Homework and Autism

Well, well, well.  Homework.  Oh my!  The tales I could tell of the nightmare that happens with homework.  No matter what it is, there can always be an issue.  

So during covid and the lockdowns, doing work at home with a child on the spectrum - oh my!  Almost impossible.  OK, well, I struggled and struggled and in the end, I did whatever work I could get him to do, and then allowed him to go and work on Code Spark with his Daddy.  He finished the WHOLE thing!  I know that generally an autistic brain is good with computers so I just let him get on with it.  Because he was learning things that will stand his stead in the future.

I will admit that from when Johnathan was asked to do homework it was a bit of a nightmare.  He was generally set a row of letters to write.  What I didn’t realise then was that the hypermobility pencil didn’t help ALL of the problems he had with writing.  

It wasn’t until we were in lockdown that one day he ended up in tears about it.  I knew there was no medical person I could go to get help, so Kevin and I started to research and we discovered a sloping writing desk and that really helped him a lot with his writing.  He was telling me his hand didn’t feel balanced, so we thought we’d try it (after speaking to the deputy head to confirm we could try things in lockdown) The deputy and  I had spent the first term just trying to find a pencil he could write with!

Fact is, Johnathan has always struggled with pen and paper.  His writing goes from bad to worse and back again.  It’s much easier for him to type on the ipad.  And he is great at doing it.  However, he still finds this a bit of a pain to do.  In fact, for one of his assignments today, I allowed him to o on the ipad.

This morning was no exception.  Actually, it was a bit different.  Some things were the same and others were not.  His teacher had gone through the homework with them and so he knew there were 3 things to do.  So he was confident that he could finish the tasks and they were achievable.

Then he opened up the app and saw there were FOUR things instead of 3!  And Oh My Goodness, his little world fell apart.  He had a real meltdown over it, although I couldn’t see how answering some questions about himself was so hard.  But he claimed this was impossible.  He could never do four tasks.

Homework with an autistic child can be extremely challenging!  Even if they know what is requested, any little surprises can lead to a meltdown.  Talking to the teachers and explaining where the difficulties are helps figure things out with the two together.  There is always something to do.

Ps I have been thinking about this issue and I think I might have the reason why he so much difficulty with the fourth task.  Not any person on the spectrum likes to divulge information about themselves unless THEY choose to do so.  She’s obviously not asking for anything in depth but it could be simply that.