Help me get chores and homework on my aspies agenda!

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kurtz~ i did not ignore all of your points....i just simply don't agree with all of them.

I'm a home-un-schooling AS/Aspergers mother of an 8 year old with PDD of some kind; broken language, attention def, can't catch balls, hates noise, 5-year-old social skills, etc ( but v intelligent, good at computer games, reads well since taught himself in the Spring, draws intricate complex system designs of various sorts etc), who is coeliac , and so doesn't eat wheat etc, and recently I've been thinking will include him in my own avoidance of dairy too to see if that helps, esp with mood swings/anger/uncooperative stuff that i notice particularly when he's had big cheesy meal.
Anyway, re: schoolwork; we just do the "homework" for assessment purposes, which works out at about one and a half hours each weekday, none of the coursework. And usually if he kicks up a fuss, a serious one, I explain again that if don't do it, it will pile up, and be worse, and if still don't do it will mean failing course and will have visit from Academic inspectors ( in France you have visits if homeschool without a certified correspondence course), which will mean answering questions etc which he hates, esp with his broken language, and which would prob result in the inspectors imposing scholarisation. It's common in France.
It's supposed to be the protection of the infant against cults, but after 10 years in which only one homeschooling family in France was found to have any cult-activities, the law begins to seem a bit hollow; is in fact the expression of France's fear of being an uneducated nation, full of illiterates, ( schools working less and less well, so they think it must be cos not enough people are going TO school ! ) and also with their obsession with the unproven idea that socialisation occurs in schools, despite the incredibly unhealthy and unnatural proportion of 25/30 children (of same age) to 2 adults in most classes, and the absence of mentor relationships between different ages which have been found to promote the best social and other skills.
Anyway , the prospect of school which my son has tried twice is enough to remind him why he needs to do his homework.
* * * I 've just realised, on rereading, how hysterically funny that sounds, that I can get my son to do his correspondence course homework by reminding him that if he doesn't he might have to go to school!!
Chores; if it's body hygiene we, ( :me reminding him of what to do; him doing it) race through the minimum necessary before going out anywhere, about 4 times a week at mo ; toothbrushing, ear wiping, bottom washing etc, knicker changing if "needs it", and if needs to change socks for a sock-footed karate session then he footwashes in a big bowl with toys!! Need to allow at least 40 mins for this tho. He has accepted doing all these things cos I said people would be put off if he smelled or looked dirty. Once in a blue moon he has a bath, again with toys. Every evening he brushes teeth and hair, this in now almost failsafe routine on the way to bed, only established in last year or so. Before that almost never did either.
I pay him 50 centimes to take his homework to the post at bottom of little street. And 50c also to return DVDs to videoshop if I'm not dressed etc enough to go myself!! He will go down to the fridge in cellar for things sometimes. He now gets his own juice drinks cos i saw he could and simply stopped doing it myself. He gets thirsty.! !
Tidying room; must admit given up!! I used to plough through it , with some help from him, at 3 monthly intervals or so. But got fed up. Now it is a strange mountainous secret mound/continent in his room. Which he still , mysteriously, manages to play with. I insist he put books away on reg basis cos otherwise books get spoiled, I've said. He needs pushing but does it.
His room is a mess. I have had to let go about that.
BUT the sitting room/dining/kitchen living space is NOT. NO toys there overnight. And is respected. Also he has discovered is dangerous environment cos his Papa has twice, or maybe it's even three or four times, walked by accident on precious things and broken them in past.
MY own problems with cleaning and washing etc are huge too; I'm often racing through my own litany of hygiene at same time as him when going out!! so I think he's doing ok.
Good luck!

That's right, I am the creature of your nightmares. I'm a big dumb jock who used to push nerds into their lockers. Now I am a used car salesman, but I am sleeping with your girlfriend on a regular basis. In fact I'm under your bed right now! Run away quick before I give you a wedgie.

TROLL ALERT!! ! Admins, check to see if it's the same person as that Atomika guy.

But it should be explained to the children why certain subjects are important. It's just not good enough to say "put up with it - because I say so".

It's also important to realise that not all aspie kids are going to get steady employment when they grow older and they might not be able to cope on their own away from home. There are other ways to measure success in life besides popularity and having high paid work. Being a happy and contented person is one very good measure of success.

By all means encourage them to do their best but avoid pushing them to do things they simply cannot do. We can't simply be pushed into some kind of stereotype of what a successful person is.

Aspie1, I presume you aimed your "smashing the keyboard" comment at me and I think it rather silly. One person, especially a child, cannot be allowed to rule a whole household and it seems to me that you think they should.

pandora....i measure success in life as being content~ not necessarily well-paid, and certainly not popular.....i guess, as an NT, i have a difficult time accepting the notion that someone could be content and not get along with others

depends what you mean by "getting on with others". If it means having interpersonal interactions that are generally peaceable, I'm all for it. It's quite common for aspies to like to spend a lot of time on their own and some have very little desire to socialise.

