tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2799087240760337340.post4931482798533903969..comments2024-01-28T00:21:38.809-08:00Comments on We Are Like Your Child: Homework. How do I?Alyssahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06413844178426365789noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2799087240760337340.post-91178948743092741722014-06-11T13:22:53.652-07:002014-06-11T13:22:53.652-07:00*nods in understanding*
It didn't help me tha...*nods in understanding*<br /><br />It didn't help me that in elementary school, where things might have been caught and good homework habits established, I didn't *need* to do homework because I knew everything after covering it in class once. My grade 4 teacher tried. She spent a year working on me to get me to do my homework (though I don't remember how she did it or how successful it was by the end of the year). I've always believed that if it was followed through with the next year, I might have been able to surmount the difficulty. (Now, reading comments about how EF can affect things, I don't know. Asperger's hadn't been rediscovered when I was in elementary schol.) Unfortunately, in grade 5, we had a teacher who made me the teacher's pet. I didn't have to do *anything* in the class. I was free to read ahead as a chose (which I did). And I *didn't have to do homework*. (I don't remember whether I had to do the work assigned in class or not... I think I did, but that entire year is rather foggy. More so than the rest of my childhood.)<br /><br />Okay, get into high school (my high school, which was known for its academics, was grade 7-13). Suddenly, homework became an issue. And another problem cropped up.<br /><br />Perfectionism.<br /><br />I've been told (I certainly don't remember it!) that my parents got a call from the school about a project I hadn't handed in. Mom searched my room (see my reply to the post on living skills for what that was like) and finally found it. Completed. I apparently told her that I couldn't hand it in because it wasn't perfect yet. And this was apparently a Thing more than once. (Again, I don't remember any of it; most of what I remember of high school assignments and projects is hurrying to finish them the day before they were due, or like Alyssa, in prior classes or between classes.)<br /><br />I've learned to do better at work projects. I've learned to do better with my writing. Sometimes. When the depression doesn't have me in a pit, or I'm not so lacking in spoons that I have no energy for anything except surviving the day. But it's still a problem, and it's part of the reason that I never finished more than a semester and a half at any university or college, despite being intelligent enough and interested enough in the classes.<br /><br />Afraid I can't offer solutions - see the above paragraph re the fact that I'm still doing it, a lot of the time. I've just learned that when I *do* have the energy, and it's something that interests me, I can work harder on it, and sometimes bull through to the end. (This does not count when I'm in an inspired mood for my writing - then it's fairly effortless, and it actually energizes me.) It does have a cost, in that it drains me the same way passing for NT does, though. So it's a cost-benefit analysis each time it comes up. (And that's another thing that can be problematic with dysfunctional EF - but I suspect that's a different post.)<br /><br /> :) tagAughtAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2799087240760337340.post-28562805371224809542014-02-22T20:58:26.406-08:002014-02-22T20:58:26.406-08:00I looked things up on my own in high school and kn...I looked things up on my own in high school and knew that one of my main problems was executive function by then. (Another being a completely lacking sense of self-efficacy, definitely related.)<br /><br />I had most of these same experiences: Doing homework on the bus or in class, but when I went to a magnet high school where that wasn't enough, I fell apart and ended becoming very ill. Luckily I don't remember actually having to hide that I was doing homework in class (even for another class). I also ended up with a couple useless independent studies, in my case near the end of high school. (I knew for sure I was mystically good at taking tests when I made a 5 on the AP exam for my E&M independent study despite how incapable I'd been of actually preparing.)<br /><br />On TV, the parents sit their kids down at the dining room table when they get home from school, and the kid does homework while the parent cooks dinner or something. I feel like if that had been my real life, it would have prevented my self-efficacy/self-esteem from ending up a black pit of despair. At one point in high school, I was forced to stay after school to work on a project I wasn't making in progress on, but at that point the supervised "work" hours were useless because my ability to work on it had been broken so badly (by the lack of support for the executive function difficulties and other factors, like an open-ended assignment and all my proposals for how to fulfill it being shot down). This was the "research" project I had to do at age 14--following one the year before that was unsuccessful since my human fibroblasts kept dying and anyway were the wrong type of skin cell for the study I was trying to replicate, not to mention my difficulties using microscopes in general--as part of the science and technology high school I'd joined because of its excellent math program.<br /><br />That 10th grade year was a bad one, and I dropped out, broken, and developed conversion disorder the next year. Which led to me developing PTSD when I couldn't say "no" or move to avoid unwanted sexual contact. Which has happened many times since. My academic anxiety and inability to do homework only healed somewhat. Graduate school was right out due to that early experience with research.<br /><br />My mom always rhetorically asked me, "How can someone so smart be so dumb?"<br /><br />I hope parents and professionals are reading posts like these, so that the Autistic child doesn't have to be stuck trying unfruitfully to communicate their inability to do homework while being treated as if they're simply refusing to do homework.adairhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05665028373027605232noreply@blogger.com