instead of a parents-only forum. So thank you for taking the time to respond to my thread, even though I don't agree with you in this particular instance. It may be that next time it will be different.

I get your general point too. You want your son to live up to his potential, and I respect that.

But I read a study somewhere (I wish I could remember where; I think it was a career psychology site) that the happiest people are the ones who got "mostly C's and some B's". C is a grade you get for doing the satisfactory minimum. (D is for the barely-passing minimum; not good.) And sadly, that's exactly what you gotta do in today's workplaces to prevent your boss from thinking he owns you. The days when your boss respects you for giving your 110% are over. If you do that, he'll only cut jobs, pocket the savings, and give you twice the work. Also, C's get you into the mindset "I don't have to be great at something in order to be able to do it". And it teaches them how to find that happy medium between failing to meet minimum standards and burning yourself out by going above and beyond. Very good skill to have in today's job market. Because hey, if you go above and beyond enough times, it stops being above and beyond.

Consider this: I turned my workplace from being a place of blatant misery to a place bosses at least pay lip service to respect, not through getting straight A's. But through street smarts and social cunning that took me decades to develop. (Most NT kids learn those by their early teens.) I worked with my lawyer, and got my boss fired; the boss that everyone (except me) loved. Now I do what I should have been doing since day 1: the bare minimum. And I can't get fired, at least not without massive legal legwork, on technicalities I signed an agreement not to disclose. While the new boss isn't a nice guy, either, he knows just enough about what happened not to try the same crap on me again. Let me tell ya, that feels good! Way better than A's on report cards ever did.

Again, I fully respect your wishes for your son to live up to his potential. But in addition to expecting good grades, encourage him... no, make him read books or take classes on these things.
* How to interact with the police.
* How to exploit the US legal system for your own benefit.
* How to predict labor markets.
They'll be more beneficial than grades ever will. After all, grades are just letters on notebook paper. These are skills I should have learned by college age at the absolute latest, not when I'm pushing 30.

I want to make one point: modern grading rubrics are not designed to reflect knowledge, so hoping that a child's grades will reflect their knowledge is a false equation. I stopped approaching school issues as being about learning with my son long ago. Our kids are learning; my son's state test scores proved that. Instead, grades and homework are about a life skill, learning to understand what is wanted from you and to provide that, even when your own logic tells you that alternative B would be better, or that assignment C is a waste of time. Once my son saw it all as a game he wanted to win, his grades started to soar. He can rant about how it all makes no sense or isn't fair, but he still takes the time now to understand the game and play it well, for he understands that is how the world works, and he won't achieve his goals if he can't play the game.

Figuring out the game is very hard for those on the spectrum. There is nothing logical about it to them. Sometimes your son will have to learn by seeing a poor grade on an assignment. He will have to learn to ask the teacher questions, and sometimes advocate for his point of view or desired approach. All these are life skills that will hopefully someday transfer to a work place.

I really think it helps to see it as something other than academic. Your son is probably well aware that he possesses more knowledge than most of the other kids in his class, and perhaps sometimes even more than his teacher. There is a disconnect there that he will have to learn to bridge.

Fortunately most teachers are very receptive to any information that will help them be better teachers for your child. If your child has an IEP, then that's that. If there;s no IEP, then I have found most teachers are still eager to accommodate. They really care about the kids more than the labels and the test scores. But even if they care, often they don't really know what to do, so the more information you can provide early in the year, the better.

Unfortunately a few teachers never get it. In these cases I think the teachers often have their own psychological difficulties. If the option is available to you early in the year then maybe you can request a switch. If not available, then you have to navigate as best you can between you's son's stress and the teacher's ignorance.