Question for Adults with ADHD

[Terabith]

I hate to suggest this and it may be a completely inappropriate suggestion, but what about a residential placement for Elliot at a school like Chaddock?  https://www.chaddock.org/residential-treatment  I have a good friend who was a worker there, and he said he saw a lot of miracles.  He also worked at a sister school for this place.  https://jri.org/services/educational-and-residential/residential/littleton

[wendyroo]

31 minutes ago, Terabith said:

I hate to suggest this and it may be a completely inappropriate suggestion, but what about a residential placement for Elliot at a school like Chaddock?  https://www.chaddock.org/residential-treatment  I have a good friend who was a worker there, and he said he saw a lot of miracles.  He also worked at a sister school for this place.  https://jri.org/services/educational-and-residential/residential/littleton

We have looked into many of those types of schools. They are incredibly expensive and hard to get into. Littleton, your second link, only has a capacity of 15 students. Our insurance will only cover 3 months of residential placement. Elliot currently also has Medicaid through a severe emotional disturbance waiver, but the waiver is contingence on him being treated in the home, and he would lose eligibility if we were to seek a residential placement.

Realistically, I think a private placement like that is out of reach. We have been advised that when the time comes that Elliot can no longer safely live at home, that we should start calling the police every time he is violent toward anyone...even if that is on an hourly basis some days. Eventually the police will get tired of the routine and will charge Elliot and take him before a judge. There will be a competency hearing, and if he passes, he will be put in a juvenile detention center.

Certainly not the ideal situation, but what it might come to.

[Not_a_Number]

6 hours ago, wendyroo said:

Actually, the outline he had to write was for his only outsourced class. So, yes, he was resisting my scaffolding, but it wasn't my assignment to start with.

And the only reasons I am scaffolding an outsourced class at all are because 1) he asked me to provide the same scaffolding for him that he saw me providing for his younger brothers...he seemed to think that would be the magic bullet that would make the assignment not seem like work, and I think the scaffolding would make it much easier for him, but only if he were to actually try it and 2) when he got too frustrated being allowed to refuse my help and handle the assignments on his own terms, he started turning in documents filled with curse words...which obviously did not go over well, so he lost the privilege of handling the class independently.

Right, I understand that this was for an outsourced class, but it was still doing it with you. At least in my house, doing things assigned by others when overseen by parents still leads to power struggles. 

Is this at all better with his Spanish tutor? Any little aspects at all, or is this simply a way in which your kids are different from mine? (I know the Spanish tutor probably doesn't have many demands, but I'd still watch the interaction and see if it's in any way better.) I'm sorry if I'm totally off... just seeing if I can spot anything that might help. 

 

7 hours ago, wendyroo said:

At the beginning of the year, he and I agreed that I would drastically cut academics (I estimate I assign 1-2 hours of work a day) and he would spend the rest of "school time" doing computer programming, Snap circuits, music, art, watching Spanish cartoons, pretty much any semi-educational, non-video-game, productive/interactive/engaged activity. That was 9 months ago. What has actually happened is that he lies, delays, avoids and lollygags to stretch that 1-2 hours of work out to fill the morning...and often into the afternoon and evening and weekend. He has spent no time on any of the activities that we brainstormed at the beginning of the year, no matter how much or how little I scaffold them.

OK, so that sounds pretty familiar, actually. I remember making all sorts of plans at the beginning of summer vacation about all the awesome things I was going to do, and really, what I did was go to bed late, sleep late, and not get around to any of the awesome projects I was planning to do. And this was the case in high school, too, when I was older and more mature than Peter. 

I would probably keep brainstorming with him to figure out what kind of scaffolding both doesn't trigger resistance behaviors and helps him. For my kids, having a posted schedule (including the "fun" activities) is really helpful, for example. Now, it sounds like that's not enough for Peter's level of inertia, but there might be SOMETHING that's enough. Maybe trying to experiment with that is worthwhile? Because I know that for us, both "not scaffolding" and "nagging" are ineffective, which is annoying, because those are the obvious things one can think of! 

I'm sorry your kids are so hard 😞 . It sounds like it would be at least halfway manageable if Peter was the most difficult one of the kids, but he's not, and the situation just stinks. If I were you, I'd feel desperate and be totally out of juice. 

[maize]

Is Peter usually cooperative with tutors?

Could you afford to hire a general academic tutor to work with him for some short period every day? The tutor could take over walking him through homework for other classes and whatever homeschool assignments he has. 

We've found several good tutors on Preply, with affordable rates. It's easy to do a few trial lessons with different people. 

Maybe someone like this:

https://preply.com/en/tutor/976682/

About the tutor

I teach students of ANY age (2y/o - 50+y/o). I handle Math for KIDS, Secondary Math, and Tertiary Math, TRIGONOMETRY, ALGEBRA, SAT, IB MATH AA, AI HL, and SL, GRE, GSCE, ACT, GED, and ICAS Math. Moreover. I provide lessons for Chemistry, Physics, and Biology too which may include computations.

I also offer English for BEGINNERS, Business and Conversational English up to English PROFICIENCY. I cover English Grammar, English Vocabulary, Comprehension, Pronunciation, Spelling, SAT Essay Writing, Academic Essay Writing, and Public Speaking Techniques.

My tutees describe me as an energetic and patient tutor. I always make sure to align the methodology I use based on the students' learning curves. So, don't hesitate to book a lesson with me and together let us exceed your goals. Remember, an Allan Paul a day; helps you ace your Math and English Essays.

 

 

I wonder if having a regular meeting with a tutor would help structure his day and set him up for success. He doesn't seem to be able to handle working independently; maybe having someone else provide all the executive function would help.

Right now he is failing at his own expectations and he can't change that. I think for his mental health any tool at all that would help him start succeeding would be worthwhile.

 

It sounds like you are doing the impossible just to get through every day. I think there is more than you can do here; more outside help may be necessary.

[goldenecho]

On 3/26/2021 at 3:10 PM, wendyroo said:

He refuses to ask for help, prefering to "avoid" work even when he knows it is going to come back to bite him, ie. He stared into space for an hour without writing one word on that outline because he didn't know where to start on his Lantern English assignment. I was checking in every 10 minutes to see if he had any questions, and every time he said no and deceived me by having an old outline up on the screen to make it look like he was working!! Even knowing he was digging himself further and further in a hole. 

 

This may not have been him avoiding work.   This may have been him working.   Not even joking. 