Others want to socialise but don't always know the "right thing" to do and say and they are the ones who are most likely to be unhappy if met with constant rejection. It is said that the difference between Asperger's and HFA is that HFA people are far more content with their own company and don't see much need to socialise.

Aspie1, you refer to my post as threatening. Is it possible that you have failed to detect the irony there? I spread it on extra thick just for you.

Let me spell it out. By use of verbal irony, I am making fun of the tendency of far too many WP posters to divide the world according to idiotic binarisms. Because I call you on your whinging, I must not be an Aspie. In fact I'm an evil NT. No, a violent psycho! A jock who used to beat up nerds in high school!

If you knew anything about me you would not make such silly assumptions.

I am 5'9" and bookish. I have a powerful upper body but I never had any real interest in sports, though I did participate in long distance running and wrestling to see what it was like. I never scored any points for my team, but neither was I ever scored on, so you could say as an athlete I held my own and I was at least adequate when I cared to make any effort. Nobody ever beat me up per se, because I got my full growth early in life and it was readily apparent that despite my bookishness I could easily have defended myself in open confrontation. There were, however, occasions when people would trip me from behind or shove me into a wall without my knowing who had done this. This is not a pleasant thing to have done to you but I didn't dwell on it or let it ruin my life. I am telling you this only because you accuse me of being a bully, when in fact what little bullying I experienced was at the opposite end.

Most of my free time I spent reading SF novels, later graduating to philosophy, theology and anthropology. I have the usual social difficulty but I was farily good at math, exceptionally good at non quant subjects, and I did quite well on the SAT although my grades have always been mediocre due to lack of effort and poor organization and time management. While I was offered a partial scholarship to a local private college with a good academic reputation, I chose instead to attend a state land grant university to get away from my home town. I don't hate my home town but I felt I needed a change of pace.

After getting a degree in foreign languages I moved to China to teach english for a few years. I later landed a nice writing job with a good company but lost it almost immediately because I failed to pass the final confirmation interview with the school director. To this day I suspect that I would still have the job if I had simply worn a suit and tie to the interview instead of a yellow and black charlie brown polo shirt and khaki slacks.

After losing that job I moved back to America, got my AS diagnosis, joined Mensa, and started working menial temp jobs to try to save money to buy a car. Last week I started reviewing for the GRE, which I will sit for at the end of december.

Now, does this sound like the life of an evil jock bully NT interloper? Think you before you post, Aspie1.

If I had known that in advance, my reaction obviously would have been different (yeah, I did fail to detect the irony). But I was bullied a lot more than you described, so any threat, ironic or not, results in a knee-jerk reaction. As for the binarisms thing, it's common for many, although not all aspies, since they tend to look for logic in a chaotic world. So now that we got all that cleared up, let's drop the argument and get on with our lives. And I don't mean to rag on your username choice, but the word "spam" in it kind of made the message look more threatening than it actually was.

Not by any stretch. FIrst, aspies don't like change, and more than likely if someone is cleaning their private, personal space they will be moving around things to different areas, things that aspie has a significant reason for wanting to be in a certain spot, and may even have very good reasons for such items should have never been moved. (ie grandpa sat this there, he's dead now.")

Also, what an aspie values can also be considered junk to the cleaner who will toss it without a seconds hesitation. Like a cracked ball point pen with a broken cap that the person who was kindest to the aspie handed to him on his happiest day last year, a day when everything seemed to go right, so that old cracked pen is a symbol that things can go great, that the aspie can be happy, and as long as he has that pen he knows its possible to be happy. Then mom comes in tosses the pen without so much as even asking if its something that can be thrown away.

When my greatgrandparents died I was told I could have anything I wanted out of the house. There was only one thing I saw the slightest bit of value in. It was an old bent metal card with my great grandfather's brother's name and social security number on it. This man died about 40 years before I was born, and since my greatgrandpa married into the family, you could say he wasn't even part of my history. However, I had felt a connection to himj ever since I first heard about him. Furthermoe I like old, decrepit objects. So that's what I asked for. It was clear from everyone's reactions thats one of the things they planned to throw away as soon as they began cleaning, and there was evena common belief i was just too embarassed to ask for anything valuable. Therefore in addition to the card, I was given a silver silverware set that my great grandmother had received for one of her weddings. I had no desire for that. Indeed I don't see the point of having something like that. Afterwall why have silveraware that you aren't going to be using on a regular basis. When I moved out of home, I took the social security card. Its in my dresser right now. I left the silverware. i've no clue what happened to it.

I've no doubt I'd have some sort of meltdown if someone tossed that soc card because of what it means to me and what it always will mean, even if it is just a bent piece of metal to anyone else who looks at

No problem : )