how do you make them understand?

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Sometimes, I feel as if no matter how much I explain to my son that I am not asking him to do X,Y, and Z to be mean, or to tell him waht to do, but its part of life...that he DOESNT get it. he gets upset like I am abusing him.

X,Y and Z can be things like, schoolwork, brushing teeth, eating healthy (eating), cleaning up his toys...etc.

He takes these things as if I am being cruel to him. I cannot allow him to NOT do his schoolwork, I cannot do it for him. I help him of course, but wont do it FOR him. I CAN brush his teeth, and usually help him do so each time, but I expect him to at least try himslef, as when he is an adult, I cannot brush his teeth for him his whole life. I cannot eat for him, I CAN clean up but if I do everything for him but what will that teach him? I dont ask him to scrub the floors, to do the laundry, to cook dinner. I ask him to put his toys away. I ask him to pick up his PJs when he takes them off. He is 7 1/2. His 3yo sister does these things. Everything is torture to him and he just doesnt get it. He is VERY smart, verbal, interactive, etc...but he wants to do nothing, unless its what he wants to do, like play video games, watch TV, eat junk, etc.

In his eyes nothing is fair.

How do I get him to understand that in life EVERYONE has things to do. Even his little sister. He hears me saying these things but he doesnt UNDERSTAND. I know he doesnt because he argues and fights, he protests and whines, he complains and TELLS me its not fair that he has to do anything he doesnt feel like doing.

I dont know how to get thru to him. I end up feeling like a drill seargant. I explain over and over nicely, how we all have things that need to be done, mommy, daddy, his freinds, teachers, etc...but he doesnt care. The only way I get him to just do it is to have a consequence that makes him sad (do it or lose vidoe game time, etc...) . I wish it didnt come to that. I am just at a loss as to how to get thru to him, how to get him to comply without him feeling like I am doing an injustice to him.

Is this part of the Aspergers? Will he ever see the bigger picture? Wil he ever accept that he has responsibilities? Will he ever just do something and not complain, whine, moan, argue, etc...

He is only seven, he will eventually better accept responsibilities. However, he may not reach these goals at the pace you expect or would like. It is unfair to compare him to his sister because they have different abilities.

All parents even parents of NTs have to at some point pick and choose their battles. If you are constantly redirecting him, both of you are getting stressed out. What things are the very, very, very most important? If his pjs end up on the floor, can you ignore it? My parents had to just shut the door to my room because I could not keep it clean to their standards because I enjoyed having my things just where I wanted them (in plain sight). If they had made a stand over it every day, it would have drained all of us.

There are just some things that he will do differently than you would want. Think of it this way: you have a set of rules that you think make life orderly and manageable and right, and your son also has a set of rules that make life manageable. It doesnt mean you have the same rules or find the same things agreeable.

If you are worried about what he eats, you really can't force him to eat certain things. But as a parent you provide what foods are available in the house, and if he picks from a variety of healthy snacks and things you can be sure that he will eventually eat when he is hungry. IF you focus too much on one meal or "the clean plate club" it will just cause more stress and anxiety which makes eating difficult.

Here is an article I read recently because it was recommended by an ASD adult. It basically says that this style of parenting works well because you ignore the bad things that aren't dangerous and offer praise and rewards for good behaviours. This aligns with what I have learned about positive classroom management, where for every negative remark you have to teach with five positive remarks in order to keep the relationship positive.

article --->nicer by nurture

my son will not change in his room, he does so in my livingroom. So, I cant really ignore it or there will be a mountain of stuff in the living area (i have actually left his stuff for days, its a mess and he could care less). Also, if I dont try to work with him, how can I expect him to know whats expected of him, and to catch on eventully. Then he will be an adult and say, "you never told me to clean my clothing up, how should I know?" He is not the type to learn by example, so just watching us do it he doenst get that he needs to follow suit. Actually, he feels everyone ELSE needs to do things, but he is exempt form that.

