How do I help my 10 year old Aspie get more organized

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This is a major issue for us. It is even one of the goals in his IEP. Jay gets so frustrated, I get frustrated... I have tried many different things any nothing sticks. What do you do to help your kids get organized? Example: I have different bins for toys with pictures on them like Star Wars in one, Legos in another etc... this confuses him. I don't sort the way he does but when I ask him how he would like to sort them by he gets frustrated because he doesn't know or cannot express it. We have check list that we go through before bed... did you remember to put your agenda and homework file in your backpack, etc... still does not help him. My main goal is to help him be more independent, and organization is a huge part of that. Homework is the main concern I have. I really want to get this under control before we throw in middle school with different classes in different rooms etc.

Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Theres not really any way you can change that about him. In his mind, he is very organized. I guess you could call it an organized mess. If you clean up everything and he kind of spazzes out, its probably because he knew where everything was when it was a mess.

Relying on visuals can help an as pie child since they usually process faster visually. Take pictures of the categories of toys that should go in each bin ( star wars toys for example) and tape it to the bin. Play into the fantasy play by reminding your child that the toys need to return to " home base" or " headquarters" at the end of the day.

Consider making your child his or her own agenda that reduces the writing demands and is on 8x11 paper. The 5x3 size of most typical agendas us often difficult for ADHD oand aspie children to graphically organize. Label each subject and consider including a picture for each. You can even put a visual reminder of what they need to do or bring home at the bottom.

Good luck!

I'd go with your original bin idea with pictures of things like "star wars" and "legos" but also include the word underneath it and actually direct him to the correct bin while saying "star wars" or "legos" as the label for said bin. This may help in case your son is not a visual learner or needs to use multiple senses to process information. I also find making lists helps me to stay organized such as "stuff I need for school", "Anime Convention", "homework assignments and due dates", etc. Many people on the spectrum tend to be very detail oriented, but it may be best to give him a few general categories (such as toys and homework) and than have him break those categories down further (to "star wars" and "legos"/ "math" and "history", etc.). Breaking it down like this may help you determine which area(s) he is getting stuck in (locating things, processing visual vs. auditory, coming up with general categories, breaking down general categories, etc.) He may also come up with his own, unique ways of organizing as he gets older.

What I introduced about 3-4 years ago,( J would have been about 8 or 9) is a big sheet of laminated cardboard, it is divided into several sections ie, before school, after school, dinner time, bed time. Then I had picture cards made up and laminated these to. I used pictures I found on the net, in magazines and some I had to draw, because J is older I had simple words written on each picture card as well.
Examples of the pictures; take your meds, put your socks and shoes on, get dressed, pack school bag, brush teeth, reading time, game time, put your toys away. Then I used a plastic take away food container and wrote FINISHED on it in bright colors with happy smiles all over it. I put velcro on the back of all of the picture cards and then put about 5 velcro dots on the bigger laminated card board sheet. I then slowly taught J that instead of me continuously asking him have you done this have you done that, I would say check your schedule. As J completed each item that I'd stuck on his schedule, he would remove that item/picture and place it in the FINISHED box. At the end of each before school, list of items I'd left a small section for me to use a white board maker to either tick or put a smiley face. He would get one of these if all morning items had been complete with minimal reminders. To start with though we started with very little expectation, we still had to remind him to stay on task. It took several consistent weeks before he could do the bulk of it with just a "check your schedule" from me. At the end of the day I would add up his ticks, if he had more ticks than not he would get a reward he could choose out of a selection that I had given him. It may have been an extra 15 minutes of pc time, or extra before bed reading time etc. Or he could choose to save his extra rewards and cash them in on the weekend, eg's an hour extra game time, dropping a chore off his list, a visit to the museum.
We very rarely use this schedule any more because the routine behaviors are now just that; routines. Every now and then though I will use it for a short while, only when his routine is being thrown or he is particularly stressed. I wish I had of used this schedule earlier, it did wonders to releave some stress in our house.
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Thank you so much everyone. I had thought about the chart idea myself but was not sure if it would work for him or stress him more. I guess we will just start out small.

Like someone commented... he does seem perfectly fine with his mess. I am not sure though if he really knows where everything is though. He is my little pack rat. He wants to keep everything. Every picture he draws, every test he brings home... and so on. That is part of our problem. there is only so much room on the refrigerator door to post things... sometimes things have to be filed in the circle file (trash can). he is doing better with that but it still is a problem as well.

Appreciate the feedback everyone.

I've been a disorganized organized my entire life and I'm fairly normal I guess though my mother would like to say now she would say I had ADHD....If my house was spotless then I swear I wouldn't know where anything was. Important stuff I TRY to keep in a certain spot so I don't forget but I have terrible short term memory.

My Daughter has ADHD (Grade 4/Age 9) and she is so disorganized at school that she is always forgetting her homework or handing things in, I actually called the principal b/c of a few things, one, the teacher "just" realized she hasn't been using her agenda, why? the teacher stopped checking because it's the kids responsibility....two, when my daughter forgot something I sent a note asking her to ensure my daughter remembers to put stuff in her bag, she told my daughter it's HER responsibility which I understand but most know that kids with ADHD have poor executive function and that includes memory...she could be walking from her teacher's desk to her own and it takes one distraction for her to forget what she was doing....she needs better classroom support for organization.

Where my son (AS, ADHD, LD) is very good with agenda and bringing homework and doing it but where he lacks is project organization slightly and STUDYING, locker is a mess and his room is very messy.

Can you take a photo of his pic's before binning them then file onto usb?

I want to throw into the discussion a simple reality: he may not be developmentally ready to be organized. Just like you can't ask a 5 year old to keep a middle school assignment book, you can't ask some AS kids to meet the organizational expectations set for their age group. In my son, that skill had lagged many years behind his peers and no amount of charting or teaching changed it. It is only this year that I would say his developmental ability started to come into line with expectations, and I confess a huge amount of relief at it, even if one still cannot call him organized. This (developmental maturity for organizing) is actually an issue with many boys, AS or not, and documented in a book I cite in the recommended reading section. The high organizational expectations schools are placing on kids is considered a big reason boys, as a group, are falling behind.

What I did with my son in the interim was act as his organizational secretary, helping him update his calendars and assignment lists, double checking with his teachers et al to see that nothing was missed. I simply accepted that he needed my help until his development caught up with the loads put on him. I can't say he was thrilled about it, but he knew he needed it, and he was eager to mature beyond it. Which, for a large part, he has. Enough, at least, for us to stop backing him up and let him stumble a few times over his own sword (part of growing up, as long as it stays within reason).

Lately we have been taking pictures of his old assignments and test and such. Then he puts the picture on his board in his room. Takes up much less space and he still feels like he is keeping it. He is getting all A's in school so I guess I should not be getting so worried but the school does put so much emphasis on it and it gets so tiring nagging him all the time. He even laughs and calls me NAG HAG!! ! He is right," I am constantly saying things like, "Did you put your homework in your Backpack, don't forget your lunch box, did you fill your water bottle." I am a Nag Hag! LOL