Help Child thinks School work is Optional

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He needs to be challenged. See if they will give him harder school work. He might just be bored so he is refusing to do it. He probably thinks just because he already knows how, he doesn't have to do it. He needs to know if he refuses to do his school work, he won't be able to go up a grade and if he doesn't finish high school, he won't be able to get into collage. Then he will be stuck with low wage jobs. Plus it will make it harder for him to find work if his education is only 6th grade and never completed high school. That is why I stayed in school and did my school work, I didn't want to be held back, I didn't want to make it harder to get a job. Plus my mom promised taking me to London if I stay in school and finish it.

Never mess with the Trunchbull, just imagine what she could do to you if you refused to comply to her demands. We have all seen what she does to students who don't do things quick enough for her.

Yeah, couldn't the teachers give him more challenging tasks? It would benefit everyone.

I don't know the movie and it seems very unattractive to me. But I do have my little story of a fight against abusive school headmaster. Would do it again.

Will you tell your story please?

Very short version:
He was known for giving really abusive speaches at finishing ceremonies, reminding the leaving students that "they were only an episode in the glorious school history" and "they owe their successes to the high-ranked school" and so on.
I volunteered to give a farewell speach as a younger student, which was a custom. My speech was all a parody of the headmaster's words, "the school was just an episode in your glorious lives" and "the school owes its high ranks to your successes" and so on.
I knew the headmaster would want me in his office. Then I came, looked into his eyes and absolutely agreed, whatever he told. This way he had no way to harm me.
Then we both went quiet. I was very gifted, won in some nation-wide science competitions, so it wouldn't be so easy to punish me. The finale... well, the year I finished that school was the only year when the title of Graduate of the Year was not given to anyone.
He couldn't appreciate my success more.

That movie gave me nightmares and things she did in the movie would put her in jail in real life and they had a scene where she tried to do attempted murder. They didn't have it in the book so it was added in the movie. Things she did to kids in the movie would have caused bodily harm in real life or even death. I wondered how was this even a children's movie and how could this even be a children's book because of someone like her and the stuff she does?

Another theory I have is the OP's son's perception of unfairness. I mean, think about it. He has to spend hours doing homework every night, while the teacher "doesn't do anything". She just assigns as much homework as she wants, and gives grades for it. If you overlook having to grade the homework, that an easy job; and even grading isn't too hard, considering how she has the teacher's edition of the textbook, with all the answers in it. In a nutshell, it's not fair . And if there's anything aspie kids hate, it's things being unfair.

As for how to get the OP's son past that mental block, damn if I know. I wasn't allowed to complain about school, and my parents always got angry at me whenever I got anything less than a B. Which put me in a double bind. I coped by fantasizing about becoming president, and making teacher's editions of textbooks available to the public. Obviously, that's a pipe dream. Today, I cope by being staunchly childfree. I refuse to bring a child into this world, only to have him go through 13 years of an academic meat grinder.

So, an update. I asked my brother in law, who is my sons hero, to talk to him. My BIL is a pilot and a Ranger in the army. My son adores him. I remember being that age and thinking my parents didn’t know anything, but favorite aunts and uncles I would listen to. My BIL showed my son his pilot license and told him how hard it took to get.. how he had to do a lot of school work and how at the time some of the stuff he learned he didn’t think had anything to do with anything, turns out he ended up using it later on. Especially math. He told him how important it was to learn as much math as possiable. Especially as a pilot, since when he’s flying, he’s responsible for others peoples lives. He has to double check his math every which way and if he hadn’t listened in school then he might not know all the ways to check his own math. Not only does it make him smarter, knowing all those ways to get to the answer, but he’s a better pilot because of it.

Since my son is on winter break right now I don’t know if my BIL had an impact... but I hope he did. I’m very grateful for him for trying.

Rose

No kidding. I've talked about my son's sense for homework "fairness" before (see http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=329058). During summer last year, my wife worked with my son through a math problem set. A few days later my son used a few paper sheets and made up a problem set, and gave it to my wife as an assignment for her. We just had to laugh. Very fair, my wife said. Its title was: "Roblox Math Set". (Roblox was a computer game that my son played a lot, it was similar to Minecraft.) It came with five sections: (1) Maze, where you needed to trace a line from my son to Mom, fighting a Zombie along the way, (2) Circling, where you circled the right answer, (3) Solving, where you wrote in the right answer, (4) Draw a Line, where you connected two equations that gave the same answer, and (5) "Easy & Popular," for basic additions. "Easy and Popular"? I wonder where he got that idea from... kind of cute, though.



Autistic children view themselves in third person. This is not a random comment. Repeated studies (including brain activity scanning) have shown autistic children lack the sense of self that is common to neurotypical people. (See e.g.: http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(07)01033-1). So, it's very important to treat autistic children as equal-rights fellow human beings. They are simply different from neurotypical children. Neurotypical children don't mind being disciplined, because they take it as natural to be manipulated. They expect to be manipulated by adults, because they themselves manipulate adults back as well. I just get tired of all those games. Trust me, there is a reason why my neurotypical wife tell people, that if she had a choice and has to do it all over again, she would still choose to raise autistic children. Life is just so much easier with autistic children.

