Sounds familiar. Only my son at 12 would just shut up and stop talking. Honestly.. he would give up trying to answer and shut up. This really annoyed Authority figure and I would get a phone call. I have no idea why Authority figure would expect a 11/12 year olds to understand and be able to articulate why they did something. Drove me up the wall, I usually ended up having to take my son home for the rest of the day. (Headdesk)
Yuh huh, and either way it's a sign of NO REMORSE. Ugh! I heard that one, too, when DS was younger. The more recent incarnation is "he doesn't care." DS will tell you that he has made a conscious decision not to care, because he doesn't think he can change anyone's perceptions. My guess is he has that feeling because he doesn't understand how/why/when he messes up. DS now nods and agrees and then tells me he has no earthly idea what any of it meant, when he's made a teacher angry.
Questioning kids about their motivation is pretty much a dead-end street, unless they are unusually insightful and/or self-aware. Similar to trying to "catch them lying." Why, even? How about direct communication? I found it a little bit ironic that DS' teacher told me he was being "aggressively passive aggressive" when she spoke in vagaries to him when trying to explain what he was doing wrong in class (my thread). He probably does, indeed, sound aggressive and he is, in fact, passive--but passive aggressive? He's not even capable of that level of manipulation. The idea that a kid with ASD could deliberate to that degree about social communication is funny, really.
And heavens above - I love this board.
Amen!
