suggestions - Aspie children sticking to homework until done

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We tried this subject in the Parent's discussion, and someone wisely suggested that we move it here, so that we could get a wider response from non-parents.

I recently visited a friend who told me the story of an autistic member of their family who is moderately affected, who can write and has verbal abilities. This child will sit at the table to do homework, and right in the middle of writing something, will literally stop in mid-word, and not move. Eventually a parent will tell the child "OK, continue working" and this child will take right up where they left off.

My son who has PDD-NOS/High functioning autism/Aspergers has a horrible time sticking with homework [much as described in the situation above] until it is finished. He has the capability to do a great job, but he either daydreams, or gets stuck, or forgets to ask for help, and whatever homework that could take about 20 minutes can often end up taking four hours if I'm not right there hovering and encouraging him to finish. He is off-task, and will often go off to sharpen his pencil, or feed the dog, rather than just sticking to the homework and working until it's done. We do have him blow off steam the minute he gets home, either by riding a bike outside, or playing a video game, or playing DDR. He is given the chance to do homework after he's had a break, and during homework, we have him finish one subject, then do a half an hour or so of whatever he likes to do before he has to go back to the homework.

We have tried alarms [to show him how long an assignment "should" take], which has had some limited success. Taking away desired activities as a threat does not work, and neither do motivators (i.e. you can play for half an hour if you finish this spelling homework). Our ultimate goal is to get him to realize that working hard for half an hour NOW will allow him to have free time for the rest of the night! For some odd reason, this doesn't seem to influence him to stick with his assignment.

Any help from people who've had this experience, and can explain to us parents a possible solution, or at the very least an understanding of what it's like for the individual, would be greatly appreciated!

Kris

I suppose I am atypical in this regard, but I didn't have trouble starting and finishing my work. I sat down and got it finished, and didn't want any interruptions until it was done.

Oh, I could only wish that would happen with my son . . .

Kris

I wish your son the very best.

I believe I am the other extreme end of the spectrum from the child who got distracted. People complained I spent too much time reading and studying. That can cause problems when other people need things done or just for you to listen to them. I never meant to come across as rude or selfish, but somehow that's how I was perceived.

schleppenheimer,

THREE possibilities you should think of!

1. He could be BORED! I was!
2. He could zone out. This happens with boredom or some imagination, or just errant thoughts.
3. It could be daydreaming.

I think ALL three are at least more likely for aspies. I had all three. HEY, ask your son!

Steve

Well, I KNOW he's bored. He only zones out to this extent when he's doing anything other than a science experiment.

He is definitely zoning out. He has a very vivid imagination, and he has errant thoughts. Both. At the same time.

AND, he is daydreaming.

I do talk to him. All of the time. But if you can remember back to when you were 10, if you were anything like my son, you couldn't always express how you were feeling or thinking. This is an absolutely terrific kid -- we have a blast together, and I love his personality. But I do have concerns about how to get him to stick with his assignment. Sometimes, you just HAVE to do things that you aren't interested in. That's just part of life. I wish I didn't have to do the dishes on a daily basis, but if I don't they pile up and the kitchen begins to smell and mice infiltrate the house and . . . .on and on . . . .

I ask my son what he thinks, how he feels, what he would like to do, etc. Many times, he just can't give me a definite answer. So I'm looking for insight from somebody who may have had this problem when THEY were ten, and how they overcame the problem, if they were able to.

Kris

I've had trouble with concentrating on one thing for a longer time, or with starting and completing tasks, since I was small.

Sticking to one task, or just sitting still, is often difficult, even now. Even when I'm completely calm, not elated or tense or anything, I still have the need to do something other than the task at hand once in a while - stand up, go to the window and look out, take another book and flick through a few pages. Then I can go back to the task and do it with a renewed energy. This appears to get my thinking going again. Otherwise my mind will begin to wander, so that I start daydreaming, or it simply "switches off" and all I can do is stare stupidly at the page. I'm thinking this could be due not only to whatever trouble I could have with focussing attention, but also to the moods. When I'm depressed, I'm chronically exhausted and concentrating on anything is difficult altogether (this is the time when I have most of those exasperating blank-outs when I can scarcely think, occasionally I can't do much of anything for hours or days on end and feel wrapped up in some sort of mist); when I'm "high", my attention switches too rapidly from one thing to another.

Deadlines help somewhat - without them, I'd hardly get anything done at all. But then they result in my procrastinating until the very night before I have to hand in the assignment, then sitting down and doing the whole thing in a matter of hours.

