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First-Grade Homework Battles - Desperately Need Help
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 256156" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Yes, we abandoned homework battles. Also, school problems stay at school. If he got into trouble at school (say, hit someone) we did not punish any more at home, if school was already dealing with it. He would get a talking to, but nothing more.</p><p></p><p>Yes, you should be able to get the IEP modified to eliminate homework, at least homework after school hours. It's hard enough for our kids to hold it together during school hours, to then have even more to deal with afterwards. </p><p></p><p>Also, to expect a kid with ADHD to be able to maintain focus once medications have worn off, is just plain cruel. It's also setting up for problems with the parents and only making self-esteem issues and discipline issues much worse. ODD is just around the corner, if you insist on homework under these circumstances.</p><p></p><p>HOWEVER - if your child is not getting work done in class,then he is not meeting the learning criteria and he is simply coasting through. While the school may be happy to let him prgoress through the geades, this is still bad for him because at some stage further in his education, he is going to hit a brick wall academically, because of everything he is missing. You need to address this independently of the school. You can also support the school with some assignments, within reason, if he can do them on ONE day over the weekend, during the day while medicated. In fact, the city school my older three kids went to actually did this for the whole school - they dropped all after-school homework completely, replacing it with ONE larger assessment task per term (four school terms). The kids could do the task on weekends and had about a month to do it. It was usually a poster presentation on a particular topic.</p><p></p><p>That was a far-sighted school! They also had a high proportion of difficult children, including the highest number of indigenous kids Sydney. A lot of these Koori kids had their own home issues that also made after-school homework difficult, plus many kids had to be in after-school care because there wasn't a parent at home to mind them after school.</p><p></p><p>HOwever, to those weekend assignments - difficult child 1 struggled, even with those. His particular problems with his constellation of disabilities, included the inability to mentally multi-task. He was unable to extract from a text the information he needed. So if he was asked to write a report on Einstein, for example, he would have some books from the library but would need to just pull out enough information to caption any pictures. But he simply couldn't extract JUST the info he needed, and no more. To do this meant not only holding the iinformartion in his head, but mentally adjusting it, fiddling with it, selecting this bit and rejecting that bit - too many mental steps which he just can't do, he can only hold one idea in his head at a time, even when medicated. It's a memory thing - it's like short-term memory just isn't working, so he learned to use his long-term memory to do the job. Slower, but it has meant that anything that manages to eventually get through to his long-term memory, is able to be pulled out at any time later on. Years later, sometimes.</p><p></p><p>difficult child 3 is different, he CAN mentally multi-task. So this isn't a feature of every person with autism, it's something thatsome have and others don't. It's not a severity-based diffrence either. it just IS.</p><p></p><p>With difficult child 3, he got through primary school (elementary) having missed so much work (it just didn't sink in) that he now has large gaps in his knowledge, so the current work can't scaffold properly. But we have at least partly dealt with this by trying to fill in the gaps ourselves, and also getting the school to modify the work they give him, to match his learning style.</p><p></p><p>What we have done is detailed, I won't dump it all on you now. But feel free to pick my brains with specifics. However, the most important point I MUST insist you take on board and do your utmost to hammer home to the school - </p><p></p><p>PEOPLE WITH AUTISM THINK DIFFERENTLY AND LEARN DIFFERENTLY. </p><p></p><p>Those teaching them, and this includes parents, must adapt to the child's own preferred method.</p><p></p><p>How do you know what is the child's preferred method for learning? By watching, by modifying their learning environment and by taking good notes to help you always move towards a better solution.</p><p></p><p>The most interesting thing - in general, autistic kids (and other kids too, I think - but in my experience, especially autistic kids) will seek out opportunities to learn, they desperately want to fit in with other people and will generally use learning as the route. So they will themselves find what works best, given half a chance. So watch what he enjoys doing, follow him into it, DON'T automatically pull him out of apparently mindless repetitive activity, but see if you can use that as your startingpoint and work from there.