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The homework nightmare

Johnsmum

I know this is a nightmare for most parents of kids with an ASC. My son, in Year 12, is doing almost none of his homework - he refuses to do any at home and I think he is doing a little in free periods but clearly not much as teachers have started ringing us up! He has recently dropped one of his AS subjects which should give him plenty of free time to catch up on work, but he just stays home if the free period is at the start of the day, and comes home if it's at the end.

He is a very bright lad and got pretty good grades in his GCSEs without doing much work at all but we need somehow to drum it into his head that he can't get away with this in 6th form. And exams are coming next month - help!

AndrewC, thanks for your input on the now closed guideline thread. The school does indeed have facilities for my son to go to Learning Support and have supervised work times at various times in the week, but he doesn't go to them! There's also an after school homework club which he won't go to either. Either he forgets, or he is too tired and comes home.

I agree with you that, as a school we once visited said, 'Asperger's and homework don't mix'. But given that all pupils in a mainstream school have to do homework, and my son is really too high functioning for a specialist school, we seem to have reached deadlock.

Parents

  • I know exactly how you feel Johnsmum... My son fights homework also and always has done. ( he's 9).. For the longest time it was because "work" was done AT school and he refused to accept it was done at home too! Then he started developing "rules" of what was acceptable to be done at home.. It took me a while, but I realised that if he had  done something similar in school that day to the work that was sent home as homework, it was acceptable. But if he had not "gone over" the work in school- it was not acceptable. 

    Working closely with the school, we made sure that he had some "experience" of the work sent home prior during the day at school, even if it was completely explaining to him only what the homework was.

    My son and I also worked out that if my son and I agree to a time that the homework is to be done (usually on the first day it's sent home, and usually the same time of day, every time too) and we do not do more then 20 minutes at a time and then have a break, it is more acceptable to him and he doesn't immediately just refuse to do it.. We also break up his work into smaller manageable sections so he's not "overwhelmed" and I get   " It's too much, I Can't do it all!"

    Like your son, my son is also very bright and like others on the Spectrum, he excells his peers in certain subjects and also seems to be able to "get by" as it were doing minimal work in these subjects. So what I'm struggling with is getting him excited and motivated to do more than the minimal in the subjects he enjoys and actually excelling in!

     

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  • I know exactly how you feel Johnsmum... My son fights homework also and always has done. ( he's 9).. For the longest time it was because "work" was done AT school and he refused to accept it was done at home too! Then he started developing "rules" of what was acceptable to be done at home.. It took me a while, but I realised that if he had  done something similar in school that day to the work that was sent home as homework, it was acceptable. But if he had not "gone over" the work in school- it was not acceptable. 

    Working closely with the school, we made sure that he had some "experience" of the work sent home prior during the day at school, even if it was completely explaining to him only what the homework was.

    My son and I also worked out that if my son and I agree to a time that the homework is to be done (usually on the first day it's sent home, and usually the same time of day, every time too) and we do not do more then 20 minutes at a time and then have a break, it is more acceptable to him and he doesn't immediately just refuse to do it.. We also break up his work into smaller manageable sections so he's not "overwhelmed" and I get   " It's too much, I Can't do it all!"

    Like your son, my son is also very bright and like others on the Spectrum, he excells his peers in certain subjects and also seems to be able to "get by" as it were doing minimal work in these subjects. So what I'm struggling with is getting him excited and motivated to do more than the minimal in the subjects he enjoys and actually excelling in!

     

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