And yes, a lot also depends on how interesting or relevant the task is for me personally. If it's something I'm very interested in - like drawing or reading one of my favorite books, - then I usually don't have much trouble concentrating and am likely to go to the other extreme where I concentrate so much that I forget about anything else. I forget to eat, sleep, change my clothing, and won't get up from behind the desk until everything's done. I made most of my pastel drawings that way, just sitting down and forgetting about the rest of the world until the drawing was finished and covered with varnish. Such a great feeling to see the completed work, look around - it always feels like one sees things for the very first time - and breathe a sigh of relief and satisfaction. The effort seems unreal, once it's over and one looks back on it. It's like doing something in a dream - one just wonders how on earth one has managed it, afterwards.

I may do the same when I'm really strongly motivated to do something - for example, I have a translation due tomorrow which I haven't even begun, and I've run out of money to buy food with and I know I will be paid a fair amount for the work.

When I do have to do something boring, trying to stick to the same task until it's done is counterproductive (the same goes for my writing sometimes, too, much as I love it; I don't think in words so coming up with the right expressions isn't always easy). I won't get it done anyway, and will only end up sitting and staring at the page and won't be able to come up with anything, unless I switch to a different activity. So when I feel I'm starting to space out, I do something else for a while - do the dishes, go to the shops, cook dinner, work on a drawing or a new piece of writing, put on some music and pace the room, or lie down and rest some. All of it helps. When I return to the assignment afterwards, I feel refreshed and my mind is sharp once again.

It's hard to say what it'd be like for someone else who has trouble focussing, so I guess I can speak only for myself. But if your son is a similar way, then the switching between tasks could be a very good thing to do.

My best wishes to him.

Part of why studying psychology at university was so hard was, we had to do a lot of rote learning and had a great many books to read, while my mother was pressing me to keep studying almost all the time. She had this idea that I'd never learn anything if I got distracted with this or that, and required me to just sit down, take the book and not get up until I'd finished. She'd enter my room every five or ten minutes, sometimes, and would tell me off because "my eyes weren't on the page", "I was looking sideways", "I was only pretending to read, my eyes were no moving the way they should, only staring into one spot", or, Heaven forbid, I was standing in the other end of the room. She constantly asked me what I was doing, whether I was studying or being idle yet again. The result was, I ended up spacing out, and just sitting, staring into the book and not seeing what was written in it. Eventually, I could do nothing at all. My rote memory is fine but doing it *that* way was no good.

As far as I can recall (though my memory is sketchy at best), when I was below the age of 12 it was exactly the same. Back then, I simply tried, very diligently, to study as much and as hard as I could, because it didn't enter my mind that I could disobey my parents, and I thought they had to be right on all accounts. I didn't always manage to learn what I had to, it seems, but it was somewhat easier because my parents didn't check on me that often, and sometimes I was left to my own devices for a long times. I just had to account for my assignments by the end of the day, and that was it. Without giving it much thought, I switched between different activities the way it is natural for me, so I managed to stay productive enough. It was a shame I couldn't listen to music, unless I asked permission for an "official" break, which tended to be short, just five or ten minutes, and usually few and far between; but I compensated for that by putting on music when my parents left and I was alone in the apartment, and walking back and forth as much as I liked. It also helped me get the necessary distraction\rest; in a way, it was like my brain rebooting while I was pacing and fantasizing.

Kris,

I think the motivators, threats, timers, blowing off "steam" and attempts to reason with what he does now will translate into time later might as well get tossed right out the window. It has nothing to do with any of that and trying to deal with it that way not only won't help, it will probably give you some much undeserved sleepless nights and gray hairs. You with me so far?

Okay. Here's why I say that. All of those approaches are from an NT perspective. You are still thinking in a world where the brain is functioning correctly so it isn't a case of he can't do it but that he won't do it. So those methods work. Well, when your brain is all wired up wrong or missing some wiring those approaches are just going to frustrate you and the child. He's going to end up feeling useless pretty fast.

So, now that you understand that, let's talk about what's happening up there. (I'm 47 and still do this even though I'm aware of it and try to keep it under control the best I can. It's a brain blip we just have to be aware of and try to deal with in the NT world.) Here's what goes on (and it varies slightly between us but this child can and will tell you what's happening):

