my teen is failing 8th grade due to executive dysfunction =/

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I can relate. I think the feeling of helplessness is the worst part of it. That's why I've been absent from this forum for awhile.

Anyway, we have an accomodation in the IEP that may be worth trying. It states that the final grade is to be determined based on test scores and not the amount of homework turned in, so the student won't be unfairly penalized for executive function challenges. If homework can pull the grade up, then it can be counted. For example, right now the grade in one class with homework is an F and the grade just based on test scores is a C. This way the student is assessed based on knowledge and mastery of the subject. Best of luck!

update!

i couldnt get ahold of the SW yesterday so i spoke to her today. i expressed my belief that the plan in place is failing, and asked that we either figure something out or i would have to request an emergency iep mtg. she told me i needed to contact the principal about this.

spoke to the principal also, she refused my request to have the teachers inform us of his assignments. she says they have limited resources and dont know how much more they can do for him, and she is not comfortable asking the teachers to email his assignments every day because of the workload. she also said something to the effect that the school may not be able to support him and give him what he needs to continue on at the school, and that they have already made accommodations and overlooked his grades and couldnt do that much longer (his grades are not high enough for him to keep his place at the school).

i am so frustrated. i asked for him to be evaluated nearly a year ago, last april. we didnt have his first iep mtg until this past january. in the meantime, his grades have suffered for the lack of support, and now they want to use those grades as a basis to kick him out. i thought we were lucky to so easily get the asd eligibility after having to fight for it so hard for his brother, but now they are using it against him.

the principal says she doesnt know what to do besides have another PST (pupil service team) mtg, and i agreed to it. now we just wait until the SW lets us know when it is.

azurecrayon,

Let me start by saying you are not alone.

The situation you describe could have been written specifically for my 7th grader. I also recognize elements of myself in there.

Momsparky - everything you said made perfect sense to me. When I first entered the workforce I was smart, but I was never where I was supposed to be, and that caused a lot of problems. Enter the Psion organizer which I really couldn't afford at the time, but bought anyway. It saved my life. As for school? All I can say is Thank God that I didn't have the homework requirements that my children have or I would have failed miserably.

My eldest son does not have AS - but does have serious attention issues. Since his aspie brother seems to be doing so well these days we now have to turn our attention to the #1 son and help him get back on track. The suggestions here are great and we will be looking into using many of them. I particularly like the ideas of visual clues and taking pictures of the board. I have been taking pictures of white boards for years - a great way to quickly capture information and I use my iPhone to email it to myself. That way, when I get back to my desk, I have the picture and (in the form of an unread email) a little 'to do' just waiting for me.

I think the amount of time needed to capture something is key. If it takes too long, or is a multi-step process, then my son will be distracted before he completes it. He can't even complete a joke without getting side-tracked. For that reason taking a picture or, perhaps, having a simple - one button - audio recording device might be a good way to go. Chronos: Sorry, but you clearly just don't get it.

Most of the teachers in our schools put the homework on a web site for all kids to see. Is your school at least doing that? If not then I can certainly point you to a number of schools that do and perhaps you can use that to show the principal what other schools are doing. If other schools can manage it then his teachers should also be able to manage it.

As for your most recent post. Since you have been trying to get him seen for nearly a year it would be quite reasonable for you to say that any grades prior to his evaluation / acceptance should be ignored. Only the point from where 'help' is being given should count, and you clearly need enough time for the accommodations to be worked out through some trial and error.

