Call me bad mom - I let my son be late to school

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Call me bad Mom. I took Henry late to school so he could finish reading his book (he was 5 minutes late). He got much more out of reading words like: Frighten, whispered, thought and shivered than looking to see that FIRE on the front page is the same word on the second page and learning to write F. He's tired of color too. While his coloring used to be so precise and tidy, he's not quit that and just scribbles to get it done and over with. I have to wonder what other bad habits he'll learn.

Already with now two weeks of homework behind him, he says, "Homework is bad." Because.... it's WAY beneath him. Writing the letter over and over again. coloring the letters that start with the same letter, counting 1-10. He did all of that at 3.

I don't want to make a habit of him being late, but it made me realize how underwhelming the curriculum is for him. Which, if he's not going to participate fully, is good in some ways as he already knows it and can do it, but... I'm sure it's boring for him too.

How do you combat that, especially since lots of ASD kids are so bright?

Hey 2Berry, well after reading my post, you probably don't feel like such a bad mom after all!! ! LOL!

Angelbear - I've been there. I've lashed out in self defense with my older son, more than once. He has realllllly strong ADHD and has impulse control issues. In the end though, I think he learned from it as it wasn't something that I usually let happen, but he learned mom has limits to her patience and can sometimes lose control too. We would talk about it, I would apologize, etc.

We did get him a punching bag, btw, so that when he felt all pent up and frustrated, he could take it out in a healthy way, instead of a lash out at parents kind of way. It helped. And he's SO NOT a violent kid, just sometimes had to let it all out.

I was hyperlexic when I first started school too. Personally it would have benefit me if people would have taught me about how to express myself and about social skills as I didn't learn any of that until I was an adult. In actuality my teachers used to let me spend a lot of time on the computer because it kept me out of mischief I think probably doing something constructive is better than being bored all day as I was pretty much throughout school. Also being bored leads to getting into trouble so I would be inclined to try talking to the teacher just to make sure he always has something constructive to do. Also don't confuse rote memory for genuine intelligence because its not the same thing and I have always struggled a lot with practical tasks and project work despite my supposed intelligence! Good luck and don't feel bad, my mum used to get so vexed shed let me stay off school too

During the years of elementary school, the rules should occasionally be broken. Even the teachers will tell you that - once they've figured out you are a solid and responsible mom Although ... if you take it to the point we had to last year, when my daughter was basically sick for 3 months straight and we decided whatever school we could get her to was better than no school, you will get a very nasty letter from the school district. Stay short of that, and you'll be fine. I've made those types of choices many a time, and when I've explained them to the teachers or principal, they've always supported me.

How did we deal with the mind-numbing boredom, the hours spent on stuff he learned in the first five minutes, the robotic drawing and colouring and copying "to order", and the waiting, and listening, and sitting still, the repetition, time-wasting, etc, etc, etc? ... With home-un-schooling.

My 11 year old PDD/AS son tried school aged 5, ( three weeks ) twice aged 10 ( three weeks and four months ), and again aged 11, ( at "big school", two weeks ), and only once found it tolerable at a tiny school with only 19 children in a two-year class, and a vibrant, very "present" teacher, and even there he was getting bored the last month or so, just stuck it to finish the school year and keep the Academic Inspection off our backs.

Don't know what we'd do if we couldn't home-un-school.
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I'd like to thank you, twice, for being such a great mom! First, for restoring my faith that there are some parents who understand the harm the educational system can do to their kids. Second, on behalf of your son. I have some idea what the poor guy is going through. If you're wondering why I say that, see my reply here http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt140705.html (it's the fourth one down, I think). And I really didn't go into nearly all the lowest points in that reply.

I forgot to suggest you talk to the teacher about modifying the homework - upwards. And, maybe, the in-class work, too. A good school can adapt each assignment for various levels of ability. Let's see if they will rise to that challenge.

OMG! Five minutes late!

Mom, you're FIRED!

Sarcasm!

Hun. Everyone gets to be late, and it might be good to teach him that the occassional rebellion (limited of course!) is not going to lead to armageddon.

As for boredom and frustration with the simplicity of the school year...