</p><p></p><p>You have labelled your son as iniflexible and defiant. You need to change your 'view' on this. I have got into trouble with some people on this site, by referring to this as "needing to change your mindset towards your child". I do not mean to insult you or to call you a bad parent - far from it. But as long as you try to see your child from the perspective of normality, you will find he falls far short. For your son, normality is too difficult to maintain all the time. He needs the chance to be himself, and part of who he is is someone who needs to have control over his own environment, because for him the world is scary, it's confusing, it's contradictory and just plain NOT FAIR. But with all its faults, he still wants to belong and is trying to find his own way of doing so. Honestly, we don't deserve our kids to be so forgiving and loving, to keep coming back and trying again. And again. The trouble is, we don't always recognise that this is what they are trying to do.</p><p></p><p>Read "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene. It won't all fit, but it should help you see what I mean about changing your mindset. You need to get into your son's head (with both boys) and use that as your starting point, to get into his world and from there, help bring him into yours.</p><p></p><p>I feel you about your morale - sometimes it just feels so hard, when your child screams at you because you changed the channel on the TV or asked him to go have a bath, or served up a meal and he won't eat it because the texture is wrong or you cooked something new. Or he refuses to wear the new clothes you bought, because - who knows? And the way they speak to us, as if WE are the naughty children!</p><p></p><p>It's OK. There are ways to manage this, but as you have already discovered, clamping down hard and getting strict is exactly the worst thing you can do.</p><p></p><p>You have an ally, in your child's own obsessive need for control. Because beleive it or not, your child can quickly learn to apply his own controls to himself, often before it is expected to be possible for so-called 'normal' kids.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, if you need to know anything more specific, either PM me or start another thread with a specific request. Another thread would be better because there is a really annoying word limit on PMs!</p><p></p><p>I have enough info to write a book. I AM in fact, doing just that.</p><p></p><p>Keep a diary. Communicate with the school on a daily basis via a Communication Book (which can double as your diary). Watch what your son does and take notes. Find what he likes, what he enjoys doing, and try to do the same things beside him. Try to see the world from his point of view. Don't react to "rudeness" because it actually is something different. Don't shout at him, remember that your behaviour has to SHOW him the right way to behave, regardless of how he behaves to you. Tell him calmly if he has done something he shouldn't, but lead, don't push.</p><p></p><p>OK, I'm saying too much now.</p><p></p><p>Hang in there. It CAN get better. Sometimes, quite quickly. But the first move towards change has to come from you, even if that isn't fair.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 256156, member: 1991"] Yes, we abandoned homework battles. Also, school problems stay at school. If he got into trouble at school (say, hit someone) we did not punish any more at home, if school was already dealing with it. He would get a talking to, but nothing more. Yes, you should be able to get the IEP modified to eliminate homework, at least homework after school hours. It's hard enough for our kids to hold it together during school hours, to then have even more to deal with afterwards. Also, to expect a kid with ADHD to be able to maintain focus once medications have worn off, is just plain cruel. It's also setting up for problems with the parents and only making self-esteem issues and discipline issues much worse. ODD is just around the corner, if you insist on homework under these circumstances. HOWEVER - if your child is not getting work done in class,then he is not meeting the learning criteria and he is simply coasting through. While the school may be happy to let him prgoress through the geades, this is still bad for him because at some stage further in his education, he is going to hit a brick wall academically, because of everything he is missing. You need to address this independently of the school. You can also support the school with some assignments, within reason, if he can do them on ONE day over the weekend, during the day while medicated. In fact, the city school my older three kids went to actually did this for the whole school - they dropped all after-school homework completely, replacing it with ONE larger assessment task per term (four school terms). The kids could do the task on weekends and had about a month to do it. It was usually a poster presentation on a particular topic. That was a far-sighted school! They also had a high proportion of difficult children, including the highest number of indigenous kids Sydney. A lot of these Koori kids had their own home issues that also made after-school homework difficult, plus many kids had to be in after-school care because there wasn't a parent at home to mind them after school. HOwever, to those weekend assignments - difficult child 1 struggled, even with those. His particular problems with his constellation of disabilities, included the inability to mentally multi-task. He was unable to extract from a text the information he needed. So if he was asked to write a report on Einstein, for example, he would have some books from the library but would need to just pull out enough information to