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I'll post in this thread occasionally when I see a situation I can shed some light on from the perspective of the child. Explaining my thought processes has definitely helped smooth out bumps (luckily, they were small bumps) between my mother and I, and I figured it would help others here as well.

Is there anything your child does that doesn't make sense to you, but seems to make perfect sense to him? I might be able to explain or help.

It is great that you want to help; we are always looking for how things seem to an AS child. You might find that a new thread like this one, however, leaves people unsure how to respond. Instead, when you see a topic you might have insight on, read it, and post your perspective there. This board is made unique by the wonderful input from those have AS, and our parents appreciate it.

Hi pat2rome, I've read many of your posts on WP over the past several months and found them to be intelligent, level-headed, witty, and overall good, and I'm glad you're here and willing to help

Any suggestions on how to motivate a 14 yo young man to do better in school? He's very intelligent and quite capable of accomplishing the things he enjoys and sets his mind to. But unfortunately he's not that interested in the core classes and he's not working up to what we believe is his potential. I know, big picture question, no clear-cut answers, and not exactly what you had requested...but that's what we struggle with on a daily basis. Any insights would be most appreciated. And you know what else, even if there are no answers, what matters most is that you care. Thanks, -DD

I would try to explain that doing well in school will give him a lot more opportunities to pursue what he's really interested in. Instead of saying something like "You have to get good grades, how else are you going to get into college?", to which he might think "Why would I want to go to college? It's just more of the same.", I would say it more like "If you get good grades, and go to college, you'll get a lot more money. That will give you more money to spend on whatever your interests are, and you will have a lot more job choices so it's more likely you'll get one you love."

That's the rough idea, just phrase it however you want. Just try to show him how those classes he doesn't care about relate to the things he does care about.

Also, I don't know how social he is, but since I always got good grades, I got a reputation as a genius (which I am not, but I now understand why people thought that, since they probably show some spectrum traits). This made it a lot easier for me to make positive first impressions (since those happened before I even met people), and it made people more accepting of my quirks (oh, he's not weird, he's just the typical scatterbrained genius). Even though Hollywood is full of examples of the nerds getting picked on, by high school most people have matured enough to realize that intelligence is to be respected. If he does enjoy other people's company, that's another thing to point out.

Also, ask him what he thinks about what you said after you say it, and see if it makes any more sense than whatever you were saying before.

High schools must be really different these days than when I was a teen.

Well, it helps that I don't have many severe social issues, so I don't come across as creepy or weird, just a little quirky but very friendly. One of my friends (I was friends, or at least on friendly terms, with just about everyone) was much less nice to people and he had kind of a superiority complex. Naturally, people weren't nice back to him. I guess people would have just felt bad about being mean to me since I was never mean to anyone.

EDIT: Duh, forgot another major reason: high schools (or at least mine) ARE different. I'm guessing when you went through, everyone was taking classes at the same level, so you were stuck with the people who hated being there and wanted other people to hate it too. I was in the CPA (College Prep Advanced) level classes, so for the most part my classmates were people who were above average intelligence and who enjoyed learning. Middle school was less pleasant because that separation wasn't there.

My high school was large enough that there were AP courses and such. However, for the bulk of the high school population, respect was still reserved for the football stars, rather than being related to intelligence.

If that has changed, it's a major step in the right direction.

We have motivated our oldest (diagnosed PDD-NOS) to do his homework by:
- asking him first what he want to do when grown up
- then show him what schools he needed
- show how much time each school would take, and in our situation it made a few years difference by doing the 'low' road against the 'high' road (better results on school >better numbers > faster path to his final school)

This showed him a good reason to do his work.
Visualization made a big difference here, my wife used a pencel and paper to show him the difference.