Yesterday morning, I sat at the dining room table after what had already been another more-hectic-than-usual morning, reading through Willy’s notebook one more time. The words struck me as wrong, and I puzzled over them, growing increasingly frustrated with myself.
“Willy knows to…” It said. Why did those words strike me as wrong?
I call Willy over to me. “Willy, did you lose your recess again?”
“Yes,” he says sadly, hesitantly, expecting a lecture I suppose.
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t do my spelling,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you bring your spelling homework home so you could do it?”
He shrugs.
“You know you need to be organized at school.”
He nods his head, his face melted with the disappointment of disappointing me.
It still struck me as wrong.
“Do you know how to be organized at school?”
He nods and says, “C-a-l-m-d-o-w-n,” in the deep, drawn out way we say it to him.
“But how do you be organized?”
“Use my head,” he says, poking his skull.
“What steps do you take,” I ask him softly.
His body gets stiff. His voice gets quiet. “I don’t know,” he says timidly. He waits for the lecture. And he waits.
I sigh, and suddenly the wrongness makes sense. Both calming down and using his head are important. But neither is enough by itself when the steps to do what needs to be done are not in his head. Willy knows to be organized. He knows his homework needs to be in his folder. He knows each assignment needs to be written down in his planner. And he knows to do his work when he gets home. But there are steps in between that make these things happen. It is these steps that make the disorganized organized. It is these steps that Willy doesn’t know.
He’s failed to do each of these things on numerous occasions, not because he’s not motivated, or doesn’t care, or doesn’t want to do them. It’s because he doesn’t know how. He’s been lectured. He’s been punished. But not because it’s his fault; it’s because I failed him. It’s because the school failed him. He’s ready for more independence, but before we hand it to him we have to teach him to handle it.
Sometimes the parent disappoints the child, even when the child doesn’t know it. So, I sat at the dining room table and I wrote a long note in his notebook. We’ve failed him, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make it right from here on out. This is a problem that can be solved with a bit of effort and a lot of coaching—something we should have been doing all along. And so I wrote to his teachers what we need to do so that Willy can succeed.
I’m sorry, Willy!
Because that needs to be said too.
With the lack of lecture, I think that might have helped in getting through to your son. The reason for this is that when you’re giving someone a lecture, you’re giving that person a lecture and not really addressing the real problems, which aren’t really intertwined with the person. Usually, when a person is on the receiving end of a lecture, it breeds resentment towards the lecturer. You see the point of that at all?
I suppose the usefulness of lectures depends on the person and the problem. If Willy were being deliberately defiant, then a lecture can help (it has in the past). If it was a simple rule, like not taking things off the teacher’s desk, a lecture can help. Whereas, if it were Alex, a lecture wouldn’t do any good, because he’d stop paying attention to your words long before you go to the end. He’s still working on understanding two- and three-step commands.
But, then again, it depends on what you mean by lecture. When I lecture, I communicate what behaviors is expected, why it is expected, and the consequences for behaving in a way that is not allowed. I also check for understanding, by requiring my child to translate the message into his own words. A lecture is not about blame or telling my son how wrong he was. That’s just not the way I parent my children. There is no build up of resentment, at least none in evidence (and my step-son is a teenager, so when he resents me he lets me know).
But in this particular instance, a lecture cannot do any good. Lectures are reminders of what someone knows or ways to teach concepts that can be learned by words. Willy needs more than words to learn the skills that produce organization. He needs hands-on, step-by-step instructions and constructive reminders. Instead, he basically went from his aides doing these things for him to being responsible for them himself, without the benefit of coaching in between–at least not sufficient, effective coaching.