School work, tooth brushing, eating. I just cant let those things not get done. His therapists were horrified that at his age we feed him on occasion, brush his teeth, etc...he needs to start doing this on his own, or at least trying first, then we help him. This is the part he isnt getting. He isnt doing anything and wants us to do it all for him, and if we try to get him to at least meet us half way or try, he thinks its not fair and will get very upset.

My issue is that he doesnt want to do anything ever. Do I sit back and just HOPE that one day he wil understand? SO far he hasnt, when much younger kids have gotten it. If i just let him be, he will watch TV all day, not eat, not bathe, not brush his teeth. Isnt that neglect? I cant let him sit by and rot.

I cant take for granted he will just get things. His mind doesnt work that way. I am wondering how to tap into his mind a bit and get thru on a level he will understand. I would love for just a bit of cooperation. I would love for just a bit of understanding. For him to have some give and take in his life. He just wants everyting the way he wants it and cannot compromise. How do I know he will just "get it". I know adults who are wasting away on their parents couches, no job, no money, no life. I dont want that for my son. I dont want to start working with him when its too late.

How does a parent know when to push, when to back off? Whats the line? If I back off of baisc daily life necessities isnt that leading to neglect of my child? If he had it his way, there would be no school, no basic self care (bathing, tooth brushing, clean clothing), he would eat cookies and ice cream all day. As a parent, I cannot just allow that. So what do I do to get thru to him?

So granted, my daughter is younger, 5.5, but she sounds a lot like your son.

We can't afford therapy and our insurance doesn't cover it. So any meeting we have with any psych ever is pretty precious.

In terms of getting her to... do... anything other than read a book, watch harry potter, play a video game or whine about not being able to do any of those three thing, it is tough. She too leaves her clothes where ever. Refuses to dress herself. Doensn't/won't/forgets proper toilet hygeine. Doesn't want to take a bath. Doesn't want to brush her teeth. Doesn't want to wear her glasses. Cries like I'm killing her when I brush her hair.

One thing that helps is constant and perpetual mini rewards for doing the right thing and I DONT mean verbal praise. While she appreciates verbal praise on some level, it is not money in the bank. She needs something tangible. So I took my old smart phone and downloaded an app that is literally a reward chart. When she does something good (acts the first time I ask her something, doesn't whine etc...) I tell her to give herself a star. We tried something similar before where I would give the stars, but it didn't work because I didn't give them instantly or I would forget and give them later. That doesn't work, it needs to be immediate. So then she can accumulate stars and spend them. So like 5 stars is an mnm, 10 stars is a hersey kiss, 25 stars is a buck to spend at the store... etc... the rewards have to be small like that because I have literally doled out 5 stars in a 30 second time span depending on what we are doing and how she is acting.

You may think that your son is too old for this, but he isn't.

When it comes to punishments, when he stars whining or freaking out you say "I don't like how you are acting, go to your quiet spot."

The quiet spot is not exactly a time out. It is a quiet spot, you can even let him pick the spot and put a book for him to read there or something. When he is calm, he can come out of this place and try again. The key thing is to not let him use the quiet spot to avoid doing things he doesn't like. If it is something like he won't put on his shoes.... don't make him. Just let him go where ever with no shoes. It is it's own punishment. I do this with my daughter and the first time she walked out into the snow barefoot she turned right around and put her shoes on.

My son is seven also, and we are in the same boat. If you want to try working on a bunch of skills at once you could set up a token reward system where he will get points for each thing he does and he earns tangible things or computer time or whatever for x amount of points. Have short term rewards and longer term rewards. You would want to scaffold the list so that if he needs prompting at first that is OK, but later on down the road you can require that he do it without prompting but so he can get bigger rewards. You want it easy, so the success will motivate him.

Alternately you can focus on one or two things at a time (That is what we do) and then move on to other things when you have achieved success in the things you are concentrating on to where he has made a habit of it. So you can give him points say for picking up clothes after being prompted, say (and let him earn more points for doing it without the prompts) I would focus on the things he just doesn't want to do because things that involve sensory unpleasantness are way harder.