I didn't know I had ADD...but after we learned my son had it, looking into it, it fit that it did.   I've never been diagnosed but there's a strong possibility I have it.

I was an English major, and EVERY SINGLE PAPER I would sit and have to just stare at it for an hour before I could start.  I don't know what was so hard about it, about just starting was near impossible.   Once I had managed to start I could get through it reasonably quickly.   It would flow...one idea would flow into another, and I could do it.   But starting...dang, starting was SO HARD.   And I usually waited til the very last minute too...because I knew it was going to be hard and I hated feeling like that.  (But staring at the paper wasn't part of procrastinating...that was me trying to work, trying to get past that initial hurdle). 

There was ONE exception to this.   When I wrote stories it wasn't hard to start.   It was hard to stop.   I'd wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and have to write it down.   And there was TWO papers in college that were SO EASY and that weren't hard to start..   The first was a research "paper" about a Bible character.   At first, like always, I didn't even know how to start.   How do you even research that?  Then a thought hit me... "If I could just write a story about this character, this would be easy.   I could research what life was like in the place this person lived and use it in the story."    And I took a huge chance and turned in a piece of picture, fully cited and researched.   (Was scared I would fail but got an A).   When another professor gave the class the option to present another research paper "in whatever format they wanted...video, website, slide presentation, etc.) I jumped to do it again. 

Now, non-fiction writing is easier.   I can blog and write with such ease and focus that I WISH I had had in college.   But here's the thing...once I started writing conversationally online, it started coming naturally.   And once it became easier and I wasn't worried about format and such as much, it became not hard.  And when it was hard I could push through because I knew I could do it.

Anyways, my son had trouble starting too.   These things really helped...

1.   Talking it out...it was easier for him to talk out ideas and I would help him organize them.  (But then, my child is very socially motivated...and dyslexic too so talking it out is pretty much a necessity). 

2.   Not starting at the beginning...sometimes that first paragraph is so hard.  Thesis statements are scary.   They are supposed to capture/summarize the main gist of your paper, which sort of felt like I had to figure out everything before even starting.   When I started with "lets figure out the thesis" like many paper outlines suggested, he was banging his head against the wall within minutes.   In stead we focused on 3 topics related to a theme and wrote those topic paragraphs first and then went back and wrote our first paragraph and thesis after that. 

3.   Set a timer.   Once he starts he only has to work on it for that long.   (That helped my son too).   We did one essay as a series of quick writes.   He was used to doing timed quick writes.   So after planning out what topics we would cover, I would say...write as much as you can in eight minutes on this topic.  I would only start the timer once he wrote his first word.  We'd sometimes wait 10 minutes for that first word. 

And in general, I suggest DO make it easier if you can.   Because once he experiences writing being easy, he won't be afraid of it.  When you've never experienced something be anything but difficult it's really hard to make yourself start.  Once you experience something become easy...there's less of a wall to break though to do it. 

I still have walls.   Right now my wall is TAXES.   UG. 
 

[goldenecho]

PS.   My son went from having no interests that were worth expending energy on (he seemed interested in lots of things until it was actually time to do them and then didn't want to) to having SO MANY INTERESTS and wanting to do so many things.  This happened around age 10, and went along with some successes and gaining some confidence.  Maybe your son will hit that eventually.

I'm hoping my older son will.   He does  NOT have ADHD.  He's pretty much opposite of an ADHD kid.   He will do things just because he's supposed to and work hard at them and remember to finish them without reminders and even stress over doing them well, but he doesn't actually care about or enjoy any of the things themselves much (he just likes doing well...grades are so motivating to him).   He's 16 and I worry like crazy about him.   (He does actually like two things...books and video games.   Used to be books, video games, and legos...so sad to have lost one of those and not found a replacement).

My third drove me crazy cause he wanted to do a different thing every 5 minutes, but now he's settled into a few things he loves and does on his own so at least I have one I don't have to worry about.  Whew. 

Edited March 30, 2021 by goldenecho
grammar

[fairfarmhand]

5 hours ago, goldenecho said:

2.   Not starting at the beginning...sometimes that first paragraph is so hard.  Thesis statements are scary.   They are supposed to capture/summarize the main gist of your paper, which sort of felt like I had to figure out everything before even starting.   When I started with "lets figure out the thesis" like many paper outlines suggested, he was banging his head against the wall within minutes.   In stead we focused on 3 topics related to a theme and wrote those topic paragraphs first and then went back and wrote our first paragraph and thesis after that. 




 

I'm a professional writer and I do this. 

Middles are easy. Beginnings are hard.

[Not_a_Number]

15 minutes ago, fairfarmhand said:

I'm a professional writer and I do this. 

Middles are easy. Beginnings are hard.

I’m not a professional writer but I’m a good writer and I’m a professional translator. And I do this, too.

[SKL]

One of mine (age 14) has a lot of trouble starting.  I can totally relate to this.  I help her get started by verbally discussing points and structure and basically how to get started, very specifically.  Then things don't seem so hard.

But avoidance is pretty common here.  I do it too.  Actually I'm really bad about it, and I'm 54yo.  As much as I plan to do better day by day, the only thing that really works for me is a hard deadline with serious consequences.

[wendyroo]

Quote

1.   Talking it out...it was easier for him to talk out ideas and I would help him organize them.  (But then, my child is very socially motivated...and dyslexic too so talking it out is pretty much a necessity). 

We do this a lot, but DS is quite resistant. More than being resistant to writing, I think he is resistant to organizing (and then explaining) his thinking. He resists brainstorming in any form, even if I offer to scribe for him. I find that if I push him to talk out his ideas, I quickly end up doing more and more of the work until I have organized my ideas: "You decided to write a descriptive paragraph about the lizard tank, so what is one detail you want to include?"...[silence]...[more silence]...[I've gone and put in a load of laundry and still silence]..."Are you going to mention the plants?"..."okay"..."What is one word you can use to describe them?"...[silence]. And so on and so forth.

Quote

2.   Not starting at the beginning...sometimes that first paragraph is so hard.  Thesis statements are scary.   They are supposed to capture/summarize the main gist of your paper, which sort of felt like I had to figure out everything before even starting.   When I started with "lets figure out the thesis" like many paper outlines suggested, he was banging his head against the wall within minutes.   In stead we focused on 3 topics related to a theme and wrote those topic paragraphs first and then went back and wrote our first paragraph and thesis after that. 

