Consequences or not? Unfinished homework and ASD

[Janeway]

Thanks! :)

 

BTW, what did you and your dh decide about the right hand drive car? I hope you were able to talk some sense into him.

Right hand drive car?

[Storygirl]

I'm glad that he got it done. But I agree with others that it is clear he needs additional support with these kind of assignments. I have a neurotypical 15 year old who has needed significant guidance with homework this year (first year of high school, first year in brick-and-mortar school). I also have younger children with IEPs, who have accommodations for their assignments in their IEPs and often need my assistance with homework.

 

It does sound to me like anxiety plus rigid thinking from the ASD. I think it's best to learn from this situation, or it will happen again. I myself have anxiety and find it hard to tackle difficult projects; it's something people need help dealing with.

 

To be honest, he doesn't sound ready to do dual enrollment classes in the fall. I would seriously question whether he should proceed with that plan, unless he has help lined up from the college disability office.

[Catwoman]

Right hand drive car?

Sorry about that -- I guess you missed Regentrude's post where she reminded me that I was thinking of plain jane and not you, and my follow-up post apologizing to you for my mistake.

 

Sorry!

[Janeway]

I'm glad that he got it done. But I agree with others that it is clear he needs additional support with these kind of assignments. I have a neurotypical 15 year old who has needed significant guidance with homework this year (first year of high school, first year in brick-and-mortar school). I also have younger children with IEPs, who have accommodations for their assignments in their IEPs and often need my assistance with homework.

 

It does sound to me like anxiety plus rigid thinking from the ASD. I think it's best to learn from this situation, or it will happen again. I myself have anxiety and find it hard to tackle difficult projects; it's something people need help dealing with.

 

To be honest, he doesn't sound ready to do dual enrollment classes in the fall. I would seriously question whether he should proceed with that plan, unless he has help lined up from the college disability office.

We need to work on him communicating more. I ask him all the time and he never told me. 

[Catwoman]

We need to work on him communicating more. I ask him all the time and he never told me.

Can you get him into the habit of writing all of his school assignments in one place so you can help him keep track of things like due dates?

[Storygirl]

DD15 is really compliant, but she also has a bad habit of not telling us everything that she needs to do for schoolwork. We ask, and she will mention one or two things, and only later does she reveal that she actually has additional assignments that she didn't mention. It's frustrating. Keeping track of her assignments and managing her time (she has a very busy schedule) are skills she still needs to work on.

 

I think people develop these skills at different rates. But I think people need to have them in place before they take classes that will end up on their college transcript.

Edited February 27, 2017 by Storygirl

[TheReader]

We need to work on him communicating more. I ask him all the time and he never told me. 

 

You asked him if he  had homework, and he didn't mention, or you asked if he wanted/needed help, and he didn't say yes? 

 

If the former, I agree with the poster saying set up some kind of system; he writes everything down, you check the list, something. That's a pretty common teenager thing, learning to stay organized and on top of assignments, and realizing the need to acknowledge stuff when assigned vs. the day before it's due. Although, you say he had already done the research and the paper part, just not the Power Point...so he just kept that from you until the weekend? That's still pretty good....or at least, pretty typical of a lot of teens. 

 

Example for you, last week my perfectly neurotypical, newly 16 yr old sophomore had Spanish homework. She doesn't email the assignments to parents or post on-line, so I only know what he tells me. Class is on Tuesday afternoons. On Monday, my DH asked him, "Do you have any Spanish homework? anything you need help with?" Son answered, "I have some homework, but it's just online, I don't really need help." Okay, cool. Tuesday morning, roughly an hour before time to leave for class, Son comes down and asks what our plans are for the weekend. Turns out, he was supposed to write a paragraph, in Spanish, about how he was going to spend the weekend. Rather than make something up, or ask sooner, he stalled, finally asked, and had to rush to write enough sentences to satisfy the assignment. I was mildly perturbed, but hey, he got it done, that's what counts, right? Wrong. Get to class, and when class is over his teacher lets me know he still has one more paragraph that was also due, but many of the kids didn't turn it in so she told them they could email it that day, no later than midnight. Okay, now I'm annoyed and ask him about it. His answer? "Well, I thought I could get it done...I didn't know it would take that long to write the first one...." 