I was a lot like your son at that age. Perhaps worse. Yes, that was second grade, I was definitely worse. (Since I had the worst teacher possible in second grade, that gives me some reason.) Actually, I did catch on to a lot of things (not everything) - I just took far longer than anyone else to do it. A few thoughts you might want to consider.

First, eating. I was a picky eater, and hated eating everything except the few foods I didn't mind. My parents spent a lot of time forcing me to eat this or that because it was healthy for me. Fast forward to when I became an adult, realised there were few things I wanted to eat and decided - on my own - to try to broaden my horizons. Since my parents stuck to a pretty conservative diet, there were a lot of things I'd never tried. I decided to try many of these foods, and liked most of them. Some even became favourites. Okay, there are also foods, and even groups (seafood, any kind at all) which I have such sensory issues with I cannot bear to eat them, even now, but I've expanded my choices quite a bit. There is one other large gap in what I can eat, though: any foods I was forced to eat as a child. That includes things I want to learn to eat now, and ones that, by analogy, I should be able to eat. But I can't, or else there are drastic limitations in how much I can do. I would actually be able to eat much healthier now, if my parents had let me stick to ice cream and chips then. I might even have grown curious about a few things on my own and tried them - if they hadn't been pushed on me.

That's one thing people do not seem to understand about the way our minds work. Simply deciding, on your own, that we "need" to learn to do something by a certain age is a mistake. The harder you push, the greater the resistance you create. Again, as an adult, the things my parents pressed me the hardest on are the ones I still have the greatest trouble with. (I can still barely tie my shoes - because I was tormented, over and over, with "you're such a genius, why can't you even tie your shoes", and "you're old enough to tie your own shoes now". But I wasn't ready to learn that. And the pressure has left me unable, even now, to make much of an effort to learn how to do it right. My laces come untied all the time, and drive me crazy, but I just cannot overcome that barrier.) No matter how unwelcome that is to you, that's how my mind works, and there's a good chance it's how your son's mind works.

Now, as for schoolwork - I did not come from the most abusive possible household. I have some happy childhood memories. But I was always uncertain, unable to be sure if things would go well or explode - and before I was six, I had learned - by experience - that you can be hit hard enough with a plain leather strap that the edges of the welt will bleed. I'd also had boiling water poured over my thumb by my mother, although I suspect that was a semi-accident - I think she was calculating that I'd be mildly hurt and "learn" rather than getting third degree burns. So my home life was hardly a bed of roses, either. But I considered home a cherished refuge from that much more horrible place, school. Even after second grade, even when some of my teachers were actually more than tolerable. In fact, I only recently realised (I grew up in the 1960s, undiagnosed, and only figured out what was "wrong" with me in 2010) that I picked up an unconscious attitude that government was cruel, oppressive, and hated me - all because I was told I had to go to school. School was worse, to me, than the abuse I just described above. It is not designed for our development, it forces us into places we do not naturally go. It is torture. So, in terms of his experience, you are abusing him by making him do his schoolwork. I mean that literally. The major reason it took me so long to figure out my childhood would be considered somewhat abusive by anyone else was because no one seemed to care that my parents forced me to go to school. That was much worse, to me. I don't care if that makes sense to you, it was my experience. Physical pain isn't that bad, you can learn to ignore it easily enough. Mental pain is much worse.

Edited to add: As unpleasant as I'm sure you found much of what I had to say, I am not trying to upset you. I debated whether I should take the time to answer when you were probably going to ignore such unwelcome advice. I did so because you cannot hope to really help your son unless you understand him. And I've been through enough, and see enough of us who are miserable on these boards, I am sick of that.

He can't eat junk food if you don't buy it.