Working with the school as much as possible without being confrontational is important. When we went to the IEP meeting my wife insisted on bringing our son in to meet everyone. This was as great idea as then they had to see him as a child and who needs help, not someone who is "difficult" or "a problem".
You will get much more in the way of help if you can get everyone to see him that way. (BTW - my wife has a new article posted in the articles section on wrong planet - see that here ) Yes...I am my wife's #1 fan

The next part should be considered in the "in case of emergency - break glass" category.
I am loath to do this but, if they insist that they cannot keep him because of his low grades, then I am afraid you might have to consider threatening legal action.
It is likely that your child costs more to keep around than NT kids, and this could be part of the reason they want to get him out. You need to remove that from the table. Any legal action (win, lose or draw) is going to cost the school a lot of money, probably far more than it would cost them to keep him in school. Please consider this as a last resort because once you open that Pandora's box things can get very difficult and it just about guarantees that they will only ever give the minimum, and will never offer services that could be available if only you knew about them. Don't even hint at it unless the situation is desperate.

You clearly care and have been trying to do the right thing. This is important because you have to be your child's #1 advocate.

Thank you for sharing as now we don't feel so alone either, and your post has generated lots of ideas that we can hopefully use to good effect with our son.

THIS >>>>>

I agree with all the rest of what houldsworth said, but I think that is a critical piece.

It may mean that an individual idea might not work. We don't know what goes on in someone else's head while they are trying to get the information where it needs to be; what feels like a one-step process for me might be too complicated for someone else. It may take a lot of trial and error to find the right answer, but don't let anyone allow the child to believe it is his fault. He needs the right tool - it might be any one of these tools, or a combination, or one we haven't thought of yet.

Case in point: I was totally unable to balance my checkbook all my life. I tried everything, duplicate checks with a running balance on the duplicate, a little book I kept with me, trying to type things into my ancient electronic organizer...nothing worked until we had the option of a downloadable online banking service. I could see electronic transactions in nearly real time, and could still check the duplicate checks to see if they'd cleared. Previously, I always missed a few transactions each month and usually wound up bouncing checks - the right technology (in this case a mix of manual and electronic technology) made all the difference in the world.

THIS >>>>>

I agree with all the rest of what houldsworth said, but I think that is a critical piece.

It may mean that an individual idea might not work. We don't know what goes on in someone else's head while they are trying to get the information where it needs to be; what feels like a one-step process for me might be too complicated for someone else. It may take a lot of trial and error to find the right answer, but don't let anyone allow the child to believe it is his fault. He needs the right tool - it might be any one of these tools, or a combination, or one we haven't thought of yet.

Case in point: I was totally unable to balance my checkbook all my life. I tried everything, duplicate checks with a running balance on the duplicate, a little book I kept with me, trying to type things into my ancient electronic organizer...nothing worked until we had the option of a downloadable online banking service. I could see electronic transactions in nearly real time, and could still check the duplicate checks to see if they'd cleared. Previously, I always missed a few transactions each month and usually wound up bouncing checks - the right technology (in this case a mix of manual and electronic technology) made all the difference in the world.

the school district he is in uses Skyward, its a really nice online access program, we can log in and see his assignments, grades for the entire year and past years, whats missing, etc. assignments can be entered in advance so that we can see what is coming up. you can click on the link to the assignment and it tells us when it was assigned, when due, points possible, points earned, overall grade, median and average grades earned by the class, etc. it is an AWESOME resource.

the only problem is that the teachers DONT USE IT APPROPRIATELY. out of his 6 classes, only ONE teacher actually enters stuff in advance when assigned. the rest only enter things on the day they were due, after class. that means the calendar is blank until after he has class that day, then he gets all these things in red entered because they werent turned in. they also enter things for the entire class, then dont enter individual grades right away, so things show up in red as missing when he turned them in and they just havent been graded and entered yet, and they sometimes sit that way for weeks. so while we THINK we know what was due that day, some things are listed as missing that arent, and we dont know what is even assigned until it is missing and counted late. and some teachers give no credit for late work.

