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Schoolwork/homework - expressing personal opinions

NAS63544

This may be asking the obvious, apologies if so. My son (8 years old) does not have a diagnosis yet, however I have my strong suspicions. 

When doing homework he does ok (perfectionism is there, but otherwise ok) with factual, find-the-answer-in-the-text type questions, but as soon as there is a what-do-you-think question he gets anxious, angry, frustrated and we have to stop. Today he handed in homework where he had just left the personal opinion questions blank. We gave up.

Is this likely to be connected to autism?

Parents
  • Former Member
    Former Member

    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. 

    Being able to tackle these types of tasks becomes more and more important in academic work as student progress through the education system. As such, I think its key to help your son develop these skills rather than ask for alternative work, especially as he'll also need to be able to articulate his thoughts and feelings to as part of future employment, personal relationships etc
    There are rules to these kinds of tasks, as is evident in the marking criteria, and your son's teacher should be able to explain these to you. If you modelled how to complete these tasks this would help e.g providing him with examples of how you'd answer it, maybe providing sentences with gaps where you son simply fills in his emotions or the response he'd have. I'd also talk to the teacher about your son's anxieties and ask her to focus on only providing only positive feedback for these tasks for now so that he starts to associate these activities with good feelings, thus, encouraging motivation. She could talk to you privately about what he needs to improve upon so you could use this info when supporting him at home. 
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  • Former Member
    Former Member

    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. 

    Being able to tackle these types of tasks becomes more and more important in academic work as student progress through the education system. As such, I think its key to help your son develop these skills rather than ask for alternative work, especially as he'll also need to be able to articulate his thoughts and feelings to as part of future employment, personal relationships etc
    There are rules to these kinds of tasks, as is evident in the marking criteria, and your son's teacher should be able to explain these to you. If you modelled how to complete these tasks this would help e.g providing him with examples of how you'd answer it, maybe providing sentences with gaps where you son simply fills in his emotions or the response he'd have. I'd also talk to the teacher about your son's anxieties and ask her to focus on only providing only positive feedback for these tasks for now so that he starts to associate these activities with good feelings, thus, encouraging motivation. She could talk to you privately about what he needs to improve upon so you could use this info when supporting him at home. 
Children
  • in reply to Former Member

    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.