How to motivate my child to want to learn

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My son is 10 years old. He has an ASD diagnosis, is verbal, can read but comprehension is low. Academics are low. We recently placed him in a separate class since his EA was being revoked and he would not be able to succeed in grade 4 deoing grade 1 work alone. PROBLEM: he is not doing much better in this new class. His teacher is lame and he himself has ZERO motivation to learn. His printing is barely legible yet he has no interest in typing. He seems to think he will get by on his interests in dinos, sharks and snakes. How do we save him before he loses all chances at a decent education. I am convinced it is a matter of lazy and you may ridicule me but I work in the school system and know for a fact nothing motivates him. Anyone facing this or have faced this please help me out....

I'm not going to ridicule you, but I will challenge your terminology. Lazy is a common and damaging misperception with AS kids, and despite the larger than normal-for-AS lag, I will suggest there is a reason for his resistance and delay that the adults around him have not yet tuned into. You are at risk for him tuning out and shutting down out of frustration and that must be avoided at all costs.

Obviously learning to read fluently is hard, and you haven't sold him on the need for it well enough for him to dig in and figure out his challenges, or he isn't convinced that he can. AS can very much be a condition of seeing high concrete walls where maybe only actually a hedge exists, but you aren't going to motivate him to figure out a way through until he sees a crack in the concrete. He needs to experience some success and he needs to incorporate into his world view the ways reading will make his life better. Then, when and if he is developmentally ready, he'll push.

Remember that many kids go through a stage where their interest in reading material far out strips their ability to read at a similar livel, and practicing on all that lame (to them) reading material is exceedingly dull and frustrating. Getting past that is HARD.

As for writing, I have several posts here that detail the successful path we used to get our son keyboarding. Your son cannot learn to type yet, his hands are not developmentally ready for it, and as someone in education I am surprised you don't know that. Push him on an area he isn't ready for, and you get mutual frustration, no progress. That needs to stop or he won't make the progress he can make. You need to have a realistic plan here, and having just come through to the other side on this issue, having felt our way through it, I do think that we lucked out in getting the right plans in place with the IEP team at the right time, and I can now at least provide a blue print. I've written long details divided among several threads and I encourage you to find them.

Something to remember: being in education yes, you've seen many kids and figured out how to teach many kids. But very few were AS and even fewer faced the exact set of challenges your son faces. Don't let the fact that you theoretically have this huge well to draw from keep you from seeing your son as a unique individual who needs his mom to understand what he is actually going through, and not what he should be going through.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 19 Apr 2011, 12:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

The definition of lazy:

lazy (n): Disinclined to work or exertion

Autistics do not have the same priorities that other people do. He probably has no comprehension for why an education is important. Just because everybody else is doing it probably means nothing to him. Telling him he needs it do work with his interests later on in life is too much foresight for a 10 year old to understand.

When I read your post I think, well so what? I have little opportunity for normal places in society and as such formal education isn't important to me, and is in fact worthless. All formal education is is scoring high enough on standardized tests. Autistics are not standard.

Secondly, an elementary education does not mean anything for higher education later on. Nobody will be looking at what he did as an elementary school student if he ever wants to go to college later on. If he will ever catch up it will be on his own time.

I'm thinking that if you could tap into his interests in dinosaurs, sharks, and snakes, he might show a lot more motivation. Maybe you could start with getting him to write neatly the names of dinosaurs under pictures of them or something. I don't know how his school situation would support that, though.

Edit: someone who is more familiar with Tracker's book should mention it, perhaps.

My son is in K and his every homework starts with "I don't want to do the work". Honestly, I understand that since I would not want to go back to school and do schoolwork/homeworks again (and I was not a bad student at all) but that is his work and he needs to do it. And that is what we repeat every time: "this is your work and you need to do it, adults have jobs and kids go to school, we all went and did our homeworks". He is okay with academics but often refuses to do the work in school so we set up a reward system (he gets a toy or a treat if he is not misbehaving). At home we simply put it as "no option" however if I see that it is too hard or he is too stuck we help out but make sure he is on track.

I would work with him at home to help him get the important stuff. Don't fuss oveer the small problems or topics, for example reading is important but what happened in a particular fairy tale is not.
Also I would put an emphasis on a passing grade (or whatever level you expect from him) and not on "good education" or learning that are more abstract things for him to grasp (they are difficult for me too).

PS: and yes I believe in "lazy". When I was growing up most kids were lazy and prefer to play and not to do schoolwork. And most lottery winners do not work after getting the money. There are cases where people love their jobs but most people work for money and because of necessity, similar thing is with school.

Tracker's book, which we on this board consider a super resource for parents, can be downloaded FREE from ASDStuff.com

My son is 9 and in grade 3. He also is not motivated at school ever since grade 1. As you say, normal motivation techniques don't work, and it's because to him, it's all boring, only his 'special interest' interests him. But my son has gotten by through a mixture of things. I think he 'tolerates' school work, if he still has enough time during the day to spend with his special interest. The teachers have to a certain extent allowed him to carry on with his own thing, as long as he has done the assigned work. Yes, telling him he needs an education for the future just draws a blank look to his face! I think these kids may never really enjoy schoolwork like other kids, but if somehow by hook or by crook we can cajole them along until they get to the age where they can find out for themselves something they like which is more like their special interest, then maybe something will 'click' and they'll find their niche.

