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This is a perspective-taking problem. He knows the teacher knows this information, so there is no point in his telling her.

At the same time, he also cannot imagine someone else NOT having the information HE has in his head-- so again, no point explaining. The whole thing feels darned ridiculous to him.

We had a lot of trouble with "show your work" in math, as well. In elementary DS used to write "My brain told me the answer." Um, yeah.

This level of "efficiency" would be hilarious if it weren't so disabling.

We have worked through "pretend someone doesn't know the answer and write it on your paper like you're explaining it to THAT person" and "I know the teacher knows, but tell it to her anyway, because she has to have PROOF that you know before she is allowed to let you move on. Those are the rules that the teachers go by."


BTDT. And yes, largely EF. Best bet right now is to support what you can and document every problem.

The clock is ticking on their educational eval, yes? Do you know whether they will accept your outside neuropsych report in lieu of testing?

I am feeling the sooner they upgrade your DS to an IEP, the better. He needs the services.

Okay--so I did actually LOL (gallows humor) reading this, thank you. Part of the problem is that it's easy for me to understand (because of the whole apple/tree thing) his process, so it's fairly easy to know how to help him elaborate. I hope I can convince the teacher that he really isn't being a smart @$$. That is the problem.

I'm going to use this. DS is crazy about his 6-year old cousin and very patient with him, so I will tell him to pretend he is explaining to his cousin. I think he can do that.


If I understood correctly, they will accept the NP report, diagnostically. I want a speech/language evaluation and stated that in my letter. I think he needs further testing and specific interventions for social communication.

I also think he should work with a special ed teacher during study hall on the EF stuff. And a behavior plan. Etc., etc., etc.

I guess the clock is ticking. I think they have 30 days from the time I request the eval to respond. After that, the time frame is unclear--maybe it's 60 days? So we have a long way to go.

OTOH--if DS can make it through this year without getting a D in anything--his probationary status in the gifted program is lifted. So for eighth grade, there wouldn't be this gauntlet hanging over his head and I could back off a little and see what works and what doesn't.

That's really the most stressful part of all this. If he is removed from the program, I'll have no idea where to go with him, since he's in both MS and HS classes right now (but more HS).

This! The first one is my DD9 and the second one is my DS12. I figured out last year on DD's reading comprehension assignments that she reads the question, thinks "......................" that much about it, and writes "..." a piece from the middle. Which makes no sense whatsoever, unless you can unpack it and see the long string of thought that it came out of.

We're still fighting the battle with DS about having to show the teacher that you know stuff, because (in his case) she has never even met him and knows absolutely nothing about him or what he knows about anything -- if it doesn't show up in the work, she doesn't know he knows it.

And DeeDee, my DS has always been that one who puts "because I know it" on the line for "how do you know?" Or "because I'm smart." Or "because that's the answer." And in many cases, I've been at a loss to see what else he might be supposed to say. How do you explain how you know that 7 plus 5 equals 12? Because it does.

Eco, I am so with you in this.

BTW, 30 days is for completing the evaluation, in most states, not just responding to the request. The timeline shouldn't be more than 60 days from end to end.

ETA: of course, those are school days, not calendar days.

Totally off topic, but once on a worksheet, there was a "workspace" and a box for the answer. DD wrote the answer in the box, and wrote "dining room table" in the workspace.

More on topic, eco, to your examples (and Nautigal, too), again, I view these things through a lens of expressive speech as much as perspective taking, and I see a lot of not knowing what to say and covering for it by saying it's dumb, obvious, or idiotic. We've seen great progress through systematically teaching how to provide presuppositional information. The SLP defined "presuppositional" first, they went through a series of exercises identifying what in a statement was the presuppositional information, and then practiced adding such statements to answers. It was done speaking first, and as DS has gotten much better at this, we've worked on integrating the skills into his writing.

It's good to have some company, even though I'm sorry you are dealing with this, too! What's strange is that DS does not seem to have advanced one iota in this through all the years of school. These answers look the same as they did in K. It was cute back then...

I asked history teacher if he will print DS' assignments and give feedback (i.e. let us know which ones he counted wrong) but have not heard back. He's suddenly getting much lower scores on his assignments. This is all pretty disconcerting.

This is good information! It's impossible to understand all of this stuff.

HAHAHA on the workspace. I really do love these answers. I can't help it. I don't like the "they are idiots" ones DS defaults to on his papers but that should be easily remedied.

I *really* hope that DS can get some SL therapy at school. If he can't, I'm going to take him to the university clinic. I do think there is something going on with his language but do not understand any of this well enough to speculate about it. I can tell it's very difficult for him to interpret questions I ask him about things (especially open-ended) but he can chatter away endlessly and coherently about his interests.

As an aside: one of the things NP noted on her ADOS report was that DS made odd observations about a picture that he was supposed to "tell a story about," including "that airplane doesn't have a practical design, its nose is too rounded" and "that person has only four fingers" among others. She said he did a great job using a lot of expression and drama in his voice, with accents, but was unable to produce a cohesive narrative. I am not 100% sure he couldn't do this task, if given a lot of time and some leading questions, but he is definitely not quick-on-the-draw with things like this. He does write creative stories for fun, and writes well, but they are plot-driven (linear). And I admit he rarely finishes one.

She called that a perspective-taking issue, I think, too. I can't remember all of it.

What do we think of history teacher so far? Would he/she be amenable to a meeting?

That meeting would include expression of concern, desire to improve; and informal coaching on what the ASD diagnosis means. "We know DS has trouble with this kind of questions; can you tell us exactly what a good answer would look like so we can coach him better at home?"

This is part of establishing that DS is not lazy or stupid; he is struggling because of his disability. It may be good to give the teachers a chance to do the right thing, unless they have already sworn to do the wrong thing and kick DS out of school.

We are meeting next week after school, with DS. I told teacher I wanted to go over classroom procedures with DS, reinforce routines and expectations for behavior.

As for the teacher? I actually feel kind of sorry for him. Yet again, the district gifted admin (who makes hiring decisions) has hired a brand-new teacher (I don't even know what his certification is in) to work in this weird program with little to no mentoring or support. He didn't even have a curriculum to use until last week.

DS thinks the teacher is fair and unbiased (although difficult to read) and I hope he is correct! Until last week, all reports were positive regarding DS. When I asked for more detail in the planner (and cc'd the onsite coordinator--different person, not admin) is when I received the flood of ick. And it wasn't actually from the teacher. I'm not sure but it wouldn't surprise me if he was completely blindsided that his casual report to the coordinator was then communicated to me as if all hell had broken loose.

I showed my sister all this weird communication (I could write a novel, it was strange and indicated some bcc'ing going on, etc.) from last week and her take is, basically, that the coordinator is on the defense. I didn't mean for that to happen but I guess that's the way it goes.

I'm really worn out with it all. I think DS has been doing so much better this year, and we have one small problem that shouldn't be that difficult to fix if everyone just relaxes a little bit--while waiting to see if he can receive services. He clearly needs them--I've never implied that this is a problem with the teachers, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't tweak things here and there if it makes life easier for everyone.

I love this story. So literal, so apt, so unhelpful in the homework context...

Indeed. It is wearying. You see your kid make progress, and yet by then the standards and expectations have risen so that he's "behind" them again.

Keep noting the progress he makes by HIS yardstick, not the world's. Look back a year or three and note that things are different now. You are doing a great job supporting him, and it's important for your well-being and his that his progress be acknowledged.