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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.

Parents

  • 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.

Reply

  • 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.

Children
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