Homework. What works for your aspie?

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Homework has been a pretty awful chore for my boy.

A couple of the things we have done.

1) he has a little study area away from his computer, with a light, and all sorts of school supplies.
2) He gets a little computer time after school to wind down, but most of his computer time comes after he finishes his homework. Homework not finished? No extra computer time.
3) Writing is hard. He uses a lot of force on his pencil, and his hand hurts. I bought him eraseable ink pens. It has helped some.
4) He is allowed to type long stuff. Being able to type is a great enabler.
5) He gets about 20 spelling words per week. He and I do them verbally. The words that he has trouble with, I try to come up with a rule, or a pattern that will help him remember. Corporal for example. It consists of Corp (a group of men) and oral, as in to speak. Hence a Corporal would be expected to speak to (order) a group of men.
6) I try to make it clear, that I am here to help him, learn the stuff he needs. I try to keep it positive, so he can see I'm trying to help. It doesn't work all the time.

What do you do to help your aspie cope with the strain of homework?

You didn't say how old he is, but I'll tell you how I was around the ages of 8-10 or so:
After school, I got 30 minutes for a snack and TV.
Then I was sent to my parents room (there was a desk) to do my homework. They put me in there so I wouldn't be playing with my toys. "No distractions."
At dinner time, I came out and ate.
Then back to homework.
Later, at probably 8 or 9pm, I took a bath and went to bed.

Why did I have so much homework? I didn't. I just couldn't do it. I was perfectly capable of doing it, but just was hardly able to make myself actually do it. The work should have taken maybe an hour, 2 tops.

Your #5 is excellent, I always used tricks like those for spelling and stuff like that.

I never had the chance to really try it another way, so I don't know what would have worked. (Yes I stayed in school, I just mostly quit doing homework.) Perhaps a distraction would help, it does for a lot of us. The radio on, or maybe even in front of the TV. Something to make it less oppressive. It seems most of us have multi-track minds, being to switch between a couple "channels" is less tedius that the same thing droning on.

Don't know if any of this will help, but it's all I've got.

my older aspie, age 16, pretty much does his homework in the resource room at school. my younger suspected aspie, age 10, does her homework after supper............over the years, i've found that making my children do their homework as soon as they came home increased anxiety levels. we've worked on the premise that they need some downtime after they get out of school- just like i need some downtime after i get out of work.......daughter needs to sit in a place with few distractions. she still balks at doing homework without someone standing near her or sitting next to her. one of our biggest struggles,honestly, is getting her to sit down in a quiet area to do her homework. ....our other big struggles are the 2 subjects she is currently having trouble with- reading comprehension & math. tears, drama, flailing......no interventions at school yet for any of her struggles........hope that this will change once her eval is done

After dinner....He literally has 5 minutes of homework on average a night and 30 minutes of reading and he melts down a couple nights a week because of this "rigorous demand."

My stance on him not wanting to do it? Don't care. Meltdown because of 5 minutes of homework? You're grounded.

Good one.

I had spelling trouble as a little kid. The thing that helped the most was to get jell-o powder or lemonade-powder or whatever, spread it out on a cookie-sheet, lick your fingertip and write the spelling-word in the powder with your finger, saying each letter aloud. Then lick the powder that's stuck to your finger off. This is kinda fun, and hits a whole bunch of senses at once. You remember with lots fewer repetitions. It's good for any memorization task; mathematical formulas, the names of all the bones in your skull, etc.

Frankly, I hope nobody is listening to kramer. He seems heartless at best. Maybe he is trying to be like cosmo cramer here! Next week, maybe he will be talking about bladders filled with oil!

I was almost held back because I didn't do homework, in the earlier grades. It was boring and I already knew it. Luckily, the school KNEW I knew the subjects, and decided to let me be.

I kind of lucked out with vocabulary. I don't think I heard ANY vocabulary word I didn't know until I was like 8, and THEN it was rare. I don't think I got much out of it until I was 10 when they had a nice textbook series.

I DID study spanish when I was very young, but it was a stupid system, so they just didn't teach much. That is a shame but, back then, there weren't many hispanics to talk to anyway. I wanted to learn German anyway.

As for the idea of corporal, hitler and napolean were corporals(When they were in the regular military)! That is the lowest level where you can officially give orders to some others. But sargeants often give orders to them, etc... Hopefully, such distinctions are given.

I like your ideas, but it is a shame that they can't use the computer. Maybe you could have a computer with limited access so they can't surf or play games, but they CAN research, edit, and print.

Well, I need some help with my daughter who can't even make it through a day of 9th grade. She has done well, has outbursts and tantrums but usually got her work done at school or at home, sometimes it was modified.

Now, she has flunked all four classes her first term in high school. No one is teasing her, she is mostly tantruming over not wanting to complete work just wants to draw her drawings etc.

She finished this term and we start a new one after Christmas, and she really wants to fit in and do the work, but it is like she has trouble controlling her aggression lately.

Help!

Define "long stuff"? A friend of the family is a little younger, 13. He only got his diagnosis about a year and a half ago and has since got dispensation to use a computer almost exclusively and it meant Cs, Ds, and sporatic Fs became As, Bs, and occasion Cs. For him hand writing was enough of a tax on him that his spelling, which he has to work on too, suffered from it because he had to put so much effort into writing.

I don't think he uses it for math though. I'd have to check on that.

Oh, and as someone that loathed how pencil slowed me down and switched to ink for everything. Though I found that the erasable ink would smudge? Whiteout (do they even allow that in school these days?), even in the roll-on strip cartridge, is really fidgety. Is he, and his teachers, OK with crossing out mistakes instead of erasing? Because straight ink, because you've got a wider range of styles to choose from and fit for him, is probably going to be a lot smoother and faster for him.


P.S. My son is not really old enough that he gets homework sent home. But 'round these parts the DS-Lite is known as "The Great Motivator". PJs to dressed and breakfast eaten in about 10 minutes if there is some Spongebob Squarepants Atlantis at the end of the line while waiting for the bus. Otherwise, maybe it'd take longer than never?

Long stuff,
oh that is easy to define

It's pretty much anything that is longer than his hand can write.