Ask him ..why.. he does these things. and then You have to do something hard. You have to listen to him and LET him Finish his explanation, WITHOUT interrupting. I know it will long and drawn out, but let him finish. Then you can address his reasons. I have been diagnosed and I hate when people ask me why then don't let me finish explaining why. Once you have his reasons you will be able to find an amicable solution for these issues.

but you have to let him finish explaining.

he is homeschooled. No horrible teachers or mean kids picking on him. He hates doing school work. He isnt beaten at home, we dont resort to any form of physical violence. He has just about everything a kid could want. Sometimes I think thats part of the problem.

I dont buy junk food. That doesnt stop him from crying for it. I dont force him to eat what he doesnt want. I ONLY buy what he likes, but he will still complain and moan about having to eat, he will take 2 bites of food and then want a snack. He will not accept the snacks we have home, and whine and cry that we dont have waht he wants. I get him a few goodies, and he can earn them if he eats the food I know he likes, a decent portion, he doesnt have to clean his plate. But a kid his age cant live off one bite of food and then say he is full and beg and cry for snakcs. He wants fast food all the time. I cant afford it nor is it healthy. He gets it a few times a week. He will ctry about that too. That is the bottom line. He wants it ALL his way and will make everyone else miserable in the mean time.

I think the point is that I am not seeing ANY PROGRESS on his grasping any concept of a give and take relationship, compromise or seeing anothers point of view. Becuase of this, he argues and fights all day long about everything. I dont know how to get thru to him. I dont want him to follow rules for any other reason then when he is older if he doesnt figure out how to see the world in another way, he will no have a happy life. He will not be indapendant and worse, I fear if he breaks laws he will be jailed. I dont want that for my child. I see a pattern here that scares me. He is completely and extremely oppositional, to even spite himself. He KNOWS the consequence but will still HAVE to break the rules, not follow the direction, etc...

It is very hard. I dont expect everyone to fully grasp it cause you dont live with us. If you dont have MY child, you have no idea and I cant really get every aspect of it down in a post. I try to explain here, and to my son, I am not trying to create a robot child. I want him to have his own will, likes and dislikes and his own ways. I just want to see some shread of him understanding that in life there are things we have to do, no matter what we feel about it. He doesnt see me sitting on the couch all day watching tv, eating chips, livinng in slop and asking HIM to eat healthy shut the TV and clean up. He just doesnt get it and refuses to comply and it makes everyone's life in the house very difficult. I have therapists coming here to work with him, he has groups, programs, etc...there is little to no progress made in this area. I just dont know what to do and am feeling like I am losing hope here. I will never give up expecting him to do better. that is how we progress. I have the same expectiations for my 3yo. I will expect her to progress as well in life. He is NOT PROGRESSING in this area, and its scaring me for his future.

Again, not sure how to get thru to him and have him undertand that I am not just trying to be mean rule inforcer (he has PLENTY OF FREE TIME to do whatever he wants) but there are things we have to do as well. In a whole day, if he can do his school work (MAYBE 2 hours in total broken up thru the day casue he cant sit for 2 hours), if he can pick up his PJs, and brush his teeth. I dont think that is unreasonable one bit. He is capable of doing every one of those things. Even if he just did 1 of them willingly without a complaint, fight argument, moan, etc...honestly, if he could do ANYTING requested of him without a fight, I woud call it a success.

Oh, I do ask him, I ask him every single day. I ask him what he would like me to do to help him. I ask him why he argues about it, I ask him to please let me know. I WANT to know. He tells me he doesnt know. and he tells me he doesnt want to do anything but play video games.

I dont get any long explination. I would LOVE to get some insight and I do ask him. I just had this comversation with him. His answer, "I dont know why, I just dont want to do anything. I want to lay vidoe games all day long. "

THat is his reason. How do I fine a solution? I use his vidoe games as a rewaed during the week and on weekends he has much more free reign over playing. But I cannot allow him to sit and play games all day long.

BRIBERY. (Adults refer to this as a "paycheck.") Come up with some system of getting him through the day with easy rewards that are built-in. I'm not talking about sticker charts (although if those work, great!) I'm talking about some kind of concrete cause-and-effect thing - and if you can make the "reward fit the task" in the same way that people make the "punishment fit the crime," even better!

