Rituals

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My son is 7 and diagnosed with HFA. He is mainstreamed in first grade with an aide for part of the day. I had a meeting with the school today and they said he is struggling a little more in the second half of the year as the expectations are being raised. Some of it is certainly his processing speed (which slows his work speed down). But part of it seems to be that he has established little rituals which take up time (I am not sure rituals is the right word, but its all I can think of). They are just small little things, but when you add them up over the day, they accumulate, For example, when subtracting 15-7 using the numberline, he has to start at "0" and run his finger up the line to "15" (rather than just pointing directly "15" to start with). If he looses his place while doing the problem, he has to start over at "0" again and repeat the process. Another example is when he is writing. If he writes and "a" and the circle doesn't quite meet up perfectly with the line, he will try to color in the space between the two. At home when we are doing homework, I can just tell him he is not allowed to color in the space and he will move on, but at school his teacher reports that he starts to become upset if she tries to move him along. He is a smart little guy, but between slow processing, being easily distracted and these little rituals, I am afraid that he is going to have trouble keeping up. Has anyone had any success moving past this type of issue?

(Just as an addition, he demonstrated these OCD-type behaviors when he was very young as well - 2ish - he would always drink from his cup in a certain way, make the train go around the track in the same direction etc..., but they relaxed as he got older and his language came in. Its only recently I've noticed them re-emerge). Thanks in advance for nay suggestions!

I think I would let the aide know what works at home to redirect him from the work-related rituals and see if they can adopt them there. If he gets out of that "habit" he may get into a new habit of not doing them. Another option is if he has a start worksheet ritual, and/or a finish worksheet ritual, if they let him do one or both of those and try to ween him off the mid-work rituals. This way his brain will get some of what it craves, but he will still be improving habits.

If you come up with any additional things that work, please add them to this thread, because my son has similar "rituals", although he is still in kindergarten. If there are several exercises on a page, he has to box them off or draw dividing lines between them before he starts. If two answers are the same on a page, he has to draw a line between them to show that they match. If he is copying words, he will cross each _letter_ out as he completes them, not the whole word, the letter. He used to be more perfectionistic with his letter formation, but that seems to have relaxed somewhat, but overly so, where I will tell him that this line needs to go all the way to here, or that it's backwards. Never a dull moment with our guys. . .

There are some math worksheets my son has where the numberline does not start at zero. For instance, they are working with numbers 15-23, so the numberline starts at 12. That might help your son if the teachers can find or make some. It would give an opportunity for him and the aide to discuss how he will approach that "problem" of having no zero.

Good luck and best wishes for finding some things that work.