Daughter Obsessed with Meaningless Test

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My 16 year old is taking a college-level pre-calculus course online. She finished all the work, she did well on the quizzes. We told her we were proud of her and she has done all she needs to do--as far as we are concerned, she doesn't need to take the final exam (which can only be taken on the computer and with time limits), but she insists she does and she is completely overwhelmed by it. She started scratching herself earlier this week (old anxiety behavior) and has just melted down completely during her first try (out of a possible two). She is convinced that she is a total failure if she doesn't pass this test. In retrospect, it was a big mistake to let her take this course, which was very challenging.
We're in the middle of it now. Any suggestions?

From her standpoint it is not a meaningless test. It is part of the course. That does not mean that she should be freaking out about it, but if you use the word "meaningless" it will undermine your credibility with her on this issue. In addition she and you are learning how she handles this type of stress. You are probably not going to convince her not to use her second try. The best I can tell you to do, which is what I do with my home schooled son and I give him advanced work to see where he is, is to emphasize that the work is way over grade level and that any grade she gets is fine. She probably will not believe you, but you have to plant the seeds for the future. I do this as well, b/c my son freaks when he doesn't get 100s on things and gets very upset. They have to let go of that rigidity and accept less than perfect, and occasionally cope with failing at things too.

I feel for you, b/c it is really hard. My parents tried to explain it to me, when I was young and I never really learned it until I started failing at things later in life. I don't know how to teach this with a soft-landing.

Listen to ASDMommy.

I was the same kind of kid. I used to claw holes in my arms, punishing myself for crying over getting less than a 95% on an assignment. I have an approaching 20-year-old scar on the back of my hand from where I ground a cigarette out on myself because I THOUGHT I had PROBABLY failed my first college-level chemistry exam.

You aren't going to get anywhere calling it a meaningless test-- because, from her point of view, school is probably about the only thing she's good at, and if she isn't good at that then she's worthless. And, yes, to a black-and-white thinker, anything less than perfect is "not good."

She's also probably struggled with enough things, and failed at enough things, and heard enough nasty things somewhere, or read enough nasty things if she was Dx'd young, that she already feels like a failure and is just wondering when she's going to turn into a total failure and make it obvious to everyone else.

I wondered that until I landed in the freakin' mental hospital-- at that point, I figured I could relax. 'Cause it was here. I had finally, ultimately, utterly failed, and everyone knew it. And then-- life went on. And I went back to worrying about when I was going to make it obvious that I was a catastrophic failure again.

It seems like we tend to fear failure, until we've failed and found out that life does (or does not) go on and we do (or do not) get to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and try again.

You CAN talk to her about how getting all anxious over something impedes your ability to do as well as you are capable of doing. That's a good, sound, logical, Aspie-friendly reason to work on anxiety.

You CAN remind her that her brain is prone to run like a hamster in a wheel on the subject of fears and worries. Sometimes this gets me stopped.

There are some books out there that have been sort-of useful. One of them is called "Asperger Syndrome and Anxiety," by Nick Dubin. It's a good-ish book. It has been passingly useful to me. It probably would have been more useful if I had gotten it at 16 instead of 33.

Are there safe things that she does to calm her down when she is anxious? The way that she thinks, you are not going to convince her that this is not a big deal, but if she can just find some way to calm herself down, she might be able to perform better on the test. Also, does she work with someone at the school who understands her autism?

can you do either of the following:

a. Sit down with her and a sample test (doesnt have to be on that subject, in fact find one she's very comfortable with) of the same size approximately, and teach her to "block it" - by BLOCK I mean, to see the test in smaller SECTIONS, rather than as a whole. Tell her to give say maximum of 15 minutes to the first 20 questions then move on to questions 20-40 for a maximum of 15 minutes, etc. This way she's not caught in a thinking loop (which was always my problem) of "do i have time to finish this problem or should I move on, but if I can do this problem now it will be done and but am i taking too long... ").

b. Get in touch with her teacher - or the school shrink/guidance councelor as an intermediary, and see if the teacher will approve of letting her wear headphones and listen to an mp3 or discman (yeah I'm oldschool) during the test - something that will give her a rhythm, and comfortable experience. Suggest that the chosen disc/machine can be given to the teacher ahead of time, so they can be sure it doesn't have cheating on it. Tell them to keep it until the exam if they want.

This may be the " perfectionism" that others describe in this with AS. I think it is a little bit " more"

I use the analogy of "closing the loop"

To give an example- I don't like when there are too many windows open on my computer. I need one window open and I can handle that. When there is a series or grouping of "things" , events or tasks I need yo close the loop and finish the series.


My wife likens it to a " heat seeking missile" and she recognises the behaviour that when it has launched, it needs to contact its target and to be denied contact is to keep the loop open.


It is a double edged sword because it allow s people with AS to focus on a series or event or " things" but when the loop remains open it can cause some anxiety.



What do you do about it?


You can't do much when closing the loop is referred to as meaningless by you. It is indicative of an inability to intuitively understand an issue. However this has been pointed out to you so you are here to seek assistance.


Like all things , it can be learned and to exist and cope and accept that some things are just not going to be finished and some loops remain open. You may use analogy to point this out to her, she can accept it or reject it, or like me wrestle with it and discover for herself the merits of the analogy, but there is a small part of me that thinks you need to also go to a different " mode" within yourself to help her.

Agreed: From her perspective, this is not a meaningless examination. Maybe later on she'll realize that examinations and courses are really very artificial and you get the best learning from picking up a book and moving at your own pace.

What's important is to slowly try to get her to understand that she shouldn't judge herself based upon test scores. This could happen if she gets more self-confidence by getting noticed for being smart, by expanding her world through gaining some friends who share her interest and who help her gain some confidence, and by hopefully gaining some self-awareness about her own value. However, all of this will take a lot of time.