Stephanie
I have major problems being organized myself. In fact, let me put it to you this way. My organizational skills are crap. I don’t know if this is willy’s case but here is my problem. There are so many different secenarios that can happen. Something could prevent me from putting away my stuff properly. Another thing that could happen is something new is added to the mix of what I need to organize. Another problem is I would not know how to determine what the best way to organize is. There could be an infinite amount of ways to organize things. Here is the problem. I’m only a finite being. I do not have access to all the possible ways of how I could organize and I don’t have access to all of the possible things that could happen which include things that could go right and things that could go wrong. I would need access to the infinite 2-dimensional timestream and to be able to see all possible timelines that could happen. There is only one being who could do that and he is infinite. He is God. I am finite therefore do not have access to all of this. This might be willy’s dillema but he may not know how to voice it like I am able to do here. I do not know if it is or not. He may be like me and may be trying to think of all possible secenarios.
It sounds like you’re on top of your own executive functioning. How did you get through all of this yourself? Maybe SBWG has an answer has well. I’ve been told I overthink things but that is the only way I know how to think? I become paralysised and I get analysis paralysis.
Stephanie
Read this as well on my blog from my thoughts and the way my aspie mind works.
http://ultimatesuperset.blogspot.com/2010/01/way-i-think.html
Cube Angel,
The sheer variety of possibilities can be very overwhelming. Instead of trying to account for every possibility or being overwhelmed by the impossibility of the task, it is much easier (and often more productive and effective) to stick to one main course of action have a one to three contingency plans for likely alternative scenarios.
I don’t know, but I don’t expect that to be Willy’s challenge. He’s still quite young to have developed his critical thinking skills that far. I suspect, with Willy, it’s more likely a lack of the fundamental steps. The first, meaning “stop what you’re doing,” is probably the hardest for him. He tries so hard to finish that he uses up his time trying to finish instead of preparing himself for what comes next. But, again, this is based on my observations at home, so at school it might be different.
As far as me and my executive functioning: That’s a fairly new concept for me, and it’s one I haven’t quite worked out. So far as I can tell, there’s a variety of understandings as to what “executive functioning” means.
People call me “organized” on the basis of what I accomplish, which is generally what they can see. As long as what I don’t accomplish doesn’t affect them or they do not see my organizational processes, they see no problem in this area. However, the ways I keep myself organized are a hodgepodge of different techniques. Basically, as a writer and an up-coming business professional, time management and organization are essential skills. I have studied these skills and developed a set of techniques and processes that keep me organized. In this sense, “organized” means I write down more things than I forget, I prioritize more tasks than I miss, and overall I get more accomplished than I fail to accomplish. The problem is that someone cannot just walk into my office and access my system. There are too many lists in too many locations and half the time the only sense they make is in my head.
For example, one of my long-term goals is to write a particular Christian fantasy novel. It’s an epic story (one that I have not yet developed the skill to write). I have the bare bones in the form of a physical chapter outline pinned to my wall. Someone who first looks at it would say (and have said) “It’s out of order.” If, by order, they mean numerical, chapter order, then yes, it is–and that’s often what they mean. But if you’ve read some of the same epic fantasies I have, then you’ll note that chapter order is less essential to keeping the story together than some other factors–particularly the order in which particular character’s tell stories from their p.o.v. and the way those storylines intersect. My order is based on that, not chapter order. I can explain it and people can understand that, but they cannot see it from the start.
I guess the point is that part of the relative success of my executive functioning is to go with what works for me and to keep trying until I find all the pieces I need for my system. It’s an on-going process; it requires researching what has worked for others and a lot of trial-and-error. I don’t fight the apparent chaos of my mind–I find the order that underlies the chaos that is on the surface.
From what I understand of the research that has been done, the autistic brain is literally “wired” differently (a literal metaphor, hm–not sure how that works). What I mean is that our synapses connect different than what might expect for a neurological typical brain. Again, obviously, the evidence is not conclusive. Much, much more research needs to be done. But, it seems to accurately describe my brain and how I access information. I can’t do it the way people expect me to do it, so I have to do it in a way that works for me. I suspect that Willy will need to find the way that works for him; as you will need to find the way that works for you. The trouble is all those “You can’t” messages. “If you can’t do it our way, then obviously you can’t do it.” Well, that’s just not true, and it’s not helpful, and it’s very presumptuous. But sometimes we believe it, and we stop trying to look for our own way.