Lying about completed school work and faking health problems

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It took me a while. Here is how I reasoned it: When you get an assignment like "write a two page essay on someone who you think is a hero" the point is not an information transfer. The point is to see how your formulate and write an essay. The topic is mean to focus your attention on a topic, see if you understand it, see how well you organize your thoughts and how well you communicate. As long as you don't pick somebody who most people consider a villain, no one is going to care who you pick. It is not the point of the assignment. So it is not dishonest to get yourself in a mind-space that allows you to do the assignment. You are pretending to be someone who has a hero.

Actors are not dishonest for playing characters unlike themselves. It is their job. I am not dishonest if I play a half-elven chaotic lawful bard on a RPPG. It is part of the game to be someone else.

Writing a school essay is the assignment. It is not a psych test, nor is it their business to give me one by asking me personal questions. It is my job to turn in a literate essay. Now, I would not make a ton of activities up for a college essay because that would be genuine lying. The answer matters in an instance like that. It doesn't for a "hero" essay for English class.

Thank you for all of your answers. It helps alot to see all of the other angles you guys had to offer, some which apply to us and some dont, but just good to know about. We had another writing assignment this weekend. An essay, any topic, 2 pages typed. So After the hero flop, I thought okay be flexiable let him write anything he likes. What does he pick? The history of mine craft.......... Almost everything in my mind was saying no red flag dont do it. But I want him to be able to write about what he enjoys so maybe his writting skills will grow, and improvment would be wonderful. So I sat down with him maybe 10 min and we talked about possible topics to talk about involving the game that would be appropriate. I go downstairs to change the laundry and when I returned (like literally 2 minute later), my ds has got a page and a half copied and pasted to his report from a website, 90% not his own ideas and at least half the stuff he either didnt get the idea of the sentence or there were words totally not in his vocabulary, when I asked him what they meant or what he meant by that he was at a loss lol... So I tried breaking it down with him a little bit and he got flustered and wanted to change the topic. He changed it to sharks, and did some brainstorming on a seperate sheet of paper and this paper is coming out much better. Hes got a good head start and its not due until friday so a little each night should not be too terrible. I tried talking with him about we can brain storm ideas with mine craft too, but he got so frustserated/uninterested it was a total waste of my breath saying anything about it, so I backed off, since he was putting so much effort into the new paper about sharks, and doing a better job about it. I guess we will just keep plugging away at this one paper at a time. When I try to make any suggestion or help him as calmly and patiently as I can , he gets almost upset and overwhelmed and rushes over everything. I dont want to tell him exactly what to write or how to do it, I try to lay low as possible, but he gets frusterated so fast. Its so hard when he obviously needs some help, and I want to help but he doesnt want me to help. I will talk to the teachers at school some more about it, maybe there is an older student or someone else at the school who could work with ds on it without bugging him so much. One paper at a time whew lol.

Somewhere here, I posted about a "script" we use for essays. Essentially I created a very carefully explained worksheet that he could plug stuff in and then if you remove the worksheet part, it's an essay. DS learned language structure - a big stumbling block for him - in this way. Kidspiration is a software that works similarly, if you want to go that route.

Here are a couple ideas - I'd take them and re-work them in language that is friendly to him. Keep in mind - bullet points, not exposition when you rework them.

http://www.regent.edu/admin/stusrv/writ ... ksheet.pdf

http://bitsofwisdomforall.com/2011/06/0 ... h-essay-2/ (see the section entitled "write your sentences worksheet)

There are multiple things that could be happening here, and you have to do some detective work and break them down one by one. For us, the worksheet helped us with my son's inability to see the "forest for the trees." He was so bewildered by the entire project that he couldn't figure out where to begin. He needed a roadmap to see the entire project from beginning to completion, because he had an idea that he would never get to the end.

Making sure the language you're using to direct him is EXTREMELY literal is another thing to look at. You can see that in some of the "Hero" discussion above.

Keeping verbal language out of it as much as possible, and writing things in bulleted lists helps a lot (many aspies make sure that all their work interactions are reinforced with emails for this reason.)

Removing distractions. We don't let my son do work on the computer at home because he will just surf the internet. Sometimes we have to move him away from books, toys and other stuff, too.

Kids often have different ways their brains organize information. After reading about it on here, I tried mind mapping (a visual representation) sort of chart where you start with the topic in the center and move outward. I thought that would work because my son is so visual, but it turns out he is too much of a linear thinker and it was not a good fit for him.

Anyway, I would try to get your son to start off organizing his thoughts in different ways to see what suits him best. I know I HATED outlines when I was younger, because it took extra time and I just wanted to get the thing done, but once I figured out how to organize my thoughts, it really does work better for me now then when I was writing something and had to figure out a way to get an essay to stretch another half or whole page or whatever.

If he does an outline (or some other method) he may find he is so much information that he can start prioritizing what to use, and that is an important executive function, too.