We NEVER start at the beginning. But, the actual writing phase is almost never the problem; DS is quite good at moving from an outline to written prose. It is brainstorming and then turning that into an outline that just about kills us. Once he has the outline done, then I typically have him write topic sentences for the detail paragraphs, then a thesis to make sure all the detail paragraphs support the correct thing, then he can either finish his intro paragraph or finish his detail paragraphs, then lastly write his conclusion. But, that is the easy part for him.

Quote

3.   Set a timer.   Once he starts he only has to work on it for that long.   (That helped my son too).   We did one essay as a series of quick writes.   He was used to doing timed quick writes.   So after planning out what topics we would cover, I would say...write as much as you can in eight minutes on this topic.  I would only start the timer once he wrote his first word.  We'd sometimes wait 10 minutes for that first word. 

The waiting is the part that frustrates me. If all he is supposed to be doing is brainstorming, if seems so pointless to wait for 30, 40, 60 minutes before he writes down anything. It's brainstorming - there are no wrong answers - just write something!

Quote

And in general, I suggest DO make it easier if you can.   Because once he experiences writing being easy, he won't be afraid of it.  When you've never experienced something be anything but difficult it's really hard to make yourself start.  Once you experience something become easy...there's less of a wall to break though to do it. 

I guess I don't know how to make it any easier or provide any more scaffolding. We did a unit on writing short answers to questions and he was really good at them - I think because he didn't have to really organize his thinking or ideas in such a short format. But as soon as we move to even a paragraph, he struggles to organize what he is going to say. He ends up with well written, grammatically correct, beautifully structured paragraphs that don't really say anything because he hasn't taken the time to think about his ideas. He had to write a five paragraph essay for his Lantern English assignment about a hobby he likes, and he managed to write 25 sentences that all more or less said that he liked screens because he liked them.

I find it much harder to scaffold the idea generation...without just doing it for him, which obviously is a giving a man a fish/teaching a man to fish situation. I know that he has TONS of ideas, but the particular skill he needs to work on is generating ideas related to a given topic. And I assume that his brain wiring is going to make that difficult, but it is such a foundational skill that we need to keep working on it.

[Not_a_Number]

3 minutes ago, wendyroo said:

We do this a lot, but DS is quite resistant. More than being resistant to writing, I think he is resistant to organizing (and then explaining) his thinking. He resists brainstorming in any form, even if I offer to scribe for him. I find that if I push him to talk out his ideas, I quickly end up doing more and more of the work until I have organized my ideas: "You decided to write a descriptive paragraph about the lizard tank, so what is one detail you want to include?"...[silence]...[more silence]...[I've gone and put in a load of laundry and still silence]..."Are you going to mention the plants?"..."okay"..."What is one word you can use to describe them?"...[silence]. And so on and so forth.

Since I do so much “talking out” with my kids, this is an area where I’ve found structured expectations really useful. I think my kids aren’t like yours in this regard, but they still seem to find surprising elements of brainstorming, like THINKING about the question, totally unintuitive. So I’ve been finding it helpful to actually explain to them what useful engagement looks like. 

I don’t know what this would look like in your family, but it might be worth working on.

[Porridge]

On 3/26/2021 at 9:42 PM, Shoes+Ships+SealingWax said:

 

We’re adding ADHD-specific tasks to our homeschool days once we return from spring break. Workbooks & several activities / games to target specific behaviors (blurting, getting off-topic, becoming physical when angry). I don’t know what will help, honestly -  we just toss things at the various problems to see what sticks. 

Could you share more about the workbook and activities you plan to try?

[Terabith]

2 hours ago, wendyroo said:

I guess I don't know how to make it any easier or provide any more scaffolding. We did a unit on writing short answers to questions and he was really good at them - I think because he didn't have to really organize his thinking or ideas in such a short format. But as soon as we move to even a paragraph, he struggles to organize what he is going to say. He ends up with well written, grammatically correct, beautifully structured paragraphs that don't really say anything because he hasn't taken the time to think about his ideas. He had to write a five paragraph essay for his Lantern English assignment about a hobby he likes, and he managed to write 25 sentences that all more or less said that he liked screens because he liked them.

I find it much harder to scaffold the idea generation...without just doing it for him, which obviously is a giving a man a fish/teaching a man to fish situation. I know that he has TONS of ideas, but the particular skill he needs to work on is generating ideas related to a given topic. And I assume that his brain wiring is going to make that difficult, but it is such a foundational skill that we need to keep working on it.

It makes sense to me that he would have a hard time writing about a hobby if he doesn't actually have anything that he enjoys enough to actually do them.  That seems like a topic that would make sense for a lot of kids but that must be particularly frustrating for him, especially if he's NEVER had anything that interested him or that he wanted to do or that he was passionate about.  

[Drama Llama]

2 hours ago, wendyroo said:

We do this a lot, but DS is quite resistant. More than being resistant to writing, I think he is resistant to organizing (and then explaining) his thinking. He resists brainstorming in any form, even if I offer to scribe for him. I find that if I push him to talk out his ideas, I quickly end up doing more and more of the work until I have organized my ideas: "You decided to write a descriptive paragraph about the lizard tank, so what is one detail you want to include?"...[silence]...[more silence]...[I've gone and put in a load of laundry and still silence]..."Are you going to mention the plants?"..."okay"..."What is one word you can use to describe them?"...[silence]. And so on and so forth.

We NEVER start at the beginning. But, the actual writing phase is almost never the problem; DS is quite good at moving from an outline to written prose. It is brainstorming and then turning that into an outline that just about kills us. Once he has the outline done, then I typically have him write topic sentences for the detail paragraphs, then a thesis to make sure all the detail paragraphs support the correct thing, then he can either finish his intro paragraph or finish his detail paragraphs, then lastly write his conclusion. But, that is the easy part for him.

The waiting is the part that frustrates me. If all he is supposed to be doing is brainstorming, if seems so pointless to wait for 30, 40, 60 minutes before he writes down anything. It's brainstorming - there are no wrong answers - just write something!

I guess I don't know how to make it any easier or provide any more scaffolding. We did a unit on writing short answers to questions and he was really good at them - I think because he didn't have to really organize his thinking or ideas in such a short format. But as soon as we move to even a paragraph, he struggles to organize what he is going to say. He ends up with well written, grammatically correct, beautifully structured paragraphs that don't really say anything because he hasn't taken the time to think about his ideas. He had to write a five paragraph essay for his Lantern English assignment about a hobby he likes, and he managed to write 25 sentences that all more or less said that he liked screens because he liked them.