Your child has a communications deficit. It's very hard for him to explain to you what's going on, and it is equally hard for you to get through to him. Sometimes, especially with daily living stuff that you are trying to instill as a habit, rewards work (for instance, what's the first thing YOU do when getting up in the morning? Something to do with a hot, caffeinated beverage? That's the kind of reward system we're looking for.)

Keep up the explanations, but in the meantime just focus on what you want to get done and what's in it for him if he does. For DS, he gets to crawl in our bed for a few minutes if he gets up at the alarm, and again if he gets dressed before the second snooze button. He gets two short educational YouTube videos if he successfully eats breakfast, brushes his hair and teeth, and puts on deodorant. I've given him bubble wrap to play with to get his shoes on and get into the car.

I think this works because this stuff that seems ordinary to the rest of us REALLY REALLY SUCKS for my son, and it's a sort of way to acknowledge it is hard and therefore deserving of a reward. I try to minimize rewards that create bad habits (no junk food, no non-educational videos) just so we don't wire in something worse, but for the most part it works - and DS is learning to reward himself after he's worked hard, something that I think is good, too.

I love this idea! Issue being that his only real reward is video games. I cannot give him the luxury of 10 minutes to play, casue he gets irate, insane and will refuse to turn it off and then obsess about when he can play again, etc...I used to have built in video game time, but that created major issues. Worse then now. Now, if he earns it at all, it is at the end of the day, before bed. Otherwise it is a huge issue.

I could try to work in 10 minute play breaks where he gets to play his stuffed toys (mario and luigi, angry birds, etc...).

I guess I have to come to the comclusion that I DO have to bribe my child. And its not the typical bribe, its trying to get him to see that there is a cause/effect, etc...

Okay, I don't think I was as clear as I hoped I was. Please try to read carefully, no matter how outrageous what I'm saying seems to you.

Although I did have horrible teachers and mean kids picking on me, that was not (with the exception of second grade) the worst part of school. And I was certainly not suggesting you beat him. (If I assumed you did, I'd also assume it was a waste of time trying to explain him to you.) I was trying to make a point. I had experiences you would no doubt consider much worse than schoolwork - but, to my mind, being forced to do schoolwork was far worse than having boiling water poured over my thumb until the skin peeled off. For one thing, that pain only lasted a little while, it wasn't unrelenting, like school work. And it was just physical pain, not mental torture.

Yes, I understand the monolithic, uncaring forces of the state force you to do this. I'm not trying to beat up on you. But until you understand just how much - especially at this age - that one "simple" (to you) thing takes out of him, how much pure misery it involves for him, you're not going to have any idea where he's coming from. To this day, I am convinced that mandatory education, at least in its present form, is a human rights abuse on a major scale for some kids. (Such as myself.) That is in spite of having some good teachers who actually made a positive difference - they may have been great, but the overall process was so much worse, the good wasn't enough to make up for that.

Perhaps this will help you see it from another perspective. I am a writer. I've embraced the English language. Although I'm good at it, I loathe math. Soon, I'm going to have to do my taxes. (My wife always makes mistakes, can't afford to get them done.) Money will be coming back, I can actually do the horrendous things in less than two hours - and yet I'd rather spend a month enduring one root canal after another over putting my mind through that two hour ordeal. I rejected math in favour of English because it "felt" wrong, in my mind. Math feels as if I'm putting my mind into a straitjacket. His interests and reactions will presumably vary, but even as an adult, there are mental tasks I consider worse than almost anything else.



Hmm. I think you have a few misunderstandings here as well. First, I remember telling my parents I "liked" certain foods - this was under tremendous pressure, so sometimes I'd crack and come up with whatever was least unbearable. That didn't mean I liked it. Then, for months or years, I'd regret what I said, because I'd hear "I thought you liked this". Uh, no, I was just under so much pressure to eat what you thought I should I said whatever I figured I had to in order to get the pressure off.