my son has had lots of problems at school, being bullied, etc, at this school and his last one. he has a difficult time making friends, and he was very upset when we put him in this school instead of letting him go to the local district jr high with his friends from elementary. since he started at this school 1 1/2 yrs ago, hes complained about it and consistently told us he hated it. we knew it wasnt true, but thats his drama side coming out (he is in the theatre concentration at school heh). i spoke to him yesterday about what hes going to need to do to stay at this school and let him know he needs to decide to work for it. last night he broke down in tears and admitted to us that he loves his school, its the best school hes ever gone to, and he wants to stay there. we told him we will fight to keep him in if thats what he wants. i am very thankful he has finally told us exactly what he wants instead of acting like he doesnt care or hates his school. we plan for him to be at the PST mtg.

i imagine we will indeed need to fight them on the grades issue. because this is a gifted school, he had to test to get in, and must maintain C+ in theater and C in everything else, or he gets kicked out of school. i think the fact that it IS a public school will work in our favor, as they must abide by IDEA laws. but i get the feeling, after talking with the new principal, that she doesnt want to provide supports, and would rather just kick him on the basis of grades.

the most annoying part is that they keep saying they are a small school with limited resources. its not like we are asking for an aide or assistive devices. the things we are requesting are FREE. it would cost them NOTHING. but it would mean the difference between failure and success for N.

Reading your story brings tears of frustration to my eyes.
I went through this and feel like it is a never ending battle.
I wish they we had done what DenvrDave recommends.
Only grade on test scores.

So many AS kids struggle with the social piece, the navigation of their day...
that when they get home. HW should be excluded. They should recover
and return to school the following day.

Anyway, Just wanted you to know you are not alone, Reading all your posts
reminds me of the struggles we had in 7th grade. We are in 11th. It is not
much better. A little. I could cry with all the hardship we went through. I only
wish we had hired an attorney back when we first went through it all. Your
son's administration needs to help more by better communication or take away
the homework. I do know how you feel. Sorry anyone ever has to have
these kinds of struggles.

Wishing you peace in this process.

This is not as easy as it sounds. I know what this kid is going through. When I was in college, I had similar issues. I won't say that things were as problematic as with this kid, but I had serious trouble with organization. I tried binders. I tried stuffing papers in my bookbag. I tried lots of things. With binders, even color-coded sections became annoying. And then I tried to have one for every subject. I can't even tell you why I had trouble with this. It was as if everything was in chaos. Trying to match things up with what was in the book, trying to flip through pages in a binder to read them, all the while trying to stay focused in the classroom. Honestly, it was a nightmare. I basically gave up and resorted to using the book as my main point of reference. It's not just about organization but also about staying focused. I have lost things, too, but for the most part, I didn't. I just had trouble finding certain papers. I knew I had them, but it took me a while to find them. If he is like I was, I doubt binders are going to help much. Colored sections would be worse. I needed a binder for each subject. I would say that binders are to be used, but they aren't going to lessen the anxiety. At least, they didn't for me.

I have come to despise teachers who, in this present day, resort to using so many papers. What's wrong with the Web? During later years in college, most classes had the materials on the web. Schools that are using paper-heavy classes are doing a disservice, at least in my view. Maybe part of the IEP should be to have stuff electronically handled? I don't know, but piling through lots and lots of papers for a single item, when you can hardly keep your own room and other papers in check, is a nightmare. I had drawers and shelves filled with papers I have no idea as to what they were ever for. There was just not enough room for all the papers I had to contend with.

RayErnest,

Thank you for your perceptive voice.
After reading Chronos I was feeling terrible about my son's struggles.
Blaming myself that I had not been teaching him better ways to organize.
Bad mom syndrome!
My son truly struggles with executive function. Far more than his AS, ADD
or any other issues he has going on. Every day it is one step forward, two steps
back but little by little he moves. His EF issues paralyze him and are the largest
issue he has in his life. And of course this is the area that is important for
survival. Binders, notebooks, colored folders, ... are not helpful. When
teachers put there assignments on line this is a solution and works great.
Not all teachers are tech savvy.

Your magnificent encouraging words about your own struggles
helped me feel like I do not have to blame my son or myself.
thank you,
magicmom