Daughter caught "Cheating"

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Don't know how to handle this. Anyone out there with similar experiences?
My 12-year-old was taking her music exam. Her text book was left with her. Halfway through, she opened it (quite obviously, I was told...idly rifling through it right in front of invigilator) and - BANG! She got hauled up for cheating, got taken to the principal's office and questioned by two teachers. She maintains she needed to know the answer "in case it came for next year's paper - I was NOT changing my own answers!" Her profile - eternal truth-seeker, can't wait to know, perenially "upright" and unable to lie. How do I explain to the school authorities and her clasmates that I believe her, that the act was wrong but not the intent?

not sure that you'll be able to explain your way out of this......just because theyre aspie, doesn't mean they don't make mistakes

I agree. That was a mistake on her part, and getting anyone at the school to understand her intent is probably an exercise in futility. Just let her know that you believe her, and that will help her.

This reminds me of the times when nobody believed me!
Our natural instinct is to be honest. It never ceases to amaze me how dishonest so many people can be, and that lies come so perfectly naturally to them.

Sounds like a moment of boredom. I've done a thing or two like that. Unlike her, most people would look up an answer to change it in that situation. The school can't make exceptions because legally everyone has to be treated the same way unless there are extenuating factors. Let her know you're on her side and tell her how to avoid the situation in the future.

We had a somewhat (although not exactly) similar situation when our oldest son was that age.

He was a straight A student, but he got a C on a test (this was before we had ever heard of Asperger's). He was afraid that we as parents were going to get angry with him, so he forged our signature on the test. I'm fairly sure that he knew it was wrong, but I'm also fairly sure that he didn't understand HOW wrong.

He got into big trouble with us. We told the teacher that we would take care of the situation, but then when he got to school the next day, she read him the riot act and punished him as well! It was frustrating -- because we felt like we had already layed into him enough, and that the teacher doing so (she said he could be arrested for FORGERY) on TOP of our punishment was overkill.

He hated that teacher. We weren't too fond of her either. We find out, years later, that she was probably going through a bad divorce, and she wasn't very understanding of any children at that time. She ended up teaching our OTHER son (PDD-NOS) and was a FANTASTIC teacher.

Go figure. You can never predict human behavior.

Kris

Sounds to me like you've got a smart kid who isn't being challenged. No, she shouldn't be allowed to cheat (except that the entire society cheats, which doesn't make it right), but in this case, I believe her. She probably wasn't changing her answer. But you're never going to sell that to the school. Get here in harder classes. It might help.

Btdt

It seems like he chose the lesser of two evils: a 100% chance of being punished by showing you his grade vs. a 50% chance of being punished by forging the signature. I don't blame him, and I feel genuine sympathy toward him. I was in his situation too, only I didn't have the benefit of forging the signature because my school suspended people for that. My parents were VERY strict about my grades, so I was struck with pure terror whenever the teacher handed back the tests, and when I got an F one time, I had to run to the bathroom to throw up. On the way home, I would fantasize about suicide, because it seemed more tolerable than facing hours of yelling, followed by no TV for a week or more. (Living near a 600-volt electric train line made it seem even more tempting.) And since I had no friends at the time, the TV was my only source of entertainment. Needless to say, I was constantly depressed, although my parents dismissed it as fear of punishment. Since I wasn't allowed to talk about this at school, teachers couldn't do much more than tell me to be more relaxed.

Sorry for the rant, but it's intended to be a cautionary tale for the parents here. Do NOT pay attention to your kids' grades, and better yet, pretend the grades don't even exist. In the long run, the school performance won't matter, and many schools are doing away with grades to begin with. The (unintended) consequence could be making your kids angry and bitter, posting rants like this on WrongPlanet many years later.

Aspie1, you're absolutely right. No wonder he forged the signature. I would have too in his place.

I also think that he was probably in his worst stage as far as not having friends, and I just didn't know it. He has talked in later years about feeling suicidal at that age, and as parents we have been kicking ourselves ever since for not realizing how bad things were for him back then.

As parents, you are always stuck between wanting your kids to do well in school (so that they can get into college, get a job, be happy in later life) and not wanting to make grades too big of a deal (and therefore possibly not doing well enough to achieve what the child WANTS to achieve in later life). It's a real catch-22 situation for parents.

I appreciate your rant. What is so important about a grade (good or bad) that it should elicit such strong emotion? It's just wrong to get so caught up in them.

Kris

I never really understood this. How if someone Aspie does something there is little to no understanding, yet if a NT kid misbehaves nobody bothers about it. It's an obvious double-standard. You can't say, "You need to raise your hand to give an answer", when you're allowing other students just to yell things out.

i think the problem with calling out answers stems from the amount of times its done, not that someon does it occasionally....plenty of kids with ADHD get admonished for calling out answers, so please don't assume its just aspies that get in trouble

explain to her WHY the school acted as they did, WHY they wouldn't be so quick to buy her excuse (whether its true or not) and she'll know not to do this again. I don't know what else to say.

Hate to disillusion you but getting good grades and getting into College does NOT mean a person will necessarily get a job and even if they do, it could be a CRAP job which will make them very UNHAPPY!

I'd agree that too many parents get too hung up on grades. Even mine did a bit. I was too scared to tell them if I did badly on a test, not because I would get hit but because I would get a lecture. So, I would pretend everything was okay but started getting stomach aches and migraines.

With my kids, I didn't nag about grades. I only said I knew they would do their best.