Is refusal to do homework an Aspie thing?

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I HATE homework.

I hated homework so much, that I did it right away, as fast as I could.

I hated homework as a kid.

Just imagine going to school and not being able to focus on your school work because of too much noise and getting distracted by your surroundings. You see kids getting their work done and they get free time so there you are watching them wishing you could work as fast as them so you can play too. But then school ends and you come home and you have tons of homework to do while all the other kids only have a little and they get free time at home while you still have to do your school work and you don't have free time. You were in school all day and now you just want to go home and relax but you can't because you have to do your homework. Then by the time you get it done, it's time for bed and you never got to play.

Yeah I hated school as a kid. Weekends was the only fun times and Spring break and Thanksgiving and Christmas and summer.

Mom had to put me in a room that was quiet and it kept me away from the noise. Sometimes she send my brothers upstairs to continue watching TV when I be in the kitchen. Sometimes she let me have breaks which was good. I can remember her telling me I can watch my favorite TV show if I do my homework when I was in 6th grade.

I remember wishing in my teens it be illegal because home is where you are supposed to relax and be away from all the stress you have had all day and the work. Now I realize why we have homework, you don't have time to do it in school and teachers don't have time to let you do it in school and never at home.

But things got easier after my AS diagnoses and school wasn't as hard and I didn't end up with loads of homework thanks to the help I got in school.

As you have said, Attwood has identified not doing homework as an AS thing. It was what actually started my family down this road last year when my then 14 year old started refusing to do homework. Having had 3 sons prior to this one and encountering challenges with each of them, I found that with this one all the strategies I'd used on/for the other boys were not working and so sought help. I believe the homework issue was what first got the psychologists attention re: possible ASD.
While we do have accommodations in place this year (one of them is a reduced homework load) all is not perfect. Just today I asked him what his English mark was and he said 61%. I asked him what he thought he could do to improve the mark and he stated that 61 was fine and he didn't need to get a better mark than that. In Science, he missed a couple of quizzes and needs to go in at lunch to catch up. Every day at lunch he "forgets" to go in. Without my actually going to school with him and walking him to the room at lunch it is difficult to accomplish this.
I appreciate what everyone else has written and wish everyone else who is struggling with it both as a teen and as a parent the best, it's definitely not easy. It becomes such a struggle that I look forward to holidays just so we can have a more normal family life during those times.

At my school you could request it as an elective - you didn't get any credits for it, though.

At one of the Catholic schools I went to we had something called "homework detention" where if you didnt do your homework you would be required to stay after school to finish it.

I had to do this all the time when I forget to do an assignment or just didnt get it done. In all honestly it wasnt that bad and I actually liked it because I was one of only a few who would have to do this frequently and I would have a quiet place to get my homework done. Less people to deal with than the ridiculous study hall periods where nobody gets any real work done.

It was even more annoying in high school because we would have so many mandatory assemblies. So instead of getting my homework done in a period intended for it, I was being herded into the auditorium and forced to sit squished in between strangers to hear the 100000th lecture on how alcohol is bad...either that or the class would want to watch a movie that they spend the majority of the time not paying attention to anyway.

I did find solace in hanging around before and after classes (after mostly) in the hallways or open classrooms to get my homework done. That would be something I would recommend for your children (provided that it will be a safe environment from after-school punks and such)

Yes, but my last evaluation suspected ADD as well...

I have ADD. That's why I ended up with loads of homework everyday. But sometimes I question it.

I never did my homework. That got me a diagnosis of ADD and put in Special Education. They said I had a learning disability and put me with the retaeded kids. But, it was "Learning At Your Own Pace", so within weeks I was doing college algebra and chemistry in the 5th grade. They shut up about the homework after that. I would sleep through class and get an A on every test.

Then came High School. I didn't do homework. I couldn't force myself to do it. They had taken me off Ritalin over the summer, so I was a disorganized disaster. I would come home and hide under my bed because I knew if my parents saw me, the evening homework abuse would begin. It really never helped me get any homework done. It just made my life that much more of a living hell. Knowing I couldn't make myself do the homework was shocking and depressing to me. My parents' behavior just tore me down worse. I enlisted in the Army to get away early.

