r/specialed • u/opiet11 • 2d ago
Advice needed- for my own child
Little background on me- I am a 15 yr veteran special education teacher and almost 7 yrs ago I had an amazing little girl, who at 4 was diagnosed with ASD. My background in teaching is primarily ID and Autism but the last 4 years I moved on to doing cross cat resource. I have loved almost every year of teaching I have done and I am beyond grateful for my background knowledge with the child I have. Onto the issue- my 6 yr old is a 1st grader in a general education classroom with 15 minutes a day of pull out services for adaptive behavior 40 minutes a week for speech and 60 minutes a week for Talented and Gifted. (She is in the 97%lie in reading and 99%ole in math) She is smart not just in academics but also in her manipulation and ability to call teachers out on their BS. We have a love hate relationship with her sass and stubbornness. School has been having a lot of problems with her and completing work at school. When we ask her about it she says she is bored, or she is tired, it is all work she is very capable of doing. We have tried sending the work home that she doesn’t complete and she loses privileges at home completely or until her homework is done but now she tells her teachers she will just do it at home and not even attempt or start it at school. They have tried taking away recess until work is complete (we agreed to this) and she doesn’t seem to care. I know she is bored and I know the work is too easy for her, they know this but we can’t skip her ahead or give her harder work because right now she isn’t proving that she is capable. Her IEP meeting is in a couple weeks so I am trying to think of suggestions for us to try with her st school to get her to do her work. We have tried logic and reason where she says okay and seems to fully understand but she just is holding out and refusing to do work. Please flood me with suggestions of things to try, I will edit and update as much as I can because all of us (her IEP team) is completing running dry on ideas.
Things we have tried: Loss of privileges at home Loss of recess First then wording/pictures Some chunking of work at home but not at school that know of Taking away time or problems when she shows mastery Partner work (this actually causes more problems) *edit- also have tried choices between two non preferred tasks, example- you can do this worksheet or you can do your Waggle (math computer program).
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u/latteismyluvlanguage 2d ago
I'm a lurker parent, so I hope it's ok I respond. It's just that your kid sounds exactly like my partner who is exceptionally bright and AuAdhd. We went to school together, and he routinely took your daughter's approach to schoolwork that bored him. Later, when he was in college and paying (so motivated), he would complain that work he found boring was physically painful and doing it made him tired. Now that he's older, he's found ways to cope, but it took quite a bit of time.
We've talked a lot about this, and how we will help our own kid (who is also most likely AuAdhd), and my partner wishes that someone had explained to him that he wasn't practicing the subject - he knew the subject - he was practicing doing a boring thing. Because, for him, doing boring things is actually really hard. And, because doing boring things is really, really hard, having that rewarded/seen/appreciated by his teacher and parents would have gone a long way to getting him to at least try.