Help with helping an Aspie/ADD teen with exams?

Post Reply New Topic

Hiya - I have a 16 year old who is in the midst of diagnosis.....he does not need a "reader/writer" for exams, but will need a separate space and a person to prod him to stay on task....or a stop watch or something. He has been home schooled for 8 years and is now doing correspondence in prep for university as he wants to do a degree in Computer Science. (He will be perfect for this!).

My question is - how do you help them go back over their work and really make sure it makes sense etc.

Soemtimes - he will do his maths books fine - but on the assessments, he will suddenly decide what he's done before for the problem at hand is no longer relevant and makes stuff up, gets it wrong, then hates to be told he needs to do what he has been taught.

And other times - he really cannot see that this is a problem OR that he has done anything differently at all.

Any hints on how to help him go over his work with a clear mind/observant mind?

=)

Blessings in advance. xx

Practice, experience, and a lot of years to grow up and mature?

Yeah. The last part is tough, but I have a 16 year old son, too, and I am seeing a lot of developmental gaps when it comes to things like this. So sorry for talking about my son and his issues for a bit, but maybe just the share can set off some ideas for you.

For us, a key missing piece is desire/belief he can do it. My son is having to figure out now, as a sophomore, that he can't get by on "being smart" any longer. Most kids figure it out earlier, but he just was not ready. So he had to tank a key exam in this crucial grade year for college admissions to realize that, um, yes, you have to STUDY for finals.

And even then he is lost as to how.

Which is why I think he was in complete denial about needing to. He has a hard time digging into things that do not come quickly to him, or that he can't see a path forward in. To do that, he needs to find deep desire for success, AND to believe he CAN find success.

I assume you have already shared all the strategies that worked for you, when you were in school? That is how we've been approaching it, having him practice things we've found successful and then brainstorming with him for ideas on how to adapt them to his needs.

my problem with things like that was if I did not have an interest in it I just could not do very good at it. things like math I always did really bad in because I could never apply it to the real world but things like history and science which I had an interest in I was always at the top of my grade. maybe find a way for him to apply things he needs to learn to real world scenarios thats what helped me for math even though I barely scraped by on it, I only passed the state test by 1 point in math.

THANK you! I do understand. I was always like that myself and still am. If it was me - if they turned everything into punny word play I'd remember the whole lot! lol

His thing is - he really likes Math and is motivated - but gets that muddled bit from one piece of paper to the next sometimes - but doing what you have done should help lots.

I hadn't thought of that. =)

*hugs*

for math have you tried grid paper or turning his paper sideways so he has columns instead of lines? Somehow that helps my son organize better. Chewing gum also helps.

With my daughter sometimes I have to point out that there are times in which rules must always be followed (like in Math, and spelling/vocabulary...she often says she likes her spelling better, or the word she made up better and she thinks everyone should just let her use it), there are times when you can bend the rules (like in creative writing) and there are times when there are no rules (like in art).

Here is a trick I taught myself to make me carefully check my tests. I tried to estimate my final score as closely as possible. So, I answered all the questions. Then I went back and categorized my answers into 3 categories: 1) answers I was 100% sure I had correct, 2) answers I had better than 50% chance of having correct, meaning I could narrow down the choices I knew were incorrect, etc and 3) answers I was basically guessing at. I estimated my worst score to be only those that I was 100% sure were correct, my "likely" score to be those I was 100% sure of + 50% of the ones I was 50% sure on + 25% of the ones I was guessing on, and my "best score" to be all of #1, all of #2, and half of #3. I was very motivated by trying to guess "right" so it made me be very picky about how I categorized my answers. This pickiness made me pay close attention to both the question and my answer. When I got my test back, the thing I was usually most interested in was whether or not I correctly categorized the answers and how close my "formula" came to predicting my "likely grade."

I should state that this did not make me an A student in HS. But it did help me maintain the B average that was expected of me as I knew which classes were easier (a higher number of category 1's) so I knew which classes to study harder for in order to balance out the the classes I was getting a C in.

I continued doing this in college because I found when I didn't, I was usually one of the first ones done with the test and completely uninterested in checking my answers. Grad school it didn't work in because the whole grading philosophy was changed in many of the classes, but it served me well for many years.