what causes spaciness?

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The diet decreases the need to spaceout. I'm trying the diet (and failing), when I want to enter fantasyland, I eat bad foods again. The fantasies start to make more sense when I eat "good" foods, but meh... As a side note for the other diet enthusiasts: Usually I can tell which foods are good and which foods are bad by observing how my body reacts. I react to bad foods within 1 hour.

If he's spacing out in class, it means class is boring. :p Jokes aside, he should start whatever he needs to do immediately after he wakes up, or immediately after school. Transition periods in between two events often trigger spaciness. Especially if he has nothing to think about, or if he is walking somewhere. Tell him to start his homework on the bus or do it at school. Important things need to be done immediately before the initiative fades. If a transition period is necessary, he should put conscious effort into thinking about whatever he needs to do. Wearing earplugs also helps, since they can prevent him from getting distracted by noises.

As for crossing the street I don't know. I STILL space when I do that.

(On an unrelated note, listening to music also helps trigger daydreams for me)

The spaciness can be controlled to some extent. The best way I could describe it is like battling with sleep deprivation. Imagine if you stayed up for 24 hours, and then lied down on a nice couch. You would be feeling very tired, your eye lids would be heavy, and you would want to fall asleep. You could of course shake your head, and wake yourself up. But, a few minutes later, you would begin to fall asleep again. You could again force yourself to wake up, but it would get more and more and more difficult as time goes on, and unless something really important happens to get you off your couch and active, you are probably going to be asleep within 20-30 mins.

In the same way, when I start spacing out, I can overcome it, and force myself to pay attention, but only for about 2-3 minutes before my mind begins to wander and I find myself spacing out again. With time, your son will learn to put off the spacing out when it would be dangerous to do so. I.E. no spacing out while crossing the street, driving a car, dressing a wound, etc. It would probably be wise to reiterate the danger of certain situations to your son, and emphasize the importance of staying in the moment for those situations.

However, trying to stay concentrated for an extended period of time when your mind keeps trying to space out is practically impossible. Staying concentrated for a short period of time on something incredibly tedious and boring is doable, maybe for 15 minutes at most. Trying to stay interested and engaged in an hour long lecture you find boring, is in no way possible. I spaced out for nearly every English class I took. The only way to fix this would be to make the class more interesting.

To extend the analogy, your son would need to get off the couch and stay active in order to avoid falling asleep. That means the only way he could pay attention and not space out is if he found the topic or subject interesting, or the teacher did something which actively engaged the students. I had an English teacher who would come up with a bunch of crazy ways to actually make Shakespeare interesting. For example, students would take small parts of the plays, and then have to present them with their own twist on them. Some students would turn it into a rap. Other students would act out the play with a gangster motif, etc. That was actually interesting and easy to pay attention to. Hour long boring lectures, not so much.


Also, I have found that my brain has a bit of a limit on how much I can force myself to pay attention. This limit is based on how long I have been awake, how much and how well I slept last night, how I am feeling, how stressed out I am, and how chaotic the environment is. If I am well rested, and well fed, then I can generally pay attention more easily. If I am stressed out in a chaotic environment, then my ability to pay attention goes down considerably. But even if I am well fed, well rested, calm, and organized, there is still a limit. And once that limit is reached, it becomes practically impossible for me to not space out.

If you want to help your son, then your best bet is to try and make sure he is well prepared, well rested, and not stressed out too much. Also, teach him when it is fine for him to space out. Trying to pay attention all day wont work, they key I have found to success is saving your periods of attention for when they are needed, and spacing out when you dont need to pay attention. To extend the analogy again, learning when and where to space out kinda acts like little cat naps and helps you to pay attention better when you need to. Some great times to space out would be:

When riding in a vehicle (not driving it)
When the teacher is going over something for the 4th time (3rd time is enough)
When the teacher is just reading strait out of the book (you can read it later)
Art class, band, drama, PE, study hall, lunch, literature class, history class, etc (not like playing an instrument or memorizing poetry are actually useful skills).

High school is generally fairly bothersome because schools somehow have the notion that human beings are able to force their concentration for 7 hours strait. I dont know why schools think that. I have never met anybody of any age, normal nor AS who could pay attention to things they find boring for that long. In the working world, you at least get a break every few hours, but for some reason schools forget that student's need a break too.

It gets much easier in college because you can schedule your classes to have a break between them, and also go for a more interesting major with less useless fluff classes.

Dear Tracker and Evil_Squeakheads:

Thank you so much for your insight and advice on my question, there are not enough words for me to express the gratitude I feel right now. I am still processing what you wrote, but I can tell you this: In two minutes of reading your replies, you have given me a greater understanding of my son than I could have hoped for. Though I am extremely empathetic toward my son and constantly try to see things from his point of view, sometimes there is just no way to get inside his head. For your gifts I am truly grateful. I wish you and everyone else who participates in these discussions all the best and hope at some point to be able to repay your kindness. Sincerely, -DenvrDave

Wow, I wasn't expecting such gushing thanks. You just made my day.

Also I don't believe we're in a constant state of spaciness, it's more like we can only focus on one thing at once, and once we "tangent" into our dream-worlds we can't come back easily. But if I start something important immediately, without letting myself get into the fantasyland, I can concentrate on it easily because I'm thinking about the task. But once I take a break and allow myself to think about something else, I'm screwed because I can't go back to the task. I completely forget about what I was doing.

Our brains are on a tangent, 24/7. Kind of like someone who gives a super-long lecture and forgets the subject of the speech half way through.

Your welcome, thats what this forum is here for. We will try to help wherever possible.

If you have a question about anything, feel free to make a post and you will probably get some helpful responses. However, I should request that if you do so, try to separate the individual questions into separate threads. Trying to address 14 issues at once is difficult at best, especially if writing the answer to a single question takes several hours to write up.

Sorry for gushing, I'm just not used to finding such helpful and friendly people on line.

It's fine, because it makes me feel very happy. Yay, I'm helpful!