Education issues

Post Reply New Topic

I would be grateful of your thoughts on the following, regarding my 9 year old aspie son.

1. Son does well at school in the topics that interest him but switches off or struggles to engage in subjects that are boring or pointless to him. Outside of school I would never make him do something he hated but at school he cant pick and choose. How can he self motivate on work he finds dull? I have explained that he needs to get good grades if he wants to work in computer games etc.

2. Son does better when he has a helper to prompt him and focus him to stay on task. He is emotionally attached to his helper as he finds her sympathetic and helps with his anxieties.
School want to encourage him to be self reliant and don't want to increase his personal support or dependency especially as he will be going to high school in 2 yrs. i get this but also like the support for him.

Thanks for advice

Many AS kids come to a point when they no longer want the helper because they feel that it sets them apart from others at school as odd. Your son evidently has not reached this level of social self consciousness and that's good.

Assuming that the school admin. has a valid or regulatory point (is one-on-one support withdrawn at some specific grade?). Could you use this as a motivating factor for your son? Such as; keeping the helper on Tues & Thurs as long as he attends to the boring studies on Mon,Wed and Fri? Knowing that the support will eventually be withdrawn; this could be a transitional compromise for a couple of years?

It's possible that if he becomes more proficient at the disliked subjects, they might be more tolerable to him. Mastery can feel rewarding in itself; even where the subject is not a favorite.

The helper's entire job at this point should be helping him become independent. Not exactly sure how it works in the UK but the special ed team for my son (we're in the US) is very focused on working towards independence. Every week they keep track of a particular set of tasks and note if he has done the task independently or with support. We have a similar situation in that my son is also pretty attached to his aide (he is 7). Do you have a written plan for what the helper works on with him? If not, that might be a good place to start. Identify the tasks he can do completely independently, those he can do with a little support and those that he can't do at all or can only do with lots of support. He needs to get lots of positive feedback for tasks that he does independently. For those tasks he can tolerate a little of, the goal would be to gradually increase the time he spends doing them. Again lots of positive feedback for every attempt. For those tasks he strongly avoids, you, the teacher and helper need to look closely at those tasks. Figure out if he resists them because he is lacking some vital piece of information or understanding and determine if the tasks can be modified in some way to make it possible for him to try them. For example, a worksheet full of math problems may be overwhelming but if the number of problems on the sheet is reduced to maybe 1 out of every 5, then the worksheet may not be so daunting. Work methodically to build up his tolerance for non-preferred activities. For my son it helps a lot to balance the time spent attempting non-preferred activities with preferred activities. So for him, participating in reading group was just impossible at the beginning of the year. No one was quite sure what the problem was as he is a very good reader and it certainly wasn't because the material was too challenging. The aide figured that he didn't like sitting at the table next to the other kdis so she arranged to have a separate desk placed beside the table. That got him to at least come into the classroom and stay with the group. He got rewarded with iPad time or other "may-do" time for every time he even attempted to join reading group. The amount of time he would stick it out increased more and more with the aide pushing him a little bit to stick it out when he wanted to leave. She is very in tune with him and knows when she can push him a little and when he is really DONE with something.

Thanks for the very helpful advice. Much appreciated.

For additional clarification, he has an assistant on 3 days out of 5. He struggles on the two other days, both emotionally and academically.

So, we are considering trying to get his support up to 5 days.

However the schools approach is to try and encourage his independence on the days without his one-to-one support.

We wonder whether the schools approach is valid, as we do want him to be independent, but the cynic in me thinks it's just about the cost.

I'm not sure what is the best thing to do....

Son wants 5 days support but school feel this would make him more dependent.

A word another parent used that is important in this discussion is "prompt dependency." Legitimately, it is something both you and the school want to reduce, and it sounds like that is what you are struggling with.

However, leaving a child to struggle on their own isn't the tool usually used to reduce prompt dependency. A technique called "fading" is what is usually employed: http://www.netwellness.org/question.cfm/56108.htm (I have found it helpful to bring "magic words" to meetings with the school, and I think this article contains a lot of them. Sometimes if you use education-specific jargon they pay more attention to you.)

ASD tends to be a developmental delay, and you aren't going to change a person's developmental time table by simply deciding you want to. They have to be allowed to grow into it on their own pace. Paying attention to the child's unique time table does not condemn the child to never be independent. Instead, in my opinion, it will strengthen their level of independence when they finally come into it, because the foundation will be more solid.

In our school district, they do their best to give the kids what they need for as long as they need it. I was often the one turning down supports because my instincts were telling me my son could be pushed in that area, and I was pretty much always right. My son learned to really trust my judgment, and learned to dig in and meet the challenges that came at him as a result. The transition to middle school was tough for my son because he was not developmentally ready for the organizational requirements, and there was little anyone could do to structurally change them, but I believe with all my heart that pushing my son harder earlier would not have prevented it, and probably would have backfired big time with meltdowns. Instead, I kicked into high gear and made myself his administrative assistant and study-buddy for over a year until I could tell he had grown further into the skills. It worked.

Getting the right balance of supports v. nudge is really difficult and super stressful on us as our child's advocate and decision maker. Pay close attention to your child and trust your instincts. You'll know when you're moving forward with the best answer: it feels right. Not easy, just right.

Thanks momsparky, this is a great explanation!

I would just add that the school needs to be keeping data about how often he needs support, i.e requires prompting, vs does things independently. If they want to scale back the amount of support he is getting, I would ask, if I was in your shoes, for them to show me the data that prove he is becoming more independent. It is pretty well accepted that kids with ASD are not going to magically learn to swim when you throw them into the deep end of the pool. Which is the technique the school is proposing to employ. ASD kids NEED the support. The concern of learned helplessness is a legitimate one however, the school needs to have data to back up their position not just a hunch that he might be getting too dependent on his aide.