I find it much harder to scaffold the idea generation...without just doing it for him, which obviously is a giving a man a fish/teaching a man to fish situation. I know that he has TONS of ideas, but the particular skill he needs to work on is generating ideas related to a given topic. And I assume that his brain wiring is going to make that difficult, but it is such a foundational skill that we need to keep working on it.

I wonder if you could work on idea generation/brainstorming separate from writing things that will be turned into final drafts.  I think that a lot of kids have anxiety about putting things on paper that they know are going to be critiqued or edited.  We say there are no wrong answers, but then we go through and pick and choose the "best" ones, or tell the kids that these two (or 25) things mean the same thing, and they have to pick just one.  

So, maybe do some free brainstorming, on slightly ridiculous topics (animals that would make terrible pets, things that are smaller than a blue whale, jobs I'm glad I don't have), and focusing on filling up the paper, and then put the paper aside, or hang it on the fridge for people to keep adding to over time? 

I also wonder about other models of teaching writing besides brainstorm-outline-draft-revise-edit.  I consider myself a decent writer.  I've never made an outline in my life, except when I was in elementary school and had a teacher who required it for 5th and 6th grade.  In that case, I wrote the paper, and then outlined it, turned in the outline, waited a week and then turned in the paper (that I had written a week earlier), because the other way just didn't work for me.  

[Not_a_Number]

7 minutes ago, BaseballandHockey said:

I also wonder about other models of teaching writing besides brainstorm-outline-draft-revise-edit.  I consider myself a decent writer.  I've never made an outline in my life, except when I was in elementary school and had a teacher who required it for 5th and 6th grade.  In that case, I wrote the paper, and then outlined it, turned in the outline, waited a week and then turned in the paper (that I had written a week earlier), because the other way just didn't work for me.  

I don’t always write outlines, but I do sketch things out in my head. Do you not?

[Drama Llama]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

I don’t always write outlines, but I do sketch things out in my head. Do you not?

Sometimes, sometimes I jump in, get my ideas down on paper, in long form, and then start again, and my second draft is more organized.  

I also often write my conclusion first.  Knowing where I want to end is helpful.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

1 hour ago, WTM said:

Could you share more about the workbook and activities you plan to try?

Sure! We have just begun using Thriving with ADHD which starts off discussing what ADHD is, then moves on to identifying strengths & weaknesses, managing emotions, focusing / maintaining attention, impulse control, creating habits & routines, tackling interpersonal issues, & functional goal setting / long-term planning. 

The other two books I purchased, Growth Mindset & Mindfulness for Kids, have a similar structure with a bit more focus on reframing situations, positive self-talk, building frustration tolerance, & managing emotions. 

[Not_a_Number]

7 minutes ago, BaseballandHockey said:

Sometimes, sometimes I jump in, get my ideas down on paper, in long form, and then start again, and my second draft is more organized.  

I also often write my conclusion first.  Knowing where I want to end is helpful.

Yeah, I do that too sometimes. So then my first draft is kind of a form of brainstorming.

I tend to think the ability to organize and analyze one’s thoughts are the most important thing about writing, as opposed the mechanics. But I think an outline can aid that process for some people. 

[Little Green Leaves]

I think it's pretty common to have trouble with the brainstorming / outlining process. I used to tutor adults who were taking remedial English courses, and this was a common issue for them. No matter what techniques we worked with, the planning stage was tricky. I think a lot of people find it quite painful to examine their own ideas, breaking them down into manageable pieces and fitting them into an outline.

Sometimes my students found it easier (kind of like what @BaseballandHockeydescribed) to just free-write about the essay topic. Sometimes I'd set a timer and have them just write while I sat next to them, because certain students found that calming.  Once they had SOMETHING down on the paper, they could cannibalize it to create an outline, and then it was easier to create a second draft.

 

 

[PeterPan]

6 hours ago, wendyroo said:

We did a unit on writing short answers to questions and he was really good at them - I think because he didn't have to really organize his thinking or ideas in such a short format. But as soon as we move to even a paragraph, he struggles to organize what he is going to say. He ends up with well written, grammatically correct, beautifully structured paragraphs that don't really say anything because he hasn't taken the time to think about his ideas. He had to write a five paragraph essay for his Lantern English assignment about a hobby he likes, and he managed to write 25 sentences that all more or less said that he liked screens because he liked them.

Those are narrative language issues showing up in his expository writing. 

 

 

[fairfarmhand]

This is kind of out there, and seems really small, but is he writing on paper, screen or what?

My son does so much better writing on a whiteboard. Because if there's a mistake...poof. It's gone. No pressure to have it just so. So planning and outlining on a whiteboard and then actual writing?

[wendyroo]

8 minutes ago, fairfarmhand said:

This is kind of out there, and seems really small, but is he writing on paper, screen or what?

My son does so much better writing on a whiteboard. Because if there's a mistake...poof. It's gone. No pressure to have it just so. So planning and outlining on a whiteboard and then actual writing?

I have tried so many things.

DS certainly doesn't have to brainstorm and outline if he doesn't want to, but trying to "just write" leads to complete paralysis and avoidance. So, in an effort to scaffold the writing, I started having him brainstorm and outline.

We tried brainstorming on paper, but then he had to either cut up and rearrange the paper to outline or rewrite everything...both unappealing options. Brainstorming on a whiteboard led to him making an outline with an army of arrows that he couldn't follow. So, currently, he normally brainstorms on a mind mapping site that offers an outline-esque format. He brainstorms in a more free-form, bubbly format, and then groups similar ideas and switches to outline format which adds hierarchy to the mind map. At that point he can just drag and drop ideas where they fit.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

9 hours ago, wendyroo said:

I know that he has TONS of ideas, but the particular skill he needs to work on is generating ideas related to a given topic.

Seconding @BaseballandHockey’s recommendation. Could you spend time focusing on ONLY idea generation for language arts? Hand him a topic & generate a list of words / ideas related to that topic? 

Or hand him exactly what to write about, & have him fill in outlines based on that? 

I don’t know what LA you’ve tried in the past, but IEW methods focus a lot on overcoming the “blankly staring at the page” issue & do a ton of list-generation.  Their Key Word Outlines could literally be scaffolded to the extent of pointing at every word of a sentence & him nodding “yes” or shaking his head “no” until done. 

The program as a whole might not be a good fit, but those bits & pieces could prove useful. 