I've just been reading a few articles about how junk food and fast food is designed to be addictive. To everyone. And I suspect at least some of us - including myself - are even more susceptible to this than most. At this point, I try to eat as much natural food as I can - and I haven't eaten in a fast food place in decades. But I still know I'd cram that stuff into my face if I got started - even though I don't actually like it as much as the real stuff. It's not a matter of choice, but addiction. (Another example - my favourite potato chips are from England, and hard to get - they're called Tyrells. I love those things, but I can get a bag and it will last a week. I just enjoy a few chips now and then. In fact, I enjoy them more than way than when I'm stuffing too many in my mouth all at once. But, if I buy ordinary all natural chips, I'll eat the whole bag in one sitting. I don't like it more. If I could afford - and get - Tyrells all the time, I'd never eat any other kind of chips. (Especially their apple cider vinegar and sea salt chips ) But the other ones, the ones I don't like as much, are more addictive. Your son isn't nearly old enough to grasp this distinction, but I'll bet it's one of the things at work.

And, at least for me, eating is a huge sensory issue. Not just negative, positive as well. The right taste, or the right texture - there are some that are pretty fixed, and some that vary by my mood - will soothe me almost as much as petting one of my cats. Remember what I said about schoolwork? That's so rough on him, I suspect he's also - instinctively - seeking out sensory comforts. And that is a need he has and will continue to have. There are foods I eat for the quality of the crunch (potato chips, almond M&Ms - different quality, but satisfying in its own way), foods I eat for the taste, foods I like for subtle reasons (steak and cheese subs are oddly comforting to me).



Read what I said about my own reaction to being forced. I'm an adult now, and I don't do anything I can possibly help which spites myself. Been there, learned that lesson. And I still can't figure out how to eat foods I want to learn to eat, because I was once pushed too hard into doing so. Too much pushing has the opposite effect to what you want. I suspect you are, literally, teaching him to break rules. Instead, let go of any rules that aren't absolutely essential, and push those as little as possible, just do whatever you have to in order to enforce them. Don't remind, nag, or anything else. The less pressure, the better.

And, by the way, if he's like me, you won't see any progress for a while. "Normal development" is what's normal for NTs. At least, that's what I suspect. In my own case, these things started to come later, in junior high. Note that I said started. He won't have it all figured out then. I was able to read college textbooks - something I learned on my own, since I was reading Readers Digest before I went to school at all - and comprehend the content in fourth grade. Perhaps earlier. (That's when one of the better teachers I had suspected something and tested my reading skills.) But the emotional / social understanding I'm talking about was something I had no concept of at this time.

It was really only reading that taught me to understand other points of view. Writing, even more so. If I hadn't read enormous quantities of fiction and taken up writing, I'm not sure I would have figured things out as quickly as I did. And it took years of reading, of wondering about aspects of what I read that made no sense at all to me, of struggling to figure it out. On my own. Left alone, I'd learn. Pushed, I'd resent it. Note that the subject I figured out on my own - reading - is still the one I'm drawn to today. I don't think that's an accident - although the enormous flexibility of language as a communication medium is also a factor.



There is no way you can explain this yet. He does not have the capacity to understand. I was very much like your son, at least in the things you've posted. I completely get the need to break every rule, even if it hurts him. I was there. And there was no combination of words which would have made the slightest sense to me which could have conveyed this. In fact, even today, I resent unnecessary rules. I spent five minutes, two years ago, filling out a form in my town hall that didn't need to be filled out - because they already had all the information and only needed the one reference to look it all up - and that incident still angers me as badly as if they'd shoved me so hard I fell, then defecated on my face. That is how hurtful, how humiliating I found that "little" requirement. I may have learned not to bother protesting, but the feelings are still there.

For the moment, you need to first of all back off on every single thing you possibly can, because you're overloading him. He can't do all this at once, not even with bribes. And the damage from that will live with him for the rest of his life. That's why I'm taking all this time to try to explain what you obviously don't want to hear - because I'd like to think maybe someone else won't go through life with as much damage as I have. Once you've figured out how to take off every bit of pressure you can manage - bribe him. That's the only thing that is going to get results right now.

