Not getting it / understanding

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Hello, Just wondering if anyone might be able to offer some insight or advice on the topic of understanding.
My son is 6.5 and officially NT, although he's always been slightly quirky, which is why I'm here.
I've been told by his latest teacher that when the class go off to do their work, my son can get anxious / tearful because he doesn't know what he's meant to be doing. She said that after a bit of reassurance he's ok. She also mentioned that sometimes he doesn't understand the task because of the language used (e.g. he couldn't divide the pieces but when she told him to share them he understood). This was a bit of a surprise because last year we were under the impression he was doing fine. He's a brilliant reader and talker, and loves school.
The things on his school action plan are having a buddy, and participating in circle time, which all the class do anyway. However I'm not sure how this will help him figure things out for himself.
In the mean time we've reminded him that he can ask the teacher, or his buddy if he needs a bit of extra help.

What could potentially be causing this lack of understanding?
Is there anything we can do as parents to help?

Thanks

It is not uncommon for kids who appeared to be "officially" NT at say 5 or 6 to have a harder and harder time with school as they get older. I've read that many Aspie's don't get dx until 9 yo. Perhaps your son falls into this group and should be re-evaluated? It sounds like he has difficulty with pragmatic speech, a common occurrence with Aspies. I guess in a nutshell it means that the child lacks the real functional understanding of communication. Often verbal communication is where the biggest or only deficit lies thus you see kids like yours that read well and seem to talk well but can't follow verbal instructions. My DS, also 6.5, is like this. And school at this age is almost all about verbal instructions. Until they put an aide with DS about 6 weeks ago, it was almost like English was his second language and he was not very fluent but everyone at school treated him like the native English speaker that he appears to be. He simply did not understand most of what was being asked of him. I am convinced of this because now that he has "an interpreter" who helps by pre-teaching certain lessons, breaking down instructions into more specifics and guiding him through transitions, he is doing loads better. He still struggles with asking for help however, another common spectrum trait. His teacher and aide are explicitly working with him on that, reminding him how to ask for help whenever it looks like he is getting frustrated with an assignment and rewarding him whenever he does ask for help whether he does it completely independently or with some prompting. He is getting better but it is still not something that comes naturally for him.

Pragmatic speech deficits can be addressed through speech therapy though you may need to search around for a ST who really knows his or her stuff.

My son has the same problem.....He will often say " I dont get it!".... Then I try to use less words, talk slower and use more concrete terms.

Kids with AS, like my son, often have sensory integration problems that contributes to problems with motor planning....They also have auditory prosessing disorder...So they can hear the words, but it gets scrambled on the way to the understanding area in the brain....this often goes together with motor planning issues.
They are often more concrete thinkers and as they get older, school instructions becomes more abstract...so more confusion.
Getting confused during changes in class can also be because of problems with transition, this may again be caused by sensory overload, poor planning, poor abstract reasoning.....So braking the activity down into smaller pieces, giving visual cues and warning him in advance, might help.

I'm new to this. I wasn't dx'd as a kid. I don't know all the educated terms, just my experiences but I'll give it a shot.

I want to know the plan before I have to act. I need to understand my part. Doing it wrong has unwanted consequences that I know all too well and would really like to avoid. Also, if someone's going to work on my teeth or take out my appendix, they need to consult with me every step of the way

So tell me, directly, frankly, and with some detail, especially if I request it. Don't leave me hanging. If you use elusive terms, you will lose me. If you say nummies when you mean food, you will lose me. I've spent 53 years trying to understand double entendre; it's hopeless. I know a lot of things by rote memorization but have great difficulty figuring out the hidden meanings NTs find so entertaining.

Also, try talking with me about my anxiety or any other inappropriate behavior. Encourage me to practice not getting upset. Help me to notice things that will tell me what's going on and teach me about body language or any other such tools you might know.

My mom did all this stuff. She was a great aspie mom and never knew it, however, it may have helped that I was very verbal, very early.

Thanks for replies
Guess there's not a lot I can do to help with classroom confusion then, except hope that the teacher can try to explain things clearly.
We went over some maths words at home the other day, thinking of other words that meant the same thing, and it was fine.
Will try to chat more about dealing with feelings & not getting upset.
The last thing I'd want him losing friends by looking silly.

Sounds like the explainations and reassurance need to be done by the teacher at the point where the confusion is happening. I'd ask the teacher if she thinks he needs to be evaluated for an IEP for possible speech therapy and additional assistance (like giving an aide to the classroom.) It sounds like his teacher is a gem this year, but you might want to consider how he would struggle if he gets a dud next year.

As a parent, you can seek out evaluations for auditory processing issues, speech and language issues, and perhaps Social Communication Disorder (a new catagory where a lot of "not-quite-autistic" kids may be diagnosed). You can keep in close touch with the teacher to see if there are areas you can help add explanation at home (like you did with the math vocabulary.)

My daughter is like this. She is a mostly NT-appearing kid unless she is in an unfamiliar situation or environment. Then she becomes easily overwhelmed and she tends to shut down when this happens. What works for her is to do a lot of PREparation. We verbally run through new experiences and situations over and over again with a great deal of detail and description...usually even days before they occur. We discuss different things that might "pop up" and how she might respond to them. We talk about how she can figure out what she is supposed to be doing and who to tell if she feels lost. We practice what to say and what to do. At school, her teacher established a routine with her very early on and tries her best to stick with it at all times. When the routine must be deviated from, she tells my daughter as early as possible and then either stays right next to her, or has one of her friends stay with her to guide her. Her teacher also watches for the "spaced out" look and selective mutism and recognizes both of these things as signs of distress and immediately intervenes to provide extra support.

My son seems to have more pragmatic language issues than my daughter does and with him it is just a lot of rote learning. I look for idioms, sarcasm, metaphors, etc. in his every day life (what his friends say, on TV, etc) and we break it down and talk him through it. He has learned how to figure out when language is figurative and even though he can't always figure out what is meant, he does understand not to take it literally. This has helped him a lot socially. But mostly what I find is a lot of repetition and explanation as things happen IRL seems to be helping him over the long run.

The added benefit is that at the age of 7, my ASD daughter has a pretty good handle on--say-- sarcasm from listening to all of her big brother's "lessons." She was actually able to read a passage at school with the appropriate sarcastic tone of voice. Her teacher had never heard a kid her age do that before, so she asked her why she used that tone of voice and she said "Because that was sarcasm. That is when you say the opposite of how you really feel but use your tone of voice to tell how you really feel." Her teacher was floored. She said that she had listened to kids read that passage 100's of times, and this was the first time it was ever read with the right tone of voice...coming from an autie! Mama is proud!