Edited March 31, 2021 by Shoes+Ships+SealingWax

[goldenecho]

9 hours ago, wendyroo said:

The waiting is the part that frustrates me. If all he is supposed to be doing is brainstorming, if seems so pointless to wait for 30, 40, 60 minutes before he writes down anything. It's brainstorming - there are no wrong answers - just write something!

I guess I don't know how to make it any easier or provide any more scaffolding. We did a unit on writing short answers to questions and he was really good at them - I think because he didn't have to really organize his thinking or ideas in such a short format. But as soon as we move to even a paragraph, he struggles to organize what he is going to say. He ends up with well written, grammatically correct, beautifully structured paragraphs that don't really say anything because he hasn't taken the time to think about his ideas. He had to write a five paragraph essay for his Lantern English assignment about a hobby he likes, and he managed to write 25 sentences that all more or less said that he liked screens because he liked them.

 

Yeah.   I get it.  I'm still figuring this out some myself.  I wish I could have been more help.   Those were all the tricks that helped me.

I guess I'm just ok with sort of organizing his thoughts for him right now.   If figure if we do this together enough, he will learn by example.   My middle kiddo (not my one with ADHD), he just had to watch things a gazillion times before he felt comfortable doing them himself, and then when he finally decided he could do it himself would do it flawlessly.   I'm hoping maybe this guided practice will help him more when he has to do it without guides.  Even the times where it was basically me organizing it, at least he was there watching how that works. 

Right now, at least mine will talk it out.  It's frustrating when they just won't give you anything. 

You might try subterfuge.   Not even kidding.   You could do prewriting without telling him it was for any longer paper.  Don't call it prewriting.  Just say "Hey, I want you to think of as many random statesments as you can related to X.   Put each on a separate card.  (Or, reasons I like X.   Or reasons people shoud to X.   Or reasons I hate X)."   Then, next day, have him organize them into group by which statements sort of fit under one topic, and write those topics down on another card and paperclip each group of things that go with that topic.    Scattered things that don't seem to go together get their own group.  Then, next day, say..."guess what, you just organized the prewriting for a paper.   We organized ideas into groups, and got rid of random ideas that didn't seem to go together.   Now we can use this to write a paper."

I have not tried this...but I think I might!   Just brainstorming sneaky ways to teach pre-writing. 

 

Edited March 31, 2021 by goldenecho

[kbutton]

On 3/30/2021 at 12:25 PM, wendyroo said:

He ends up with well written, grammatically correct, beautifully structured paragraphs that don't really say anything because he hasn't taken the time to think about his ideas. He had to write a five paragraph essay for his Lantern English assignment about a hobby he likes, and he managed to write 25 sentences that all more or less said that he liked screens because he liked them.

I find it much harder to scaffold the idea generation...without just doing it for him, which obviously is a giving a man a fish/teaching a man to fish situation. I know that he has TONS of ideas, but the particular skill he needs to work on is generating ideas related to a given topic. And I assume that his brain wiring is going to make that difficult, but it is such a foundational skill that we need to keep working on it.

The bolded are a language issue.

On 3/30/2021 at 6:32 PM, PeterPan said:

Those are narrative language issues showing up in his expository writing. 

Bingo! I wouldn't have guessed it since you've said a lot of what he produces is good, but it definitely shows up in the previous quote.

Knowing what to include or not include, etc. is all part of the language deficit.

Language issues with 2e autistic kids can be narrower than an imaginary line but deep enough you have to dig halfway to China to fix it. Seriously.

We used Mindwing Concepts materials, but someone other than me did it. I get the gist, but I can't break it down to that level of granularity. My 2e son (ASD, ADHD), at 13-14, had to go all the way back to fairy tales, and I had to order the Making Connections autism book so that he could have a lightning bolt of intuition about some picayune thing that made all the difference, lol! Then, he had to rebuild it all with that new understanding. Thankfully once it was fixed, his progress increased exponentially. He was doing preschool work that by all outward signs had appeared to be fine for him but were not. His critical thinking and problem-solving skills were stellar as long as they never involved language, lol! With the information you gave about putting keys in outlets, I think maybe he has major issues with critical thinking and problem-solving across the board or at least with seeing cause/effect, inferencing how that goes.

I think it's also quite likely that ASD1 is not quite the right support level.

I am sorry it's so difficult. I wish I had good suggestions, but, like PeterPan, I really do think this part is language.

 

[wendyroo]

29 minutes ago, kbutton said:

I wouldn't have guessed it since you've said a lot of what he produces is good, but it definitely shows up in the previous quote.

The essay that follows is what he can produce when he is forced through the writing process. This was a Lantern English assignment that he lied about and avoided until the afternoon before it was due (I know, not incredibly unusual even for neurotypical kids his age). By that point, I had sat with him for hours and hours and hours, broken into 10-60 minute chunks, all week trying to get him to brainstorm or doodle or discuss or outline or write or engage in any way. He just sat there or said he was thinking or outright lied or cried about how he couldn't do it.

Finally I told him he would be doing nothing else - not playing or eating or reading or going to bed - until it was done. I didn't even particularly care what he produced (as long as he didn't resort to cursing again) - he just needed to get something on the paper. He needed to find a way to get past the avoidance...and if he got a bad grade, we would treat it as a reminder that life goes on, call that his rough draft and work to polish it from there.

I felt somewhat like a jailor, sitting next to him, reading a book to myself, not making eye contact or engaging beyond prompting him to "keep working" in a no-nonsense, "there will be consequences" voice anytime he stopped. When he had a large mind map, I told him to make it into an outline. When he had an outline, I told him to write his paper (I gave him no further instruction on how to do that). When that was done, I told him to read it out loud to himself and edit and revise. From start to finish the whole thing took 45 minutes.

I don't know. I think it is fine for his age - pretty formulaic, but with proficient transitions and touches of burgeoning style. I don't think the writing is the problem...I'm also not convinced language is a major part of the problem, because he can brainstorm and outline and write when his feet are held to the fire and the stakes are high. He will just fight doing those things tooth and nail, while acknowledging at times of non-conflict that not doing them leads to paralysis and crap results, both of which he doesn't like. I think the task initiation/focus/sustained effort/self-motivation are the issues. And I think I need to find a way to foster those skills separately from academics. Because if I simplify assignments to the point that he can succeed at independently initiating and sustaining effort, then they are academically trivial for him and not growing his skills. He is asynchronous, as in all things. He is ready to write longer essays, experiment with different writing forms, work on adding citations, etc...that is his composition zone of proximal development...but his zone of proximal development for task initiation is at the paragraph level. And he needs both writing skills and task initiation skills to be a productive, responsible, independent person.

