Defience

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From Tony Attwood's Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome (p43):

"Clinical experience and research indicate that parents, especially mothers, of children and adolescents with Asperger's Syndrome often have to provide verbal reminders and advice regarding self-help and daily living skills. This can range from help with problems with dexterity affecting activities such as using cutlery, to reminders regarding personal hygiene and dress sense, and encouragement with planning and time-management skills."

One of the things we figured out is that sometimes the gifts autism can give you can turn against you. For instance, my son (and myself, to a lesser extent) has an absolutely incredible visual memory - sometimes photographic. While this is an incredible gift, it also means that sometimes he can visualize something so clearly that he thinks it has happened.

I don't mean he's imagining it, exactly, I mean that if you tell him "check to make sure your homework is in your backpack," he will get a mental picture of that (like everyone does to a degree,) and that mental picture is so vivid that it seems like reality - he can picture it being done so well that he can't distinguish between the mental picture and actually looking at the thing. This is especially true if he is overloaded.

Our work-around for this was to tell him that checking something means he needs to TOUCH it, so he has a double-check for the visual.

It took us a while to figure this out - I would guess for your son there is something like it at work. Not necessarily the visual thing, but something is getting between what he knows he needs to do and him actually doing it. Obviously, notes aren't working. Does he have a smartphone? Can you set up the clock alarms to cue him what to do at what time? That's something that works for me.

Basically, you're going to have to try different things until you find the thing that works - and in the meantime, you're going to have to support him under the assumption that he can't do it himself (I like InThisTogether's way of phrasing it.)

Another thing to remember is that routines are extremely important to people on the spectrum: if his schedule is variable now that he's 16, that in itself could be the cause of the problem. Building a routine so that one thing follows the other is very helpful, if you can't control what happens during school, you can try to make sure that you've got a good routine down during the afternoon and evening.

Wow, there's some great advice and explanations here.

Not a real solution perhaps, but there are watches that you can set to send reminders. Looks helpful if you're tired of being the prompter; and I think it might make older kids feel less helpless. I haven't tried them, though.
http://watchminder.com/

Bit in the same boat with 11-yr old daughter. Punishing don't work though. I used to be cynical about her not remembering but when punishments didn't make much difference I just gave up punishing as it wasn't achieving anything.
She is not allowed a pet of her own because I am not prepared to look after it. She needs to show me that she can remember the things that need remembering before she takes on the responsibility of her own pet.
I have always worked with key words. First one ever was 'consideration' and it took best part of 4 years before she started to understand the basics of that. Then we went on to 'responsibillity'. Been on that for about 2 years and our word of the moment is 'initiative'.
In relation to the rabbit it means she is considerate enough to not pester the rabbit into a stress-induced early death. She understands it is her responsibility to feed it and clean it's cage and now we are working on her understanding the importance of taking the initiative to effectively look after her rabbit should she have one.
Have told her that there will be no rabbits in the house until I am happy it will not become my responsibility because I can not deal with animals in cages and would much rather release a rabbit in the woods which is the other side of the garden fence

If she forgets and can't find a way to make herself remember the few chores that she does have then there will be no rabbit.
Should you wonder, her chores are to put the cutlery away, to put her washing in the laundry basket and uncurl her socks and make sure nothing is doubled up in layers because I am tired of spending 15 minutes with every wash load unravelling clothes afterwards and also to look after her horse riding gear by putting it away proper after lessons instead of letting it lie around the house till the next lesson.

She doesn't always like my bargaining methods but at the end of the day it's about seeing what she does have in her and how much I can expect for the future.
Last deal we made looks like we will be buying her a small laptop this summer as she has actually put so much effort into her maths that she has earned it as by agreement.

I can relate to that “defiance”.

How did my parents manage to get me obsessed with studying, so I wouldn’t dare do much else of my own accord? By recklessly forcing me to spend time doing essentially nothing very useful, by completely disregarding my need to finish school tasks in time and to have a proper place to do my homework, and by declaring that my perception of those needs was a mental defect I had to be cured from. Scolding me for having no friends probably helped, too. I mean, it helped me stay focused on my studies lest their constant pressure for me to devote less time to them and be more careless would ruin them. It didn’t help me make friends or start going out, but they didn’t approve much of this after all.

How did my parents get me obsessed about my hygiene? By keeping it hard (as in no hot water, no privacy in the bathroom, sometimes no running water at all …), letting me suffer the social consequences of body odor (I was in a rather posh school and my classmates never failed to point it out), and then angrily claiming that having a shower every day is a vice of soft, modern life (people used to have one each week), that the stench I felt wafting from my own body was all in my imagination, and that I should be ashamed for wanting to give in to peer pressure.

How did they get me to be as tidy and caring as I could possibly be with everything in my possession? By handling those things in a conspicuously ruthless manner, thereby implying how little respect anything belonging to me deserved.

The general lemma could be, “whatever is right starts being wrong as soon as you understand it is in your best interest and begin to pursue it on your own”. This ensures you’ll never be good enough and you’ll be in constant stress. The system works even better if you’re made to feel guilty and mentally defective for that stress.

I think there’s a Japanese saying about stabbing your foe with his own knife. Perhaps the idea can come in handy in order to take advantage of teenagers’ rebelliousness to control their behavior and worldview.