Lack of endurance

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My daughter is 7 and in the 1st grade in an inclusive general Ed classroom. She has a dedicated aide to assist her throughout the day for all activities. She is excelling in the classroom academically and her peers are extremely supportive. However, she is doing poorly in Physical Education (has an E for 1st marking period) and Integrated Arts (dance and movement, she has a low C).

When I questioned the PE teacher, she said that she participates enthusiastically for 15 minutes and then sits on the floor, refusing to participate for the final 30 minutes. She also said that she did really poorly when they tested her locomotor skills (hopping, skipping, jumping, etc).

I spoke with the Special Ed teacher and she was going to make sure the aide was pushing her to participate. The PE teacher is seeing about having her evaluated for Adaptive PE in addition to attending regular PE.

My daughter does have low muscle tone (all over). Her developmental pediatrician is sending her for a cardo work up to rule out heart issues (due to a condition I have been diagnosed with).

My question is: Do kids on the spectrum have endurance issues? I'm not ruling out that this could be sensory related, but she seemed to do well in PE last year.

Neurally, yes. The brain consumes more energy than most thinkers might notice. Overstimulated brains, even more so. Some of us still have significant physical strength however, myself included. Endurance sports are the only ones that interest me, but I do still have to pay attention to my overall energy reserves when I have a lot of studying or work to do. I'm very cautious about my eating habits and caffeine intake...

YES my son has always had low endurance. He has to work twice as hard at physical activities to keep up and tires VERY easily!

I do the same as cberg (avoiding particular foods/drinks that may introduce variability and make it more difficult to anticipate energy reserves or potential mental/physical crashes), but I think I have good endurance for athletic activities as long as I'm interested or feel motivated. I do become lost/uncoordinated during more cooperative activities like dancing, basketball, etc. I do recall being rather poor at sports as a kid, and it might be something that I just willed myself to overcome as I got older.

My daughter is 8 and has a tough time with coordination and had a breakdown last week when the class was playing a competitive game where they were supposed to jump up and down as quickly as possible. She did poorly and was quite upset. It's just not something that comes natural to her or captures her interest.

Low muscle tone, poor large and fine motor coordination and low endurance levels are all common among spectrum kids. If there is a family history of heart issues, it is good that you are getting that checked out. But I have to question why the hell they give GRADES IN PE to a 7 yo? I mean REALLY? Who cares if she sits out after 15 minutes? Is she being disruptive to the other kids in the class? Before I asked the aide to push her more I would try to find out why she stops. Is she really tired? Sometimes my kiddo, also 7, stops participating in PE because he is overwhelmed or he simply doesn't get what is going on. He often has a hard time focusing on the teacher at the beginning of class when instructions are being given so he may not understand what to do and so he just balks. Don't know if anything like that might be going on for your DD.

If she has low muscle tone then she's probably working very hard, then refusing to keep going because it hurts.

PE is hell for many ASD kids. If it is a skills based class, they get frustrated because they just aren't good at it. If it is an efforts based class, they get frustrated seeing other kids slack off but still somehow manage to perform better.

My son was horrible at pretty much everything they did in PE, but he always put in the effort. He was good at pacing himself so the endurance was not as big an issue. Ultimately, though, his fitness comes from the types of things you can't do in class: he is an avid and excellent hiker and really enjoys distance biking. PE is supposed to be about learning to enjoy moving, and you don't want a child to lose that in the battle over details like how to hit a ball.

But I actually have a different thought with your daughter. You know that ASD is a developmental delay, and you also may remember that toddlers are notorious for using up all their energy and then crashing. Sounds to me like she isn't pacing herself, that she doesn't understand the need for it or how to do it. Because of the developmental delay on that concept, perhaps. While it is also likely true that she simply has less to give overall, I think the going all out at first and then being done reminds me a whole lot of what a much younger child would do.

Yeah, I am totally with you on that. Schools hear have moved away from teaching PE as a skill and instead have moved towards making sure all the kids learn to enjoy and engage in simply being active. You work on skill to improve overall health and make the activity more fun, not to grade it. The goal is to turn kids ON to movement, not off.

Okay, what everyone said makes sense.

I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which is a connective tissue disorder that causes collagen to be defective. Since collagen makes up most of our bodies, they keep an eye on the heart to make sure there are no defects there. It's very likely that she also has EDS, so they are checking the heart just to be safe.