Assignment: Write a five-paragraph essay using specific examples to state whom you admire and why you admire this person.  (They gave more detailed instructions and expectations, but this was the gist of it.)

His essay, exactly as he wrote it:
My Role Model
    Can you believe that my role model has been the number 1 chess player in the world since 2013, won 4 world championships, and achieved the rank of Grand Master at the age of 13? The one person who fits all of these requirements is Magnus Carlsen. He is my role model because he is a world champion chess player, Famous Grand Master, and has only been beaten by a highly advanced computer once.
    The first reason that Magnus Carlsen is my role model is that he is a world champion. He has beaten all other chess players at least once if he has played them at all. He has a chess rating of 2,872, making him the highest rated player in the world. He has also won four world championships. Magnus Carlsen is an amazing chess player.
    Carlsen is much more than just a tournament winner. He is also a famous Grand Master. He became a Grand Master in 2004 and has been ever since. He was born in 1991, meaning that he was only thirteen years old, only about a year older than me, when he became a Grand Master! To become a Grand Master you need a rating of 2,500, and I am only at about 1,500! Magnus Carlsen’s skill is immense even though he is only thirty years old.
    Magnus Carlsen’s skill against humans may seem extraordinary, but what is even more impressive is that he is better than a super advanced computer. In a six-game tournament against the computer Deep Blue, he only lost one time and drew twice for a score of 4-2 in his favor. Deep Blue was the most advanced chess computer of the time. Magnus Carlsen seems almost impossible to beat.
    Because he is a world champion chess player, ultimate Grand Master and better than even the best of chess computers, Magnus Carlsen is my role model. I really want to be as good of a chess player as Magnus Carlsen. He has been my role model ever since I heard of him and will be until I get as good as he is. Until then though, I will just keep practicing. Checkmate!

[kbutton]

10 hours ago, wendyroo said:

I don't know. I think it is fine for his age - pretty formulaic, but with proficient transitions and touches of burgeoning style. I don't think the writing is the problem...I'm also not convinced language is a major part of the problem, because he can brainstorm and outline and write when his feet are held to the fire and the stakes are high. He will just fight doing those things tooth and nail, while acknowledging at times of non-conflict that not doing them leads to paralysis and crap results, both of which he doesn't like. I think the task initiation/focus/sustained effort/self-motivation are the issues. And I think I need to find a way to foster those skills separately from academics.

It is formulaic, but it has style and is decent writing. It's a little circular. The writing that demonstrates concern is the 25 sentences saying he likes screens because he likes them, which also sounds circular. I really think there could be some very miniscule but persistently difficult language task that is causing issues with his writing. In the role model piece, he doesn't really explain what makes this person a role model except that they are good at chess. With some critical thinking work, he could add personal qualities about his role model to the essay or tie the facts he has to personal qualities that make him a good role model. This is essay is more like "I like chess, so I want to write about a chess player for my role model essay" than "I thought about what makes a good role model and then demonstrated that this amazing chess player is a good role model because he possesses those characteristics." Critical thinking helps with that. I haven't seen a prompt or instructions for the essay, so some of this might the fault of the prompt. A good prompt will give kids a sort of problem to solve even if the essay doesn't seem like a problem/solution type of essay. Absent that kind of prompt, the writer has to figure out what "problem" they are solving when they write--this involves thinking about what the reader wants to know or might want to know that fits in the format of the type of essay assigned. This is really difficult for kids with autism (and plenty of NT kids too).

https://www.ncshla.org/sites/default/files/springCon/2016/Session-19.pdf  This presentation might ring some bells. You might have to print it to see some of the smaller details. It shows how expository writing flows from narrative writing, and it contains graphic organizers that demonstrate how critical thinking is used to elicit information for essays.

The presentation also breaks down the parts and pieces of language as six overall strands with webs of skills in each strand. I think my son had only a couple of glitches in one or two webs, and it was enough to stop his writing (and overall language development) for years.

I think that working on the task skills in isolation is a good idea. I think he likely has problems with those skills as well. We had the massive kinds of pressure situations you are talking about with many subjects. It's not unusual for kids on the spectrum to do better (in some ways) under (some kinds) of pressure if you can get them in a situation where they feel like what they have to do is not nearly as bad as what will happen if they don't. I never realized how closely this problem was tied to my son's language development until working on language helped this problem tremendously. I truly have no explanation for it, but it was the lynchpin that shifted things for him. In my son's case, he only had issues with initiation in areas where he felt like a fish out of water, so YMMV. 

So, what are his language issues associated with autism? It's a given that he has some language issues if he has an ASD diagnosis. Has anyone quantified what they are? I would argue that most literature on ASD kids and language doesn't get very specific about 2e kids. It's frustrating. 

 

[wendyroo]

11 hours ago, kbutton said:

So, what are his language issues associated with autism? It's a given that he has some language issues if he has an ASD diagnosis. Has anyone quantified what they are? I would argue that most literature on ASD kids and language doesn't get very specific about 2e kids. It's frustrating. 

When he was diagnosed, the psychiatrist felt DS had no language involvement. She said that if she had been making the diagnosis even a year earlier, she would have called it Asperger's - which she said largely meant autism without language issues. But by the time DS was diagnosed (2014, at almost 6 years old), Asperger's had just been dropped from the DSM.

OTOH, DS, like all of my children, started life with a severe speech (articulation) delay. At 18 months when Early Intervention came to test his speech, he was saying no words, no consonant sounds, no babbling, no signing, no waving, no clapping.  His receptive language and vocabulary tested at 5 years (and that was clearly not an accurate reflection of his abilities because he was still cruising through the test when they hit the upper limit), but his expressive language tested at 6-9 months...and he was not frustrated by this fact, but rather oblivious and uninterested in the whole concept of communication.

