doing school work

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I may have written a smiliar post, but here goes:

My son is just 7 and in 2nd grade. He is homeschooled and working mostly on a 3rd grade and above level in all areas. We are back to school, so I am once again baffled by how he completes school work and wondering if I should just let it be or try to conform it a bit.

Here is what we did today, simple work, he had to read a sentence, underline the noun and state if the noun was a person, place or thing.

My son reads the sentence, he wil then identify the noun, he talks thru every step. "Ok, so if teeth is the noun, and my teeth are in my mouth, my mouth can be a place my teeth are in, but my teeth arent a place. A place is like the store or the park, and teeth arent one of those things. I say teeth are a thing, even though there are in a place called your mouth, but your mouth really isnt a place that you can go to..."

Now, that was one sentence. And If I dont say something, like "Ok, great you figured out that teeth was the noun in the sentence and it is a thing, great! Lets move on to the next sentence!" he will keep going and going.

It can take an extremely long amount of time to complete a simple task casue he does this for each and every sentence.

I love that he is making connections and he is really thinking about it, but it almost feels OCDish in nature. Like he cant just stop the thought process once it starts and he is compelled to say all that he might know about the topic.

If he was in school, this would be a huge issue. I am able to deal with it casue he is homeschooled, but part of me wonders if I should try to cut back on his thinkin out loud and rambling in all directions, or just let it be.

Also, anyone else with aspergers do this??? Is it helping him come up with the answer? It feels to me like it takes him off topic and I have to keep bringing him back to what he needs to do!

We have an ABA who comes a few times a month. I am going to have him observe my son doing ork and see what he makes of it too!

I think there should be some moderation. It is likely that he needs to explain it more to himself and it may increase his anxiety to not be allowed to explain. At the same time, it can make a simple assignment/task take forever. So, maybe let him do it on the beginning half and set a separate goal to just name the item/provide the answer in the second half (or less if that is his comfort zone) Or if it is about comforting his anxiety about being unsure of himself, let him pick 2 or 3 he is "sure" about to "just answer." It is my understanding that the need to explain fully (and often seeming tangentially) is a common trait for many people with AS.

That's a hard one, because it is so cool, and so smart.

I might maybe start out by introducing one timed assignment a day. Make it a game. Have something like what you described, nothing he has to write out or anything, just circle the nouns, underline the verbs or whatever; and have him make a game of how fast he can do it while still getting all the questions right. Then see what he does. It will help you see if he can be flexible when he needs to or if it is a train of thought that he feels he has to follow through on.

good thoughts! thanks I will try that.

He also does it with math, he will do a problem and try to make patterns out of it or connections to other examples. One of my favs is how he does multiplication. He knows counting by 2s, and when multiplying my 4, he will count two 2s in a row. SO he will say, 4X8... 2-4, 6-8, 10-12, 14-16, 18-20,..etc...all the way till he has multiplied 8 times. And then he will tell me why, because there are 2-2s in 4. He tries to find patterns like this in all the work he does. he figured out he can double 3s to multiply by 6s and he figured out he cant double anything to multiply by odd numbers, etc... It is smart, and I appreciate it to an extent. But it is extremely time consuming, and sometimes he gets so off on a tangent he forgot what the initial problem or question was. When adding he will add patterns up or down, and it has nothing to do with solving the problem, he just enjoys it. Thats fine, but it takes forever and he forgets what the original question was!! ! That is why I worry about this. If he was doing that and not getting so lost in it, I would probably not be as worried!

When he really gets into his speeches, he will get up and pace, sometimes jump. I feel like in a way its a stim. He gets super excited when he figures out a new rule or new way to solve something, or even just making connections with other material he has learned in the past. Pacing, jumping, laughing...is it a stim??? If i keep him seated during these episodes he is squirming, tapping pencil, looking in the sky, bouncing his legs, etc...movement is a huge part of it!

I used to time his work, but he get overly anxious over the timer. I might try to do a timed part of the work. Maybe the last few problems he has to do as fast and accurate and QUIET as he can.

My son likes to make his homework into a game too, so I know where you are coming from. Of course since my son is autistic, the games are autistic with patterns and whatnot, too. Right now we are trying some of the ideas in "Smart but Scattered," which we bought after seeing multiple references to it on this site. We just started yesterday, after dealing with a 2 hour homework session the night before, that involved more fussing and crying than work. The difference between last night and the night before was incredible.

Your son seems good with task initiation at least (unlike my son), so it is more efficiency (and quiet) that you are working on. We added rewards for getting work done in a timely fashion, with an earlier start time as a consequence for dawdling. You could probably develop something like that to meet your needs. Don't time it in an obvious way if it freaks him out, but reward him if he finishes earlier, by some reasonable transitional amount.

smart but scattered sounds like my son...lol! I am going to look into that

He is saying exactly what goes on in my brain much of the time, but I have ADD and not ASD, so I don't know how much overlap there is.

Here is what I can tell you from my experience: it is both a hindrance and a help. It is a hindrance because sometimes, like your son, it takes me a lot longer to complete things because I go off on tangents and lose what I was supposed to be doing. Sometimes my brain will circle back around to what we started with, but sometimes, unfortunately, things get left undone.

Sometimes it is a help because there are times in which relationships and patterns are not readily observable and are hidden. Because my brain does this, sometimes I am able to "see" things at work that other people do not see, but once I point it out, everyone can see it. It is seen as a valuable skill by my employer.

What to do with a 7 year old? I haven't a clue and I don't recall much of what it was like to do this at 7. Is there a way to structure his learning to allow for this sometimes, but inhibit it sometimes? I don't know if maybe I would have been able to learn to "turn it off" for awhile if I would have gotten help with it at a young age. But I can tell you that I wish I had more control over it. I suppose that is what meds are for, but I'm afraid if I take meds, I will lose it all together and I would not be happy without it.

This probably didn't help <sigh>

I work through problems the same way. I also think out loud when alone I try not do it around other people as people think you are crazy when you talk to yourself.