1. See if there's a chance he could skip a grade. Does he want to try this? Let him consider.
2. Play with the stupidity of the class projects.
i) Tell him to make fun of the coloring by doing it all in the wrong color. Blue apples, pink clovers, black stars, green horseshoes. Give him a thin marker and let him draw a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Or add a unicorn to the top left corner of the page.
ii) Next time he has to write a page of letters, turn the whole bloody book upside down and do the letters that way. You did your homework right? So what if it's unconventional, it's still done right, and you've shown how much you respect the drivel of it.
iii) Do more. Add complexity. Convince him to get creative while still doing the intended work... Color in all the words that start with the same letter, then turn the page and start writing a story containing all those words. Tell him to ask if he can read his story to the class. That not only will get him to practice social / public speaking, it'll give him a challenge and give the teacher such a heart attack that he'll automatically be skipped ahead.


I'm such a @%-disturber

You could try skipping a grade or homeschooling. Maybe one-on-one tutoring with a tutor who can adapt the material to his learning style and can see where he needs to speed up or slow down. That's how I'm finishing high school, but I would expect there to be some way of doing it for elementary school...

Oh, and tell him to make up stories about how the class is really a spaceship and... I dunno, he can come up with the rest, right? Tell him to do that when it get boring, but not tell anyone.

As he gets older he could possibly do gifted and talented or advanced classes. As for now I would be asking for harder assignments or little jobs to do in the classroom.

But I never really had this problem and never get bored, so I can't relate.

That isn't a guarantee of much. When I was a freshman in high school, I had an English teacher who bored me to death. She complained to my mother because I was reading in class all the time. Well, I stared at her. Every moment. Every day. Until she called my mother and begged her to get me to start reading in class again.

So I ended up doing independent study, because it was obvious to everyone that this class just wasn't going to work for me. Every Monday, she gave me an assignment to turn in on Friday, I goofed off until Thursday night, then whipped something off. I got A's on every one of those assignments - and I overheard her in the teachers' room, complaining about all the sleep she was losing, coming up with assignments that would "challenge" me.

That same year, I had another English class (I got special permission to take extra electives), and I just took the standard course. No special treatment at all. And I worked my butt off, and had fun doing it. That was one of the few good teachers I ever had - and one class, he came in and told us that the night before, in the School Committee meeting, he'd stood up and told them everything that was wrong with the school system, then told them "Before you can fire me, I quit!" It was a tragedy, but I totally understand why he had to do it.

The moral of the story? It all depends very much on the individual teacher. And there is a very small percentage of teachers capable of overcoming the shortcomings of the system in order to really teach their students.

When I was in elementary school and I would tell them the work was too easy, they'd reply "Well good, you'll just finish it faster then."

This was an entirely irrelevant statement because there wasn't a pre-determined amount of work. When you finished one assignment they would simply give you another one to do.

It also proved to me they really didn't have my education at heart.

Shortly after I left elementary school, they developed a program for gifted students called GATE, which my brother, who has similar test scores to my own, was put in.

You should ask to have your son tested and be given level appropriate work. You would be a bad mom if you tried to force your son to waste his time with work which does not benefit him.

My sister was like that...I think she is an aspie but never diagnosed. Anyway, she taught herself to multiply when she was 18 months old and could read by 3 years old. Needless to say kindergarden was hell for her at first. She broke out in hives for 3 weeks straight due to stress and the teacher cried in the shower for 3 weeks straight...until mom interviened and told the teacher that she needed to be challanged more in her class. So the teacher gave her legos and she built replica effiel tower that was 3 ft. tall. All the kids in the county that went on to Ivy league came out of that kindergarden class in the poorest school of the county. She went on to an Ivy leauge college and is now in law school. My sister not only made the teacher think about how much a young child is capable of doing...she taught her teacher how be a great teacher.

It is important that your son be challanged in school...otherwise he will go the way of many bright kids and that is being grave underachievers because school is boring to them, but this impacts their life in a negitive way. My mom always stayed on her teachers about challanging my sister to push her intelectual limits, not merely half@ssing projects while getting A's because she met the limits of other student's ability.
This is very important. I also would advise you to have him put in gifted classes, some school have gifted classes starting in kindergarden. A private school principal told mom that kids like my sister either go on to be like albert schwartz or end up dying their hair pink and purple and hanging out at bus stops. And your son is the same way, so he needs to be challanged to HIS ability not the ability of other kids. He has already started a bad behavior of getting behind on homework because it does not challange him...this behavior will only get worse if he is not challaged and he will fail classes not because he is stupid...but because it does not teach him anything.