can't hang up clothes

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On most good days, I think that my son is fairly close to others his age, and maybe the gap isn't so looming. Then something happens like today.

Since the weather has been so nice, I decided we need to move the pile of coats from the bench and wall hanger to the closet. I gave my 12 y/o son the task of putting one light jacket for each person on the hooks and hanging all the rest of the jackets/coats in the closet. Ten minutes later I find him lying under a pile of jackets in the floor in front of the door. I can tell he is upset and trying to calm down. (Two years ago, I would have assumed he was just avoiding the task). When I sat down on the floor with him and asked him what was going on, he broke down and was angry that the coats wouldn't stay on the hangers. He physically was not able to hang up the coats like the rest of us. Instead, I had him lay them out on the floor, put the hanger in and zip them up. He was on the verge of a meltdown, crying softly and his hands shaking, but he did it. By the end he was laughing and joking again. He explained to me that it makes him very upset with himself when he can see in his head how something is done, but then his hands can't make it work, and it all falls apart. I have come a long way to see that he wasn't avoiding the task and really could not do it like everyone else does. He has come a long way in that he was able to calm himself (hiding under the coats), talk to me about it, and finish the task without a full blown meltdown.

As a mom, I felt good about how far we have come, and sad that my 12 y/o son struggles to hang up a jacket on a hanger.

I just wanted to share... anyone else have similar stories?

I've had many similar things happen to me. It's not a matter of fine motor skills, I just screw things up by making a mistake. I get frustrated when something doesn't come out the way I want it or the way it's supposed to be. Sometimes it gets to the point of me just wanting to be left alone.

We have issues like this too. It is hard to find chores that our son can manage on his own without frustrating him. I give him things to "do" which I end up doing most of. At this point it just for reciprocity so he can learn he is part of the family and he does things to "help" us as we do for him. We aren't worrying too much about the life skills part, although we probably should be.

No story, but I do have a suggestion. I sewed a piece of ribbon in the back of each coat to make a loop of sorts and my daughter just sticks the neck of the hanger through there. She can't seem to manage getting the "arms" of the hanger in the shoulders of the coat and get the hanger up without everything falling off.

DS can't put dishes in the dishwasher unless there is nothing else in it: he can slot the dishes in if there's nothing in his way, but he can't figure out how to move things around to get dishes to fit. We are only just now trying to get him to help with dishes.

What I'm struggling with right now: it is impossible for me to tell when DS is really struggling with something, or whether he's capable of doing it and just doesn't feel like it. The only tool I have is to try to make him do stuff and then back off when we run into a situation like you describe. I don't think he can really tell the difference between the two, either.

For instance, DS has been doing significantly better at math this year. He had a page of long division. He got out his calculator, and I told him he had to do it by hand, but he could check it with the calculator. He melted down. I had him take a break, and then I questioned him a little bit. I discovered that since he has the accommodation of a calculator, nobody bothered to teach him long division! (GRRRRR) We sat down and went through it, and he had it in just a few tries, no problem.