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Daydreaming

Bird

Hi

My son is 15 years old, was diagnosed with High Functioning autism. He attends mainstream school with an autism resource base. He is doing well with his studies but he has a daydreaming issue.

He doesn't daydream at school but when he is at home doing homework or revising for tests he daydreams a lot. It also happens when he does other things e.g. brushing his teeth, having a shower, just after waking up etc. Due to daydreaming he usually takes 50 minutes to have a shower and get dressed (if he doesn't daydream much he can do it in 30 minutes).

As a result of this he doesn't have time to do the things that he enjoys or socialise with his friends. It also affects the time he goes to bed. Most of the time he has at least 1 test to revise for and homework. This makes him go to bed at 11:45pm on average. On weekdays he gets up at 7:00am to go to school. This means he only gets about 7 hours of sleep.

Could anyone give us advice to help with this problem please? Many thanks in advance.

  • in reply to Creative68608

    (In reply to Bird’s original post)

  • It kind of hurt to see the word ‘problem’ there, because daydreaming for me (and from what I’ve read on AS sites and this forum others too) is a great coping mechanism. It’s such a positive thing. Without it I don’t think I could have got through my childhood very well at all. Does your son see it as a problem? Does it bother him?

    I see what you mean about the time thing, as a 37-year old it still takes me forever to get ready in the morning, I still sit and can spend hours daydreaming; but it’s a recovery mechanism for me. Any negative feelings I have from this are mostly guilt that I’m slowing someone ELSE down, and it’s usually because I feel pressure from someone to “hurry up”. That pressure creates a lot of anxiety.

    I’ve found at the times I need to “be quicker” (I need sleep for a big day, I need to be at a class on time, or I need to focus on something with undivided attention) I use things like music to help me. Playing music helps me stay focused on the task. Or listen to podcasts. Or I’ll mentally schedule time in (“If I spend an hour on this, then I’ll take a break and daydream for a bit”).

    What is he daydreaming about? I just put up a post under Adult Autism yesterday called Character Daydreaming. I’m wondering if this is what he’s doing, or if he’s worrying? Is he stimming while he’s daydreaming? Or is it a good thing he’s thinking about for comfort? Or is he just happy and wondering about interests? Or, is he just taking in his surroundings? I generally need more time to process my environment. For example, if we are at a park I’ll tend to stand and stare which seems like daydreaming but I’m actually observing everything (sound of the birds, the trees rustling, the clouds, the flowers, the smell, etc).

  • Hi Bird,

    What your son is exhibiting although inconvenient at the moment is actually quite a skill. His 'zoning out' episodes are likely to be something termed as hyper-focus. He is able to give intense attention to detail that he is thinking about. It's likely that he is concentrating hard on something that interests him. It may be that he is uncomfortable with his surroundings or the work he has been given. Our grandson zones out at school a lot but not at home where he is more comfortable. Interestingly when in main stream, our grandson did this a lot, but the episodes have declined since he went to an additional needs school where the classes are much more animated, smaller and well supervised so he has people checking his level of attention all the time. Have you brought this up with his school? It may be that he is struggling with accessing the syllabus wholly despite his intelligence because he is a visual learner. He may be stressed and not able to tell you.  Our grandson responds in this way because, despite being very erudite, he can't verbalize his emotions.

    Our grandson's school wouldn't dream of trying to give him homework as he needs to compartmentalize his life to manage...school work...home...relax. In mainstream they tried to pull the two venues together and it was disasterous.

  • Hi there,

    Could I ask, do you have a rough idea of what it is your son spends so much time day dreaming about? Have you asked him!?

    As an adult with Aspergers I just thought I would weigh in here and ask this, as well as explaining that I tend to 'zone out' a lot or day dream as some people say.

    Personally I think it could be that your son is either thinking about his interests/hobbies, avoiding reality as it can be stressful to think about, or maybe something I tend to do - trying to work out the answers to things that there are no answers for example... Is there a god, what happens after you die, what exists before birth etc... These sort of thoughts can circulate as there will never be an answer!

    I would say if he has a playstation, xbox or a form of gaming console, that limiting the time spent on this would help somewhat! Perhaps you could ask him to write the things he is daydreaming about, this may help I am not sure.

    I cant say that myself and your son are the same because we are on the AS... but thought it wouldnt hurt to ask questions and share, its nice to see a concerned parent and I hope you get the answers your after.