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Schools are too highly rated. I am glad they promote the concept of "No Child Left Behind" in the US. Students don't usually repeat grades anymore (https://edsource.org/2014/student-retention-rates-declining-in-u-s/71386). That's the way it should be. Hurting students in order to make teachers' job easier was never the purpose of education. Today, it's all about individualized education, accommodations, etc. What I further try to promote is to increase the "Pull" portion of public education, as opposed to the "Push" portion. What's needed in the 21st century, in a robotic economy, is creativity in the new generation of work force. And you don't get creativity by using the "push" model in raising our children, be them neurotypical or autistic.

Wow!! ! This explains everything!

When I was in elementary school, I never understood why kids in my class were so accepting of being mistreated (read: harshly disciplined) by our elementary teacher. When I tried to talk to them about it, they claimed to not to know what I meant. Not to mention, they claimed to like school, although I'm sure those kids were just telling adults what they wanted to hear. In addition, their social popularity among classmates was strong enough, that a harsh remark from the teacher was a barely a blip on their radar. Plus, they could take out their frustrations on me.

By middle school, when many kids go through a teacher-hating phase, they became more vocal about not liking school, both in conversations with me and in general. (But they learned to parrot back the "school spirit" to teachers and officials, which I learned to do as well.) So in that sense, middle school was easier: at least kids hated school like I did.

In high school, I learned to compartmentalize things in my mind: specific teachers could still be nice, even when school in general sucked. That, or I drowned my sadness/frustration in any alcohol I could get my hands on.

I am not sure that this is 100% true for neurotypicals as they have some brain wiring disparities and I think there have been studies (I am guessing the subjects were mostly NT though there was no neurological variables to be sure) where some people prefer environments with heavy discipline even if it means they will bear the consequences themselves.

Some of it may be cultural. Where I live now, this is very true. I have in-laws who brag about how often and harshly they were disciplined as children. Most of them grow up and continue the cycle. Where I grew up, it was very much the opposite and it was not some autistic assortative mating paradise or anything. I think the people who admire dictators with whom they align with ideologically are the same types of people. As long as they agree with the paradigm, bring on the authoritativeness.

I don't think it is all NTs, though.

So the mom would also have to explain to her son that his teacher also gets homework. She has to take home the assignments and grade them and has to prepare her next assignments for her students and make copies of them all. She also has to make report cards and give them out and also has to give her students a grade based on how much work they have turned in and what grades they have gotten on them each. Just think of how much time it takes her in her spare time when she has like 20 pages to grade than just one page and she has five different assignments to grade for each student and it all adds up.

Really? I have always seen kids claimed adults are mean whenever they get disciplined. They break a rule and get caught and they then rant about how "mean" the teacher is. To me they were stupid for breaking a rule and whining about it. Maybe it has to do with their upbringing, they were not made to follow rules at home but when an adult actually enforces them, they are not used to it so they think the adult is mean.

Could it be he doesn't understand the concept of "grades". I never understood them either. Why am I doing all this work which physically hurts me (I had undiagnosed dysgraphia and writing my hand physically hurt) for the teacher to write a letter on it which I can do myself? I had no idea what college was as a kid and if I had been told, I would have been like, "So I gotta finish this just to do it all over again?" And again, it was too far off in the future for me to fathom.

Sounds like a good conversation. Glad you thought of it.

It will likely take similar and repetitive input before your son really integrates the concepts.

This was and always will be my son. He "gets" it now but still rebels against it all to varying degrees, depending on day and mood. A lot of factors come into play: sometimes the work is boring, sometimes it is challenging, sometimes he is too stressed to be able to handle anything but what he wants to do in the moment, etc. Each variable needs its own logic. And, honestly, sometimes the reaction is so self-defensive (ie part of personal time and stress management) that you will have to let your son have his way.

I can say that when push came to shove and my son started his college career, he did wish he had done a little more to play the game and get into an even better school than he is in. He has expressed that as a regret. But, honestly, I don't know if he could have done all that much more. By mid point of high school he understood the game and most assignments he let slide were for mental health and stress reasons. That need will always be part of him; it isn't going away; so no matter how brilliant he can be, there will always be a stress box around it that can't be broken out of.

Teach your son the need to play the game, as well as the logic that while he may not always see the benefit, there may be benefits he just isn't seeing. I remember those many, many MANY conversations, and it is pretty amusing to look back at some of the arguments my son used to give. But also be wary of self-defensive reactions on this issue, ones born out of a need to stress manage, even when he isn't aware that is why he is making the choice. Most ASD individuals need significant amounts of "down" time. It isn't an option; its a need. Just watch carefully so you can gauge accurately when to push, and when to let go.

Really, now? The teacher does not "get" homework . The teacher GIVES homework. He/she is the reason why kids have to do homework in the first place. Not only that, if a kid doesn't do well on his homework, he gets scolded by the teacher AND gets in trouble at home. And in the kid's mind, the teacher is the one who got him in trouble.

Also, grading homework is a cakewalk compared to doing it. The teacher has a special textbook with all the answers, for crying out loud! It may be tedious, but it's certainly not hard. (Although essays and reports are a different animal; they're the only homework where doing it and grading it take almost equal amounts of time.) Not only that, if the teacher does something wrong (like grade a homework incorrectly), he/she doesn't get in trouble for it at home.

So like it or not, the unfairness in there indeed. But life isn't supposed to be fair, especially for kids, so oh well.