caption any pictures. But he simply couldn't extract JUST the info he needed, and no more. To do this meant not only holding the iinformartion in his head, but mentally adjusting it, fiddling with it, selecting this bit and rejecting that bit - too many mental steps which he just can't do, he can only hold one idea in his head at a time, even when medicated. It's a memory thing - it's like short-term memory just isn't working, so he learned to use his long-term memory to do the job. Slower, but it has meant that anything that manages to eventually get through to his long-term memory, is able to be pulled out at any time later on. Years later, sometimes. difficult child 3 is different, he CAN mentally multi-task. So this isn't a feature of every person with autism, it's something thatsome have and others don't. It's not a severity-based diffrence either. it just IS. With difficult child 3, he got through primary school (elementary) having missed so much work (it just didn't sink in) that he now has large gaps in his knowledge, so the current work can't scaffold properly. But we have at least partly dealt with this by trying to fill in the gaps ourselves, and also getting the school to modify the work they give him, to match his learning style. What we have done is detailed, I won't dump it all on you now. But feel free to pick my brains with specifics. However, the most important point I MUST insist you take on board and do your utmost to hammer home to the school - PEOPLE WITH AUTISM THINK DIFFERENTLY AND LEARN DIFFERENTLY. Those teaching them, and this includes parents, must adapt to the child's own preferred method. How do you know what is the child's preferred method for learning? By watching, by modifying their learning environment and by taking good notes to help you always move towards a better solution. The most interesting thing - in general, autistic kids (and other kids too, I think - but in my experience, especially autistic kids) will seek out opportunities to learn, they desperately want to fit in with other people and will generally use learning as the route. So they will themselves find what works best, given half a chance. So watch what he enjoys doing, follow him into it, DON'T automatically pull him out of apparently mindless repetitive activity, but see if you can use that as your startingpoint and work from there. You have labelled your son as iniflexible and defiant. You need to change your 'view' on this. I have got into trouble with some people on this site, by referring to this as "needing to change your mindset towards your child". I do not mean to insult you or to call you a bad parent - far from it. But as long as you try to see your child from the perspective of normality, you will find he falls far short. For your son, normality is too difficult to maintain all the time. He needs the chance to be himself, and part of who he is is someone who needs to have control over his own environment, because for him the world is scary, it's confusing, it's contradictory and just plain NOT FAIR. But with all its faults, he still wants to belong and is trying to find his own way of doing so. Honestly, we don't deserve our kids to be so forgiving and loving, to keep coming back and trying again. And again. The trouble is, we don't always recognise that this is what they are trying to do. Read "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene. It won't all fit, but it should help you see what I mean about changing your mindset. You need to get into your son's head (with both boys) and use that as your starting point, to get into his world and from there, help bring him into yours. I feel you about your morale - sometimes it just feels so hard, when your child screams at you because you changed the channel on the TV or asked him to go have a bath, or served up a meal and he won't eat it because the texture is wrong or you cooked something new. Or he refuses to wear the new clothes you bought, because - who knows? And the way they speak to us, as if WE are the naughty children! It's OK. There are ways to manage this, but as you have already discovered, clamping down hard and getting strict is exactly the worst thing you can do. You have an ally, in your child's own obsessive need for control. Because beleive it or not, your child can quickly learn to apply his own controls to himself, often before it is expected to be possible for so-called 'normal' kids. Anyway, if you need to know anything more specific, either PM me or start another thread with a specific request. Another thread would be better because there is a really annoying word limit on PMs! I have enough info to write a book. I AM in fact, doing just that. Keep a diary. Communicate with the school on a daily basis via a Communication Book (which can double as your diary). Watch what your son does and take notes. Find what he likes, what he enjoys doing, and try to do the same things beside him. Try to see the world from his point of view. Don't react to "rudeness" because it actually is something different. Don't shout at him, remember that your behaviour has to SHOW him the right way to behave, regardless of how he behaves to you. Tell him calmly if he has done something he shouldn't, but lead, don't push. OK, I'm saying too much now. Hang in there. It CAN get better. Sometimes, quite quickly. But the first move towards change has to come from you, even if that isn't fair. Marg [/QUOTE]
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