As far as grading for specials, she technically gets CE (consistently evident), DEV (developing), or HD (having difficulty) for grades in specials. However, those are tied to an actual percentage which equals a letter grade. I would much rather they push PE for the sake of keeping kids active and learning that sports/exercise can be fun.

My daughter is a perfectionist and gets extremely upset if she can't do something correctly or is told that she is doing something incorrectly.

I assumed that it was just her class in PE, but then I remembered that last year they had 2 classes attending at once. It is possible that all those kids and the activities they are asking her to perform is just to much for her. I've noticed her act is a similar manner when we've participated in sports activities outside of school. She does seem to get tired quickly and will even refuse to do preferred activities when that happens.

I just wish she could tell me what was going on so there wasn't so much guesswork.

It can as well depend on the bad body feeling we have. I never really was able to run long distances, while I could bicycle and do hiking all day without probs. Was a miracle to me all life long. So one prob, that I got immidiately after some minutes that typical sidebelly-aches, but even when ignoring them, I ran out of energy pretty fast.Now that I am 33, about a year ago, a friend regularly training football since he is a kid, simply experienced that I have an awful breathing technique, that normally kids avoid instinctively. So I try to make normal full breaths, but a a normal full breath in, simply takes longer then a step while running, so while I breath in, I disturb that myself 2-3 times by doing running steps.

Normally around the ground school age, children should acchieve instinctively a breathing technique, that lets you stops, whenever you do a step while breathing in. So "short breath in - step - short breath in -step - breath out heavy and fast- step - short breath in - step -short breath in - step breath out heavy and fast". Not doing so enables your lung as well, to receive osygen properly, and so causes you to being exhausted easily. If that may be the problem, at least this can be as well learned on purpose by jogging and focusing on acchieving a correct breathing technique. Once you acchieved doing so on purpose, after a bit of training it becomes instinctive as well.

I have a connective tissue disorder (diagnosed as a kid, it was not looked into more than that or specifically named, beighton score of 9) and Aspergers.

Both of these things can contribute to feeling tired quicker. AND because regular school will likely tire her and increase her need for "downtime", I'd say: is there a way to get her out of PE+dance? Regular reccess would be more conducive to what she needs.

If she is "pushed more" in PE, her other grades may drop.

Also, the fact that she continually tries for the first 15 minutes before sitting out signals to me that it isn't a behavior or avoidance problem.

It's just too much for her.

Can you get P.E. to be ungraded in the IEP, at least? If she may have connective tissue issues etc. I really do not think she should be pushed so hard, and then have to feel bad about grades, too.

We have an IEP review meeting Dec 4th, and I have an advocate that is familiar with the connective tissue disorder and autism joining me. I am definitely asking about an alternative for her, or at least modifications.

I went in to observe yesterday, which was a day they had the dance (IA) class. Their specials are at the very end of the day, which very well could be the problem. Her regular class is 17 students, and for specials they combine 2 classes (for a total of over 30 kids). I'm thinking that could contribute as well.

Anyway, she was completely overstimulated the entire day. They started a morning sensory routine about 2 weeks ago, that starts as soon as she gets to school in the morning. This was started after the couple weeks of her falling asleep at school. Her Special Ed teacher and General Ed teacher feel she is getting overstimulated and that there has been an increase in behaviors in the last 2 weeks. They are even documenting these behaviors. I tend to agree and am working on getting the morning sensory routine stopped. I think she would do better with multiple smaller breaks throughout the day, which is what she had before.

Her General Ed teacher believes in daily recess, which she has about 15-20 minutes after lunch. They go outside when the weather permits, otherwise they play in the classroom.

They assured me that she was more "wired" than usual, which we think was because she was excited that I was there. She did keep coming up and hugging/kissing me. She does extremely well, as long as she has something to do. She isn't very communicative, so she gets lost when they do discussions (even though they try to include her) and there is an increase in behaviors. There were also a few lessons that were geared more to listening and following directions, which she has a difficult time doing without visuals. I spoke to them about that, and they said that Jewell gets excused from those activities when it gets to be to much. They do find an alternative way for her to complete the activity. Her teacher isn't as concerned with her doing it like everyone else, as much as she is wanting to make sure she understands.

I had poor endurance, but this might have been more related to asthma. I didn't do well in PE because it was boring. If we could've done something to make it more imaginative, like racing "to escape from a giant" instead of just running fast for the same of running fast, it might have had a better outcome for me. It isn't that I didn't like being active, but the activity had to have a purpose. Same with exercise for me as an adult.