You're really not going to want to hear this part - but he is not even aware you're a fellow living, thinking, feeling being yet. At least, I doubt he is. (No matter what he says. I learned early to at least sometimes say what was expected of me, to take the pressure off. And I didn't even understand what I was saying - I figured it was just noises you made to satisfy the weird things that expected to hear them.) The first living thing I recognised as a fellow creature was my cat. She - and other cats along with, later, certain other animals - were the only fellow creatures I recognised until junior high, when I had the first glimmer of a clue other people might think and feel, too. Before that, although we didn't have computer games in the 60s, if we had, I would have thought of them as those enigmatic figures that just stand there and you have to figure out what they want, even though it makes no sense. Or like a boulder, you just have to go around it, there's no sense to why it's there. (The reason I recognised my cat might be instructive - because even at that young age - I was about 5 - I knew she lived in a world she hadn't made and didn't understand. We were alike in that, although I didn't fully understand what that meant for years. But I used to annoy the grownups standing up for her by pointing that out when she got into trouble. Think of your son as a cat. You can't explain to your cat why some things are - it isn't that they aren't smart enough, but that it just doesn't make the right kind of sense, because it isn't their world and they're stuck in it anyway.)

First of all, figure out what he considers positive sensory input. That makes for good bribes - and has the added bonus of helping put him in a better state. On the other hand, letting him just start to get into an activity he likes, then jerking it away - that's not a bribe, it's more like fishing. Where the fish feels the hook bite in almost as quickly as he starts to enjoy the bait. The way focus works for me, although I'd want the activity badly enough to keep trying, I'd also conclude it wasn't really worth much effort. Because that would make me crazy. There are explicit lessons, and implicit ones. The implicit one is that you're just going to let him start having fun when you spoil it. Another rule which will make no sense to him. In other words, a bad idea.

And no, he is not really going to see there is a cause and effect. Because your rules - ones you have to follow, by law - are so irrational and unfair, they are not going to make sense to him. At almost fifty-four, I still have to take it at least half on faith that people are serious about some of the crap they put others through, and aren't just being sadistic. What he is going to do is at least get something which helps him to settle down enough to endure what he must.

I very much suspect that many parents who believe they've solved these issues with their kids would be surprised if they could read their kids' minds. Because, over time, we do learn to make tradeoffs, to avoid what we can and figure out ways to endure the rest. But, in the process, we often learn implicit lessons which are not at all what we're supposed to be learning. And since we've learned to hide that, by saying what is expected of us - hey, if rules make no sense anyway, then why not just say whatever's expected, too - no one figures it out. At least, I know I've done a lot of that - and I'm still trying to figure out, let alone work around, all the implicit rules I picked up which made a mess of me.

I think this is the sort of thing you are looking for. Get a visual timer so the 10 minutes isn't in your control and is always consistent (and be prepared for "break's over" meltdowns for a short while.

Can you find a videogame of some kind that has a timed element to it? Like a racing game, maybe - so you can say ONE time around the track for every _____________________of homework (again, use some kind of lockout software so YOU aren't the one turning off the game.

PBS kids has lots of games on their site, and most of them are broken down into very short bits that aren't hard to do - so you can give him one "bit" of the game to do. Some apps have very short sessions (fruit ninja I think is one) http://android.appstorm.net/roundups/en ... -children/

a bribe idea that might go well with his interests but not have the extreme effects of the video game is legos. They have tons of lego sets that go with Harry Potter and Spiderman and they are really fun.

They are expensive but you could give him one lego piece for each activity he performs himself (take of pjs, put pjs in laundry basket, eat a banana, brush teeth for two minutes, etc). If you start when he wakes up, he could have enough pieces by the end of the day to build something. This is also a project that can be taken in the car or in the waiting room at the DR.

PBS kids is great, too! They have a really cute cheetah racing game that doesn't take very long to finish.


just an idea.