Both of my boys learned to read for their special interests. (One is as the other NT - but the NT guy has always had special interests too).

The internet is pretty worthless if you can't read. Once my kids figured out that they could get every bleeding detail about whatever they wanted on the internet - they stopped fussing.

For my older guy, hos love of pokemon helped him learn on his game boy (I wasn't going to read it for him). My younger one, has learned everything about WWE wrestlers, and any song he has ever fixated on. He has learned to play music and researched science experiments - all online.

When the HW assignment was read 20 minutes, I couldn't get that to happen in a book - but no problem online. I needed to open my mind to figure out what my goal was, and if it fit my goal. I wanted him to read - why do I care where he does it.

My son does not like academics. There is no way around it. He loves to learn though - just not necessarily what they want to teach. I do my best to nuture his love of learning - which so far, school has not.

OK well...

Tomorrow I meet with the teacher and principal for the 7th time in three months to once again defend my son and give them all the reasons stated above for his lack of success. I have MANY times stated to them that ASD is a syndrome NOT an attitude. Have I given up on my son no? I simply come to you for a personal input to aid in suggestions for helping him out. I totally get that in his mind all this is irrelevant but fact remains he has to go to school and if we don't care later what his success was in elementary school, how do I, as a parent stand by and put him through this &%^$ knowing the stress it puts him under? Maybe he's onto something, maybe I should just let him stay at home and learn about dinos etc until he's old enough to make his choice.

I can give you a strategy on the writing. I can't on the reading, but I can on the writing. And I just tried to find a link to the last two posts where I went through this in detail but #!*(@#&@ I didn't find them.

It is hard to know from a first post where a parent is on this journey and, well, you had a few words and phrases that made it seem maybe you were in a different place than you currently are.

So lets start over.

What is currently in the IEP on the writing issue, and what has the school been doing? If we have that starting point, we can stop telling you what you already know, and start brainstorming from a new place.

I had the same issues with my son and took him out of school early on to home educate him. He is self-directed by his interests now and gets more out of unschooling than he ever did at a high cost private school. My son plays video games. He got interested in an RPG. I read him everything that was said in the RPG for three days. After three days I told him that if he wanted to play the game and understand it, he needed to learn to read because I had other things to take care of.

Kids (all kids) need valid reasons for why they are learning what they are learning. Nothing spoils formal education more than having no reason other than "because that's what you need to learn." Learning is only of value to those who see the reason behind the learning. Most formal education is rote learning that none of us maintain unless we are interested anyhow. We learn in school to pass tests and then forget what we have learned. How many adults can recall everything learned from K-12? We usually remember our literacy lessons, our math lessons and other things we actually apply. If we're interested in history, we remember that. If we're interested in science, we remember that. If not, we don't unless we grow up and have to apply it somehow.

Does your son want to drive a car? Does he want to have a bank account? Does he ever want to live on his own? Get some local forms from a variety of places in your area; real estate applications, driver license application, whatever you feel might be pertinent. Show him the reason we need to be able to write. Show him why and how Paleontologists became professional scientists (they have to write reports and describe species in order to get funding). I explain to my son that the reason we write is that we cannot recall things easily without the written word. Show your son this in concrete terms. Have him write what he wants from the grocery store on a grocery list. Don't buy what is not on the list. (You are very sorry, but you could not remember what he wanted because he didn't write it down. Your life is very busy and stressful and you need to have things written down to remember). Someone needs to show him why writing will benefit him in his interests in life.

In my very honest and personal opinion, he would have more success in life if you did let him stay at home. There's some great reading from some brilliant teachers about this issue (links below). I realise home ed is not an option that comes easy to most of us, but sometimes (and I honestly believe this with all my heart) it can mean the difference between success for our kids and a life of clinical depression and misery.

Best of luck to you. I really feel your frustration and empathise with it from my own personal experiences.

http://www.holtgws.com/johnholtpage.html
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

Also, have you looked at some of the comorbid conditions that can lead to reading comprehension issues? I wish I could remember the names of them, but since we didn't have that issue, I never latched on. But there is actually a condition that could be involved.

Other areas we could discuss, if they apply, are managing work load and stress. Some AS kids put on a good "I don't care" act out of self-defense, becuase they just don't believe they CAN confront the work load. For that I have some strategies, too.

Unfortunately, much of what we might talk about can take me hours to compose, and I have to confess I've gotten tired of setting aside things with my family to do that, when I'm not entirely sure it applies. We can't answer you in a sentence, it doesn't work that way. So, I need more to go on before I invest.