But by the time he was evaluated for autism, he had graduated from 4 years of speech therapy and his articulation was largely age appropriate. It was noted that he had a flat affect and trouble with prosody, but that was it. He was given an ASD1 diagnosis, and in most ways I think that is spot on. I've seen ASD1 described as: the child 1) has difficulty initiating social interactions and 2) organization and planning problems can hamper independence. For #1, DS is certainly awkward, naïve and unrealistic in social interactions, and #2 described DS to a tee. They describe ASD2 as 1) social interactions limited to narrow special interests and 2) frequent restricted/repetitive behaviors. Neither of those describe DS well...he is more quirkily outgoingly with huge executive function weaknesses. I don't know what it would look like if he were in full-day school, but he is able to adapt well and succeed in a variety of in-person and virtual classroom situations. I would be surprised if any of his teachers haven't guessed at an ASD diagnosis, but the only accommodation DS seems to need is a bit of explicit guidance on classroom etiquette - when he is interrupting too much, when he is off topic, when it is okay to chat with his neighbor, etc. But none of those classes are academic, so most of his weaknesses don't come into play.

When DS was 9, I was becoming more and more concerned with his narrative and pragmatic language skills. I still had connections at the speech therapy center (because all three of my other children were still receiving articulation therapy), so they agreed to work with DS for a semester. Every single language evaluation they did with DS came back between normal and far above normal. He is a high IQ master pattern matcher, so he easily compensated for his weaknesses. I brought them videos of him stuttering, backtracking, cutting himself off and lapsing into silence for 20-30 seconds at a time when trying to answer a question like "What was Charlotte's plan to save Wilbur?" or even "How did you celebrate your birthday yesterday?"  He knew the information - he knew too much information - and just could not prune it, organize it and string it into sentences that would make sense to a non-omniscient listener. But the tests could not pinpoint any issues, so after a semester they graduated him again.

Since then I have just been flying by the seat of my pants. I keep trying to move him along all the axes of development. So I work with him on the aspects of writing that he can do, while also working with him on the major foundational skills of logical thought that are hindering his writing. I work with him on high-level math and Spanish and science, while also working with him on very basic initiation and executive function skills which are hindering him in all aspects of his life. I keep introducing and having him practice age-appropriate hygiene, self-help, safety and life skills, while accepting that right now he has the impulse control of a preschooler, and that "setting him up for success" means highly structuring his environment to keep him safe and allow him to socially, emotionally, and academically thrive until he matures and develops more self-control and the ability to regulate himself.

[MomN]

On 3/31/2021 at 10:36 PM, wendyroo said:

Assignment: Write a five-paragraph essay using specific examples to state whom you admire and why you admire this person.  (They gave more detailed instructions and expectations, but this was the gist of it.)

His essay, exactly as he wrote it:
My Role Model
    Can you believe that my role model has been the number 1 chess player in the world since 2013, won 4 world championships, and achieved the rank of Grand Master at the age of 13? The one person who fits all of these requirements is Magnus Carlsen. He is my role model because he is a world champion chess player, Famous Grand Master, and has only been beaten by a highly advanced computer once.
    The first reason that Magnus Carlsen is my role model is that he is a world champion. He has beaten all other chess players at least once if he has played them at all. He has a chess rating of 2,872, making him the highest rated player in the world. He has also won four world championships. Magnus Carlsen is an amazing chess player.
    Carlsen is much more than just a tournament winner. He is also a famous Grand Master. He became a Grand Master in 2004 and has been ever since. He was born in 1991, meaning that he was only thirteen years old, only about a year older than me, when he became a Grand Master! To become a Grand Master you need a rating of 2,500, and I am only at about 1,500! Magnus Carlsen’s skill is immense even though he is only thirty years old.
    Magnus Carlsen’s skill against humans may seem extraordinary, but what is even more impressive is that he is better than a super advanced computer. In a six-game tournament against the computer Deep Blue, he only lost one time and drew twice for a score of 4-2 in his favor. Deep Blue was the most advanced chess computer of the time. Magnus Carlsen seems almost impossible to beat.
    Because he is a world champion chess player, ultimate Grand Master and better than even the best of chess computers, Magnus Carlsen is my role model. I really want to be as good of a chess player as Magnus Carlsen. He has been my role model ever since I heard of him and will be until I get as good as he is. Until then though, I will just keep practicing. Checkmate!

I've seen lots of five paragraph essays written by middle schoolers, and I personally think this one is fabulous.  It checks off all the boxes that I would look for - I especially like his strong topic sentences.  The grammar is better than just about any junior higher I've worked with, and it reads really nice.  

I didn't read every comment here, but in terms of brainstorming and outlines, I find that they are not helpful tools for every student.  I personally hate brainstorming.  I never use outlines.  Writing an essay would always take me 3 to 4 times what it might take another student.

[shinyhappypeople]

Forgive me if some of this has already been  mentioned, but I don't have time to read the whole thread right now.  I have ADHD and started medication last fall.

Right now given his age and diagnosis it's not realistic to expect him to work independently.  He's showing you he is literally unable to do it.  Maybe pare things down to the most essential subjects and then break those down into small steps. Stretch a day's work over a week if he needs it.  Slow progress is still progress. 

Things that have helped me (in addition to medication):

Body doubling, breaking things down into itty bitty steps, and no distractions or interruptions.

Lemme explain what it feels like to have an ADHD brain.  Think back to when you've had to dress a toddler who was in a particularly silly, wiggly mood. Instead of taking just a few  minutes, it takes 20 minutes but  hey, you're finally almost done!  You walk across the room to grab his shoes and... seriously!?... he just wiggled out of his shirt!  And just then a loved one walks into the room and is super judgmental ("You're not even finished getting him dressed?! It's been 20 minutes!")That's what it feels like to try to get my ADHD brain (sans meds) to accomplish anything.  It's frustrating.  It's overwhelming.  And I often didn't even bother trying because I knew (or thought I knew) how things would turn out. (Screw you, brain.  Just run around naked.)

 

[vonfirmath]

On 3/30/2021 at 2:20 PM, BaseballandHockey said:

I wonder if you could work on idea generation/brainstorming separate from writing things that will be turned into final drafts.  I think that a lot of kids have anxiety about putting things on paper that they know are going to be critiqued or edited.  We say there are no wrong answers, but then we go through and pick and choose the "best" ones, or tell the kids that these two (or 25) things mean the same thing, and they have to pick just one.  

So, maybe do some free brainstorming, on slightly ridiculous topics (animals that would make terrible pets, things that are smaller than a blue whale, jobs I'm glad I don't have), and focusing on filling up the paper, and then put the paper aside, or hang it on the fridge for people to keep adding to over time? 

I also wonder about other models of teaching writing besides brainstorm-outline-draft-revise-edit.  I consider myself a decent writer.  I've never made an outline in my life, except when I was in elementary school and had a teacher who required it for 5th and 6th grade.  In that case, I wrote the paper, and then outlined it, turned in the outline, waited a week and then turned in the paper (that I had written a week earlier), because the other way just didn't work for me.  

