School work help needed

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Hi all, I'm hoping someone/anyone can help. I need an outside opinion.

Here's the issue;

J my 12 year old (dx's are in my signature) has never produced a great deal of school work. All his books come home at the end of the school year and in each book only a few pages have anything written on them. J flat out can not do home work, it cause's massive anxiety, school have finally worked this out and have taken it off his agenda.

I had a conversation with J last night, he was in a reasonable mood and more willing than normal to share some info, so I kept asking. It appears that during work time J struggles to get anything out of his head. He apparently wont write until he knows/thinks he has formed the perfect answer to what ever it is the teacher has asked. A lot of the time he doesn't understand or fully understand the question or how to respond, then he spends enormous amounts of time trying to formulate the perfect answer, then getting that answer out of his head and onto paper is another task. J tells me he is a perfectionist and doesn't like to do anything unless he can do it perfectly, (to his level of perfection not the teachers). J also has adhd, so his entire thought process is easily distracted by internal and external influences. He has ocd, so I can see how his need to feel that his work is perfect would be over whelming and stressful, add to that the anxiety disorder and aspergers and you get very little school work done.
He thinks he is disappointing his teacher, he knows she wants him to do more work. He said to me "mum, when I do my maths work sheet, R(his teacher) will come look at his work. She will pause....the longer the pause the more disappointed he feels she is. Then she will say J do you think you need to do more work?" I believe his teacher is doing her best to understand him and to kept the pressure off him but at the same time keep him on track.
He is also extremely disorganized. We can also see how disorganized and forgetful he is on the outside, so I am imagining he is the same way with his thoughts/ideas.

How do you help a child in this situation?
What can I do as his parent and what can I suggest his teacher do to help?

I am not easily distracted, but I can understand your sons struggles. I too am work perfectionist. I think part of that perfectionist attitude stems a lot of my motivational issues. I dropped a few classes, well actually just after a while stopped going to the classes because here I spent hours and hours trying to follow all the rules of the class, and writing a perfect answer to the question. My standards of perfection. And I'd always get feedback that was less than satisfactory, even though I had put so much effort into the work.

Its one of the most stressful and demotivating problems you can face. I also have issues with timed test, which also stems from my perfection. I want to be on time, but also have perfect answers. Yeah, that's not actually working out very well.

I don't have the fully or the greatest advice. Only because I really don't have anyone to help or support me. I have to do everything on my own. So I have to push myself to either do half perfect work or perfect work and suffer the consequences.

What I can suggest, is maybe assisting your son on his homework?

I find that I understand the material, and can easily write it down and get good marks by discussing the material with someone. It allows me to form my thoughts and allows me to baffle around.

So what I mean by assist is discuss the material. Its a great tool of learning and getting ideas out. But it also is less stressful because by the end of the discussion you have all that you need to write perfect answers.

I started having this problem in college. I was always a perfectionist but it became debilitating then.

What I would have loved was a "study buddy" in each class. I envied two girls in my dorm/house who were best friends and took all the same classes and worked on homework together on the floor of the room they shared.

I need someone to push me out of my inertia. Maybe something like this would help J (who I realize is in grade school but still). I'm not sure how this might be arranged.

Thanks for the replies.

Unfortunately "home work" is not going to happen, it sends J into an anxiety driven meltdown. He will verbally and physically attack himself if asked to do home work. So now homework has been taken out of the picture. In fact there is to be no cross over between school work and home life at all.

A study buddy in class to perhaps help keep him on track sounds great, it's getting him on the right track to start with where I feel the issue is.

I think his teacher this year is capable and willing to making a huge difference, it's just knowing what we need to do and understanding exactly what his issues are that's causing all the problems.

It seems like he needs a healthier way to deal with his anxiety. Maybe you could help him figure out what exactly is worrying him, and then help him identify a different way of thinking about it. Make a What If vs. What Is chart to help him identify thoughts that are worry thoughts and not helpful. Then he can start to catch those earlier and redirect himself to think about "what is." Practice going over it daily, and even maybe have a visual reminder at school?

What if the teacher is disappointed? vs. I just need to try my best.

What if I get the answer wrong vs. It is okay to miss a question. That is part of learning

What if I don't understand the question? vs I can ask the teacher for help


I've taken a lot of exercises like this from Freeing Your Child from Anxiety by Dr. Tamar Chansky. They worked well for my kiddo.

Another one we do from that book is the "Brain Train." Introduced it as the 2 tracks you have a choice to go on when a worry thought pops in your head. While you have no choice of what thought pops in, you DO have a choice for what you do with it. We talk about Thoughts, Feelings, Action.
If you go down the "worry track" you thoughts will be things like "What if I get it wrong" Your feelings will be anxious/worried. Your action will be not doing your work on time or at all.
If the thought pops up you can CHOOSE to go on the "smart track" where thoughts are what IS: I just need to try. Feelings are "not worried, focused on work." Actions will be "getting work done on time."

Sometimes people just don't realize that they have a choice about what they do with their worried thought. Once they understand that they have the POWER to change the course, it can get better!

He will need a lot of support to work through this stuff. It would be worth finding a good therapist/behaviorist to make a plan for home and school.

You have two problems, I think:

The perfectionism, which I honestly have no idea how to deal with. Have you seen how many times I edit most of my posts? And I don't even consider myself a perfectionist!

The disorganization.

On the later, for producing work product, at least, I suggest teaching him to use a multi-step process:
Step 1 - brainstorm. No rules, no restrictions. Put down all the thoughts.
Step 2 - review and narrow down.
Step 3 - edit into an acceptable answer.
All of which are much easier on a computer, or using cards that can be moved around.

Get the teacher to agree with you on an approach, so the same approach is used at home and in school. Someone will need to do it WITH him, to help take the pressure off and prompt him through it. Its time consuming but a necessary investment.

In fifth and sixth grade I remember working with my son using a similar process, and it helped. In a way you are trying to simply unblock the dam. Once the water is allowed to start trickling through it slowing widens the channel until you get a steady stream.

For overall life disorganization I simply became my son's administrative assistant, and we still do a lot of that for him. You do it until they are ready to take it over. And they do eventually take it over; just kind of happens.

Maybe you need to teach him what his teachers are looking for?

I mean, he's worried he'll disappoint his teachers, right, but he knows his teachers are disappointed because of his lack of work. This means that his current strategy isn't working. You need to show him that what his teachers are looking for is a student who's brave enough to try in the first place. I teach EFL in Asia and one of our classroom rules (we only have five) is Always Try. I write it on their quizzes when I see a blank line. Always Try, that's the rule. I tell them that if they don't try, they'll get zero for that answer. If they try, then maybe they'll get half a point. So teach him that. The best way of pleasing his teachers is to at least try. And then there are other methods:

- the brainstorming one was a good one.
- time challenges can also work well.
- controlling the OCD needs to be a priority. Make a work space for him and keep it clean.