 

See, he didn't view his reply to us on Monday as a lie, because he honestly thought he could handle all the work on his own, in the time he had left. He didn't think he needed to list every.single.part. for us, because he felt he correctly answered us; no, there was none he needed help with. :sigh: Such are the workings of even a "normal" teenage brain....now I know to rephrase my question and ask, "What homework do you have for Spanish?" and push until I know he's shared all of it. And he knows to mention even the stuff he "doesn't need help with" just in case. You might need to set up a bit more of a system with your Aspie; my (not formally dx'ed) Aspie-ish kid uses an assignment notebook and a calendar on the computer to keep track of everything. Something like that might really help your son and you keep track of what's due, when. 

 

Now....if it was the latter, you're saying you asked if he wanted help, and he never said he did......mine does that, a lot. What I have found to be the case, for us, is that if I ask him "in passing" while I am busy with something else, he will say no. Period. No matter what. Because he doesn't want to interrupt me, doesn't want to impose, is picking up a vibe from me that I'd rather not actually help, realizes I'm busy so won't be able to drop everything right then anyway so why ask if it'll just get delayed, etc. If I want to actually find out, I have to go to where he is. Sit down. Give him my undivided attention and then ask, "how can I help you with this?" or "Is there anything I can do to help make this easier?" If he isn't yet actually in the process of working on the assignment, I have to be the one to say "How is your project going? How far have you gotten? When is it due? What else do you lack? Let's go take a look at it, and let's see if there's anything I can do to help speed things along..." 

 

I do it this way because I know, just as you knew without him asking, that he needs the help even if he won't ask for it. Yes, ideally, we'll reach a point where he does in fact ask. (he's improved a lot from when he was 15, and now will ask, incidentally; I think in large part because he has had so many positive experiences with us helping, he knows we won't laugh, sigh, be resentful, etc. but will simply help as needed). Yes, communication is a great and needed goal. But in the meantime, I can't withhold what he needs, just because he didn't ask for it. 

 

With my son, there was even a component of feeling like if we helped, he was cheating. If your son has rigid rule-following tendencies, talk with him a bit about that and make sure he understands it's not cheating for you to teach him how to use Power Point, help him download it, revise his slides or help him organize the thoughts from his paper into bullet points, etc., whatever the case might be next time. It took a semester at least of us helping coach him through papers (he did all the work, we were just sort of guidance and moral support) for him to really be comfortable with the situation. 

 

Sorry to write a novel, here, it just sounds so similar to what we face with our oldest.....I just want to encourage you, helping him will be worth it in the end. 

[luuknam]

BTDT (and I even procrastination clean sometimes).

 

I'm not sure what to do about the asking for help sooner (which he obviously needs to learn).

 

A big part of the problem (for me anyway) is that an assignment like that is this big mass of unknown stuff. By itself, downloading and installing PowerPoint is not a big deal. Playing around with it to learn how to use it isn't a big deal either. Nor is making a slide. But the combination of all those things, including multiple slides = overload. When caught early enough, just breaking it up in baby steps fixes the problem. But after waiting too long and anxiety going up, even just breaking it up into baby steps isn't going to do the trick. Oh, and for fun, sometimes I can come through last minute, and sometimes I just completely can't. I can't predict when I will or won't either. 

 

So, anyhow, part of a possible solution is to teach him to break projects up into baby steps when he gets them, and to even put in deadlines for each step. And if a baby step isn't getting done by the self-imposed deadline, to break it up into smaller steps and work on the first of those right away, or to ask for help right then and there. 

 

Aside from this, presentations were one of the worst things in PS. They gave us barely any instruction in how to do them, and it's really hard to do something if you don't have a clue how to do it. Personally, a community college public speaking class and doing Toastmasters for a while were quite helpful. Now, Toastmasters technically requires you to be 18, but in the Toastmasters group I was in there was a 15 or 16yo (with a speech impairment) who attended with his mom - not every group is going to allow that, but you could ask (of course, only if you can get your kid to voluntarily go - nobody wants a hostile teen there).  IIRC, the visual aids assignment is the 8th or 9th speech in the manual (and you can use any visual aid - doesn't have to be PP), but you can use visual aids (incl. PP) sooner if you want. They won't make you do a speech until you feel ready, and there's no schedule as to how often you have to give a speech - it's go at our own pace - but some clubs might have a busier roster than others, so there are some clubs where you'd have to sign up to give a speech a couple of months in advance, whereas at others you can sign up to give one next week as a matter of course. So, anyway, I'd strongly recommend you and your son go to one or two meetings just to check it out - different clubs have quite different atmospheres btw, so if you don't like one club, try another.