I had straight Ds when I left school, but my score on the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) was so high, the Army took me in at an elevated rank and offered me any job I wanted along with free college. I got kicked out within a year and went to a technical school that would take anyone who qualified for student loans. I'm a Telecommunications Engineer now, and my parents regularly appologize to me for all the hell they put me through. "If only we had known what was wrong with you..." Still, nobody really knows. The latest name for it is Aspergers.

I always did my homework but really, I didn't have much except for reading in 11th grade English - UGH that took forever! I never studied until a certain final exam in college.

i'm in college, and i still need nagging and prodding to do my homework!!

I've questioned the ADD ever since about HS, when I finally was able to learn enough about ADD to understand what it really is. Never considered myself to exactly be normal, but ADD wasn't it either.... BTW, I never did homework in HS. Never understood the point of it. Already knew the stuff. Tests would have been the same, except I did know the point of those was to see what I did know, not teach something new.

Eight + hours of school five times a week was always extremely difficult for me. It wasn't until I got into college and was able to come up with my own schedule that I excelled. I had the skills, just couldn't access them because of the eight or more hours having to shuffle around classes and deal with all those teachers and students (I had over two thousand students in my high school class). I never did any homework. Once I got home I just wanted to recoup from the ordeal I had been through all day. I guess it could be an Aspie thing.
The good news is, college might be easier for your son. When he gets to make his own schedule and can work in breaks between classes, his attitude toward studying and homework could improve.

My son (AS, almost 13) has always had homework issues as well. I can see that it's not merely an attitude thing in his case. I think it's mostly related to his AS and ADD.

The worst thing is that the teachers makes such a fuss if the homework isn't 100% complete. Nine year olds are given so much homework each day, that by the time they are finished, it's been a full, 8-hour day of work for them. And that's assuming the kid isn't encumbered with AS and/or ADD, and can just sit down and do the work without tears and ulcers. If they get worn out and only manage to complete 3/4 of the assignment, not only do they get in trouble, but the parents get endlessly badgered as well.

Every year, when I asked why they gave so much homework, the answer was, "To prepare them for next year, when they'll have even more."
To me, that's like cutting your finger off to prepare you for next year when you have to cut your hand off. If it was just a little bit, to help the kids learn some responsibility, that would be one thing. But it's endless and unrelenting.

I'm homeschooling him now, and he's free to learn about the things that interest him. It's fruitless and counterproductive to try to "make him" do assignments. It's too much stress, and it only teaches him to hate the idea of learning. It also made him feel like a failure, because he would get so stressed out at the idea of homework, that he could not do it even if he wanted to get it done.

I firmly believe that a child with AS should be exempt from homework if it's stressful for them. My son had chronic stomach aches all school year because of homework. He was too upset and stressed out to do any of it, because he knew he'd be in trouble for not doing it, but he couldn't concentrate on it to do it in the first place. It was awful.

By the way, if you are in the US, you can request that a no homework (or reduced homework) clause be put in his IEP. If they deny that, you are entitled by law to have them give you something called "Prior Written Notice", which means they have to give a written reason why they are refusing that. If they can't give a written, reasonable explanation why he absolutely needs to do homework in order to have his "Free, Appropriate Public Education", then they need to exempt him, if that's what you request. I'm throwing around the buzz words they use in the US, but it's probably similar in a lot of other places.

I never did my own homework. I never could. ADHD Sluggish Cognitive Tempo. My brain was just too slow to do one sheet of homework. I probably also preferred to watch TV or just forgot about it.
Recently, I've seen the importance of doing homework the night I get it and I get better grades.

Never ever did homework infact I got an "unclassified" in history because we had to do a 2000 word essay at home as part of the exam. We had 3 months to do it in but I refused to do it. At college I still refused homework and as at school our homework counted as part of our exam results. It was a carpentry apprenticeship course and at the end of 3 years for "practical" I got a grade one distinction and for the written exam I got another grade one distinction, The tutors could find no record of my homework to add to the exam result so gave me an average of my class work instead, They thought they had lost my records .