Low Frustration Tolerance & Rigidity of Thinking

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It's a losing battle. This year especially I have really noticed the curriculum is stacked against the aspie mind. In a book report they had to answer such questions as
How do you relate to the main character?
How does the story make you feel?
It was several days of confusion for my daughter as I tried and tried to explain to her what they were looking for in these questions. Her mind does not work this way...she does not generalize well so these were quite difficult for her to answer.
This year seems to be the beginning of this type of learning, which has started all of her doubting. She doesn't understand how these types of questions are so easy for her peers. She is fact based-give her some fact to memorize and she does very, very well. But when you have a teacher that doesn't accept " I do not relate to this character at all." as an answer or the fact that the sun is indeed actually RED you're left with trying explain to your child what the teacher is looking for in an answer and not actually what the question really says. Ugggh.

I will take this opportunity to recommend my favorite program yet another time:

http://www.socialthinking.com/books-pro ... age-detail

This works well for both of my kids (7 and 11).

Can you give her a script to follow? When DS was in 1st or 2nd grade (I forget which) he was in the lowest reading "group" in his class, and forced to read books that had just a sentence on each page (he was reading much more complex stuff at home) largely because the teacher wasn't convinced he comprehended what he was reading.

I finally found a set of questions and "translated" them for him: "When they say how do you relate to the main character, they mean they want an example of anything in your life that is similar to the main character. For instance, if the character was angry, you could compare that to a time when you were angry." and then I walked him through how to do that specific to the book. Eventually he figured out what they wanted and was able to spit it out for them.

Really, you might tell her they are asking for exactly the same sort of thing that she did with the metaphors - a comparison between one thing and another, just in this case comparing herself to the main character.

How does the story make you feel is another one you can learn by rote: explain that the teacher usually expects her to share the feelings of the main character as they are at the end of the book, or even that she follows the feelings through the book "At the beginning of the book, I felt sad and scared when the main character was lost, but when she found her parents, I was happy."

If you try to give her literal scripts to follow for even very general, subjective questions, she might well be able to follow them. Once DS figured out how to do this, he went from the lowest reading group to the highest within a couple of weeks (meaning, of course, he was comprehending just fine - he just didn't know how to express what he learned.

Another tool I used for him, when they ask what the book was about "Say the same thing as the book does, but use fewer than 10 words." or however many words they want. ("Use your own words" didn't help - but he understood how to restate the ideas as long as I found a roundabout way to prevent him from using a direct quote. I used to have this problem, too - to me the author always said it exactly as it should be said; why would I say it any other way?)

LOL, yup, we had this too - I think I only succeeded because DS was so sick of being required to read such stupid books. It was a while ago, so I don't really remember exactly how I got around or through that particular obstacle, I only know that I did.

Will the teacher or someone else at the school work with you? I recognize that this teacher may not be ideal, but she may be willing to work with your daughter if you give her a framework that works. If not, does she have any kind of support person at school (speech therapist, social worker) who could step in and do it? It's really tough when the school isn't on board.

Maybe if you come up with scripts you think will work, and give them to the teacher/social worker to work with her on, she will figure it out.

That's tough... the upside of having a child who did not work very well independently until this year was that she expected me to help, doing a pretty substantial amount of the work. I went from dictating sentences to beginning the sentences and asking her to add a word or two and then finally to scribing for her. Sometimes she does the whole thing now, but just as often she avoids doing any of it: guess that's our next step!
Here's one of the pages from a good website I found:
Readers with Autism
I have to say that identifying hyperlexia / low reading comprehension was one of my key discoveries, and has helped a lot.
J.

This may be a weird piece of advice, but on the off chance it helps...

My son's reading comprehension used to stink. We would read a passage and when I'd ask him about it, he'd only remember an insignificant tid-bit of information ("A dog crossed the street" when the story was not about dogs, or crossing the street). One day I let him chew gum when reading. Not only could he recount what happened, he remembered entire passages verbatim. He now likes to read--even fiction--but will still usually chew gum when doing so.

My son has pretty severe ADD, but his ability to hyperfocus is really quite remarkable. I find this to be true of myself, too, and is the main reason I never realized I had ADD--I can focus VERY well. I just can't seem to control what I focus on. So if something adequately engages me, I can focus on it to the point that other things get missed. But sometimes really important things don't get done because I cannot make myself stay focused on it long enough.

I have a friend who's son is "more autistic" than mine (IOW my son seems mostly ADD with a touch of ASD and her's seems mostly ASD with a touch of ADD) and she uses small doses of caffeine with success. I don't see the harm in trying it.

Has she been assessed for dyslexia?