Staring into space. Typically when I do this it is one of two things happening (and it really sounds like this is what is happening with this child), either I am suddenly hit with blinding clarity by a realization that I had been seeking for a long time and I "go off" into my head to think about it or whatever I am working on suddenly spurs me to make some "leap" in understanding to something else (it could appear to you to be related or completely different). If I take that leap, I also go off into my head for a bit of mental examination. I literally forget what I had been doing and it is an actually mental feeling of leaving it. My brain has literally gone somewhere else. That is like a split second thing, so thinking that a child will make any kind of value judgement to stop it is kind of wishing for the moon. I doubt that the child is even aware that it will happen before it does. Even though I know in retrospect it has happened, I never know when it is going to happen because any given word I am looking at could cause it to happen. In those cases, what you, as the NT, are experiencing is "hitting the reset key." That's how I describe it. I'm literally gone into my own head until someone hits the reset key and I literally hear, see and smell nothing around me until that happens. I've done this for 30 minutes to an hour at a time until my mind reaches the limit of what I have realized and then I reset on my own. If they are seeing this with that child, that's what is happening. If you want to test this out, in a very non-threatening and inviting way ask what he is thinking about and show interest and no judgement. If you can do that, you'll learn a lot about what is happening in his brain.

"That sudden distraction." I get this one as well. It just suddenly hits me that I need to do something else and off I go, promptly forgetting what I was doing before. I don't mean deliberately forgetting, I mean it is gone. I guess the circuits drop the message or something. I don't get any warning with this one either, it just happens and I'm there doing it. I've been banned from the kitchen by my husband for 26 years over this one because he's afraid I'll burn the house down if I attempt to cook (something I don't care for anyway so I see it as a benefit!).


Anyway, all of that helps you understand, but now you are right back to "Well, what do I do about it?" <in a very frustrated tone because right now you are feeling like his brain is currently your worst enemy in the war on homework> The answer to the question is that while you can't do a thing to teach him (because it's really that his brain needs some major rewiring, let's face it), what you can do is help him understand what is happening inside his own head. Do you, his father or anyone you know understand basic electronics? Don't worry if he doesn't, he'll see it as a grand adventure to learn about it. Or, even better, satellites and waves. Basically, instead of getting angry, upset or frustrated, you are going to have to explain this in an adventure way. Adventures in learning. Be literal. No implications or assumptions are allowed. Here's what you need to get across. Something is happening to "bump" the message off course and send a different signal in its place. It's like picking up the phone call of someone else and not realizing you have just landed in someone else's conversation so you keep on talking. In his case, it's like someone saying learn this and his brain suddenly going, No! Learn this! (and erasing all knowledge of the previous learning assignment) Find a way in. If he's computer game literate, say it is like someone launched a virus that hijacked his game and replaced with another, but he didn't realize for half an hour or an hour that he was actually playing another game. He just thought it was a different area of his game that he had never explored before.

Once you find the way in to explain it in a visual sense so he really "sees" it, then turn it into a game where he tries to realize when the covert operation has hijacked his game and tries to figure out a way to get it back. That way, when he figures it out (and it's like a puzzle or a game so he will want to figure it out), he will provide his own solutions to it. He won't ever stop doing it, but he'll gain more control over realizing it has happened and resetting himself. But first, you have to get him to visualize what is happening in terms he can understand. All of your NT training (which works great in the world we flub up) is pretty much useless when it comes to this problem. That's okay though, there is a work around. It isn't perfect, so don't freak out when he continues to "space out" (or as my husband fondly calls it, going into space puppy mode), just let him work at it and correct it. If he does it and needs a reminder, don't get defensive, angry, frustrated or any of those emotions (because remember that emotion overloads us and makes us even more confused), just say, Oh, did you get hijacked again? That will remind him and he'll try to go back and puzzle that out.

That may make the homework take longer as he's trying to figure it out and fix it, but in the end it should help. Just be careful in the kitchen.


Hope that helped!

My husband calls it space puppy. He says I look like I'm in a trance, but eyes open while you're asleep describes it as well. He just comes over and says, "Okay, space puppy, time to return to earth. You're freaking me out." That's basically him hitting the reset key.


Do you ever do it in meetings? I have many times and it really freaks the other people out especially if I'm looking at someone when it happens.

I think it is an Aspie/Autie thing. I can't feel it coming on though, can you? I can never stop it before it happens, I'm just instantly there. I have been able to realize that I'm doing it and pull myself back so I can get things done. See my earlier post to Kris. I talk about what happens when I do it. I wonder if your experience is the same and if you agree that the suggested approach would work with her child. I'd be interested to see your take on it.

Brief comatose states are supposedly helpful so that the body can recover. Maybe the brain is just working on itself. I'm not sure. I do think that eventually they will find out what they did with Down Syndrome children - that they are actually happy and it's the parents who are messed up by it because their reality is so different. It's a scary thing for the parent while the child could care less. It they weren't hauled out and forced to deal with the world they would probably be perfectly content down the rabbit hole. I know my life's ambition was to live in an attic and write my fiction in my head. I didn't see anything wrong with that.

Of course, this is way off homework now!