I can't relate as my first AS son was hyperlexic and most of my kids pretty much started reading on their own b/c we are such a reading oriented family. However, my AS son did have terrible handwriting for years, and until he learned cursive it didn't improve. Keyboarding did help, and I also allowed him to narrate stories into a tape recorder, or dictate to me.

We home educate, and I can't really relate to the issues in the school system. I would support, wholeheartedly keeping him home if you can.

One of the key things in my kids learning to read is a weekly (or however often I can make it) trip to the library. Leading them to books on their special interest, they became motivated. Even just printing lables for their toys of special interest got them writing when they didn't know they were "working on writing". Some books were favorites and they memorized them, but in turn, they also began to recognize letter sounds, ect. For us it moved naturally into real reading.

I hope you can find what works best for your son and I mostly offer support for home education if you can. If your son can take the lead in what he is motivated toward and wants to learn, that may be your best option. If you did a unit on his subject of choice, he is likely going to be more motivated in general.

In homeschool convetions I have seen something called "Handwriting without tears" and heard many boast it's rewards. I'm very lax in this and let them learn on their own, not neccicarily through traditional methods. No lined paper, no correction or red marks on the page. Just helping them work through what they've written and tell them what would make it easier for me to read. Right now my 6yro AS dd will write her letters and words sort of run together and how they sound to her. I praise her for all her hard work but tell her she must read it to me b/c I can't make it out. When she makes signs or posters she wants others in the family to read what she has painstakingly written, so she takes my advice on how to make it more legible. We have a big white board and I will write words or sentences she dicates to me and she will attempt to copy. I don't push. My kids did keyboarding early and were thrilled to come to me and say, "Mom! I can type 25wpm!" at age 6 or 7. They have fun w. the typing games and when prtinted out and put on the fridge becomes a source of pride for the learner. In homeschooling you have so much room to do what you sense your child needs, so if that is an option for you, I encourage you to go for it!

I wish you all the best!

In my experience with my son, it took me a very long time to really understand what he truly has to overcome in order to get his school work done. One of the things we did was have him evaluated by a vision therapist. This is not the same thing as an opthamologist. My son's vision was tested and was found to be totally normal....but this test was a whole lot more comprehensive. That helped him with not only writing, but also with reading. He still struggles with writing.

I came to realize that he should only do the minimum amount of homework...zero homework is ideal for him. There are studies that prove that homework is mostly useless. Maybe if you can explain to him that you understand that he needs to rest when he gets home...maybe then he'll be more motivated to do the work at school. Someone explained AS to be like running very fast and someone is chasing you (I think this was in Tracker's book, but I have a problem with my memory). Anyway, there is so much to overcome sensory, social, etc...and then, when you come home, you just want to decompress. Let your child rest and enjoy his special interests.

Another thing that helped my son in school was to limit the repetition. So, let's say the teacher gave out a math problem and they like to keep kids busy by giving them 20 other similar problems. Well, that's great for some kids, but for my son, it is completely overwhelming! We made a deal that as long as he got one or two right (he would get the hardest ones to do), then he didn't have to do anymore and he could do what he wanted (computer time, drawing, supervised time on the playground to let him take a break, etc.).

I used to go to IEP meetings and tell them to pretend that my son has no hands! I wanted them to understand how tough writing was for him, but they kept saying that it's just not a preferred task. I want to scream just thinking about it!! ! Eventually, we were able to get my son more multiple choice type tests and also to have him dictate answers/essays or to do oral exams. To this day, his teachers consider him to be a Math genius because he insists on doing all the work in his head...just to avoid writing. That is not lazy. That is compensation. In 4th grade, he got a D in Science because he refused to write his lab notes, even though he knew the science material better than his teacher or anyone in the class. To me, that is a failure of a teacher to recognize the gifts that lie within my son. Someone like that shouldn't be teaching. I believe that a teacher who tries to see the best in every child is a successful one. Hone in on what your child loves and therein you will find the motivation.

Once I realized that my son was really doing the best he could, then I went into meetings with a whole different attitude. I also had a much better relationship with him....instead of blaming him like the school did, I was finally on his side and that is where I"ll stay until the day I die.

Sorry I was jumping from one thing to another here. I just get really frazzled when I think of all that I want to express here. I'm not sure if any of this helps you. I really get the frustration of trying to make it all work. Just keep trying and you will find a way.

Wow, I really need to learn to do that quote thingy you guys here on WP are doing. Luckymommy, my AS son is the same way re. doing "math in his head" all his life just to avoid writing!! !!
Only now, doing calculus (at age 14 mind you) does he "show his work" and still only minimaly. Compensation big time!

Also like your son, my son hates repitition in work, He finds it a waste of time. When he attended private school the first few yrs before we homeschooled, he would be misreable the first few weeks of "review" and any time review was needed in class. Once I got him in the home classroom, he proved to me over and over he didn't need this. He was right, it was a waste of his time, and mine! So we don't do it unless there is something he doesn't quite grasp.

I will add that now he has beautiful handwriting, when he wants to!