Schoolwork/homework - expressing personal opinions

I've just finished working in a uni that had over 700 autistic students. I've attended many events that these students have spoken at, plus I've had a lot of autistic students on my caseload over the years. Many of these excel at communicating their thoughts and feelings. I've also found in general that the autistic community tend to be a lot better at communicating exactly what they think and feel compared to NTs, therefore, I tend to see there is a nurture, rather than neurotype issue.

From these boards, I've noticed a tendency for family and friends to suddenly become extremely closed-minded when an individual receives a diagnosis and start seeing their loved one as a label rather than taking an holistic view of the entire human being and how their socialisation has also formed their personality and views. For example, my OH, who is NT, was treated poorly if he expressed a differing opinion to his parents, therefore, he really struggles to express his own opinions/wishes/feelings as an adult as he was constantly told that his emotions weren't valid. Rather than dismissing this as neurotypical man behaviour I can see this is down to his upbringing. 

I would speak to the SENCO in the first instance but you also need to be realistic about the education system and how knowledgable or competent the school is at meeting differing needs. My PGCE only had a few days on how to teach inclusively and it didn't include anything on autism. I've also worked with a lot of autism specialists who were just starting out and due to their limited experience had an old fashioned and very narrow view of this neurotype and how best to teach the individual in front of them. You might be really lucky and the school employs a fantastic teacher for your son's class, or you might end up in the position that you have to do a lot of support at home

Thanks for your response. I definitely agree with what you say about needing to learn to develop these skills. As someone who is completely new to this, I can't help wondering to what extent this is actually possible. I believe my husband has Aspergers and a huge problem in our relationship is him not managing so well with expressing his own opinions/wishes/feelings. I suppose I feel a little pessimistic about the possibilities. 

I also think that he really needs stability at school in terms of one teacher for a longer period of time. With the constant changes there is noone who has an overview. The current teacher is a substitute who is not a teacher, though very experienced in working with kids. She will be with them until October and then yet another new teacher comes in.

I am wondering if I need to talk to the special ed teacher at the school first since there is no "regular" teacher for the class at the moment. It's a tricky situation. 

As an autistic, as well as a teacher who specialises in teaching academic skills to those society labels as disabled, I don't believe this is a specific issue due to being autistic and is more attitude based. For example, I work with many students with a wide variety of 'disabilities' who simply give up and avoid a task rather than try or ask for help when they don't know what to do. Sometimes this is due to confidence, others it learnt behaviour. 

Hi - thanks - no I haven't written anything - I'm a twin so I had a 'normal' version of me to compare and measure as I grew up - I wasn't diagnosed until I was 42 - but in that time, my love of tech and nerdy things had managed to turn into a job in electronics where I worked mostly alone doing high-tech stuff,.   I ended up as a chartered engineer running nuclear particle accelerators.

Is your son into any tech stuff like engineering, models, planes, trains, Technical Lego etc.?    It's a good way to have something completely under control as a distraction from the annoyances of dealing with people.

There's lots of similar threads to yours on these boards - loads of information here to assist you with figuring out what's likely to come next in his development and lots of ideas to smooth the path for him.    Try to minimise his additional stress with understanding and chatting logically with him.   Make sure any house rules are totally logical and be prepared to adapt if a better, more logical way of doing things makes sense to him.     Peace, calm and logic are your friends.

You explained it so well. I recognise  so much of what you say in my son. The expploding when he comes home. And his need for things he can control. He is really into Pokemon Go and it's all he wants to do after school. He comes home and asks me immediately if he can play it and if we can go on a "pokemon walk". And I think he's too much into it and try to limit it. But that may well be completely the wrong strategy. 

As you see, we need a lot of help with how to help him.

You are so good at explaining this. Have you written/published anything on the subject?

Again, many thanks. I am going to read all I can and get the ball rolling in terms of an investigation/diagnosis. 

You're welcome - might be worth getting knowledgeable about autism because, as you say, things will get harder for him as he gets older and more subjects are demanding more open-ended questions.  

There's also the social element - all his peers will start to grow up soon so all of his constants and known facts about them will start to become variable as they test their social skills against each other - he'll come home from school absolutely knackered!   He'll need careful, sensitive handling as he tries to make sense and facts out of all the annoyances and vague answers of the day - decompression time.    

He'll likely bottle it all up all day at school and may explode when he gets home.    Make sure he has a place he can go to re-balance his brain.    All of the uncontrolled interactions of the day need balance with things he can control - like video games, hobbies etc. - and taking him out to indulge his hobbies as relaxation becomes more important.

Thanks for your reply. Really interesting. He is not on any radars yet, other than mine. He generally does well with the structure and routines of school and I think this type of issue is only now starting to become apparent. It's really only been recently they started getting more structured "homework" with texts to read and questions to answer. I think it's just going to get harder and harder for him . So yes, I think it's time to talk to teachers. He has been unlucky in having constant teacher changes for the past 2 years so I think he has also falllen under the radar a bit too because of that. 

Thanks again. This is all new to me and all advice is really appreciated  

I was exactly the same - give me maths all day - but you want me to write an imaginary story???????   It's too open-ended - no working parameters, no 'right' answer - I hated it.  

It's really hard when the teachers insist that we're bright enough to do it but we're unskilled at measuring emotions and feelings so we need a LOT more data to act as a framework.  

Have a chat to his teachers - is he on the radar of the SEN people?    Try to explain the problem and maybe they can find something more appropriate to do.   We love to demonstrate our vast knowledge on things but ill-defined questions are of no use to us.