Agreed. I don't write from outlines well either.

But I have a son who teaching him to write down first what he wanted to write about. Then write underneath eahc a few details to support helped make writing the actual paper less painful -- I don't call it an outline. But really -- its an outline.

 

[kbutton]

On 4/1/2021 at 11:16 PM, wendyroo said:

When DS was 9, I was becoming more and more concerned with his narrative and pragmatic language skills. I still had connections at the speech therapy center (because all three of my other children were still receiving articulation therapy), so they agreed to work with DS for a semester. Every single language evaluation they did with DS came back between normal and far above normal. He is a high IQ master pattern matcher, so he easily compensated for his weaknesses. I brought them videos of him stuttering, backtracking, cutting himself off and lapsing into silence for 20-30 seconds at a time when trying to answer a question like "What was Charlotte's plan to save Wilbur?" or even "How did you celebrate your birthday yesterday?"  He knew the information - he knew too much information - and just could not prune it, organize it and string it into sentences that would make sense to a non-omniscient listener. But the tests could not pinpoint any issues, so after a semester they graduated him again.

A lot of language tests are NOT open-ended, which makes them very limited. @PeterPan has talked about this a great deal.

What you are describing is very much something that materials from Mindwing Concepts will help. You would have to absorb the point of them and then ratchet it up to your son's level, but this is exactly what they are designed for. 

My ASD kiddo did well on language tests until we finally found the right ones. Narrow but profound things showed up on the Test of Narrative Language (the one for older kids) and the Test of Problem Solving (adolescent edition). They are entirely open-ended and get at some of these problems. 

Most language people see kids who have frank problems with these areas early on, not kids that limp along and do well until they don't. I would go so far as to call it a missed opportunity with really bad repercussions. We need more people with more experience in this field to develop testing and to see what it does IRL with kids whose language issues are missed on testing.

[Not_a_Number]

6 minutes ago, kbutton said:

My ASD kiddo did well on language tests until we finally found the right ones. Narrow but profound things showed up on the Test of Narrative Language (the one for older kids) and the Test of Problem Solving (adolescent edition).

This is a bit off-topic, but I've been kind of amazed at how narrow the problems that cause an inchoate feeling of something being "wrong" can be. 

I've been complaining about DD8's "not engaging with my questions" on here for ages and ages. And it's true -- she wasn't engaging with my questions. But it was really hard to say what that meant, and people threw a smorgasbord of explanations at me -- it's normal, she's just a kid, I'm expecting too much, she's working above her level, etc, etc. 

As it turned out, she literally wasn't hearing the words I was saying because she was thinking about something else. And if she heard them, she spent zero time thinking about them. So then OF COURSE she wasn't engaging -- it was literally impossible given what was happening in her head.  

So it turned out that the problem was actually very specific and very narrow, once we did enough troubleshooting. I had no idea that it would turn out to be something that blatant and that simple, but it did. And I do wonder how often that is the case, and how often people are mystified and unable to move forward because they can't figure out what's wrong. 

Edited April 11, 2021 by Not_a_Number

[kbutton]

 https://www.ncshla.org/sites/default/files/springCon/2016/Session-19.pdf 

I posted this link earlier. From the concept maps in this link that deal with the strands of language, this is what my son exhibited in case this is useful...

Pragmatics:

• Tone of Voice (receptively and early on)--he relied on tone of voice to interpret all social cues; once he had more tools in his arsenal, he used it when he was reading. Listening to someone read or reading things out loud to himself made meaning clear, but listening to a computerized voice was USELESS even though a lot of kids with dyslexia can use the computerized readers and not struggle with meaning. Once he had therapy related to narrative language that involved critical thinking for problem-solving, this vanished as a need, though he still will do better if he reads aloud; it's just more at times when he struggles to concentrate, or there are small, easily missed details  on tests (he wishes he could have read ACT passages aloud, for instance).
• Clarification (he had some other issues early on but worked on social skills with an ABA provider, which remediated most)--He mostly couldn't ask questions, literally, but this was surprisingly not obvious. He had workarounds, but they were clunky and inefficient. He would state several problems with emphasis in his voice and expect you to read between the lines as to what the problem is, and then solve it/explain it. I fell into the trap of not noticing his lack of questions because he started doing this before he used full sentences as a toddler. He very clearly had needs that were unusual, and it was a survival skill for me to figure out those needs. I just never noticed that the rest didn't develop because I could communicate with him, and no one else every commented on his lack of asking questions.

Semantics:

• Cohesive devices--for him, this was also tied to the critical thinking. Once that was solved, those devices showed up like magic. If he was revising someone else's words, he could use them extremely well and in a very sophisticated way (like the OP's son).
• Schema/content--once in a while, this is an issue, but he seeks this out on his own and remedies it. Even when he was pre-verbal, he would seek out information to do this by having me re-read books (lots of non-fiction). We joke that he was like the robot on Short Circuit that used the TV, books, etc. to get "INPUT" so that he could understand the world. He actively did that very, very early on. He used Caillou and Thomas the Tank Engine as living social stories to explain his world--his behavior would dramatically change after watching an episode that clarified some mysterious thing for him. He also refused, from the time he was tiny, to comply with "going places" routines if I didn't explicitly state where we were going and tell him what to expect. As in, he would arch his back and throw himself out of his carseat at 6 months old. I thought for a while I was surely reading into this, but it became clear over time that I was not.

Syntax/Morphology:

• Cohesive ties--basically the same as under semantics.

Discourse:

• Narrative--I didn't realize how circular and irrelevant his stories were when he told them, but more importantly, he would not be able to form a narrative about what would happen until long after the event. It could be hours, days, or literally, years before he could accurately describe it all from his perspective. He could answer questions if you stumbled upon the right ones. But he couldn't say in the moment why he responded oddly to something until something oblique would prompt it. So, he would get in a tiff with kids in the nursery at church, but we sometimes wouldn't know for days what it was about, especially if there were contingencies. And we expect things to be straightforward with little kids, but they aren't, especially with gifted kids. They are complex even in diapers.

Basically ALL of these issues disappeared once he could hook up his critical thinking with language. That one ability swept under the rug everything that he hadn't already worked out a workaround for on his own when he was tiny. The change was profound.

He had no issues with the other strands of language development, so I didn't mention them. 

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by kbutton