Strategies for Focus, Motivation and Task Completion

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I'm posting this in the parents discussion as I'm approaching this issue as someone in authority, and would appreciate perspectives from people who are in this kind of role: i.e. parents and professionals...however, I would like if people on the spectrum responded as well. I apologize in advance if this is lengthly, but I would really appreciate some help.

I'm not a parent, but I work as an assistant teacher/coach for a program which teaches young adults with Asperger Syndrome skills that they will need in their adult life: things like self-awareness, self-advocacy skills, and developing skills related to the workplace. My boss is amazing, but she has been very busy as she is coaching others as well, so I have a very limited amount of time with her. In this program, I am assigned as an individual coach to four young women, and meet with them for an hour once a week to work on a skill that they need the most assistance with. Two of them have excellent focus, work ethic and motivation towards their goals, so I have no concerns with them...it's the other two that are struggling and as such would really appreciate some advice on how to move them along.

Person #1 has AS and depression. She comes from a volatile family environment and was recently diagnosed. She lives with her mother who doesn't understand AS and will do things like publically shame her for her behaviors. Her goal is to improve her executive functioning skills and to complete the tasks she needs to do every week. She is in university and is very bright, but she struggles greatly with the work and lacks the reading comprehension skills needed to go through her text and find the main points to take notes. As a result, she fails to do the readings and is now doing poorly, having failed one of her two classes last semester (she has not revealed this to her mother). She has taking a class right now and has an essay due next week, and does not know the concepts well enough to even get started. How am I supposed to teach her to break things down and prioritize if she struggles with the material, and getting the necessary motivation in the first place?

She also fails to complete the assigned homework every week for the transition course I am helping with. It also doesn't help that her mom asks her to do chores for her during the week, which she never declines doing to focus on work. When we are meeting, she often gets off track, jokes around, does not stay focused. Despite me redirecting her, she does not take this seriously and fails to see how this affects her adult life. The problem with this is that since I only have one hour every week, I am struggling to make progress with the goals I have assigned for her. I want to give her some material on how to make a priority list as well as break down her assignment - but she never checks her email, despite clear and numerous reminders.

Any advice on how to make her stay focused at both school and home - and to take her goals more seriously - would be amazing and extremely valuable to me right now.

Person #2 I have less concerns with but she is tough to deal with - even my boss agrees. This young woman has AS and ADHD. attends the local college during the fall/winter and is fairly good at assignment completion and staying motivated with school goals. However, she is a non-stop talker, will constantly interrupt and go off-track and needs to learn how to stay focused and to listen to others when they are talking. If I or my boss bring up something she finds tough to understand or is outside of her comfort zone (i.e. talking about how to regulate her anxiety) she shuts down, pouts and whines. She has already achieved her initial goal (being able to ride the bus around town) which is fantastic, so we are working on another goal: being able to participate in her first volunteer placement. However, in order to do this independently, she needs to learn how to stay focused when being given directions or when we are discussing something that may be hard for her to understand. She is unaware of the effects of her constant talking on others (people get really annoyed by it) and she shut down when I tried to talk to her about this. It is likely that she will be volunteering at an animal shelter (animals are her special interest), so it's important that she be quiet so that she does not upset them. My next session with her will involve me sitting in on her first volunteer shift to take notes, but I fear that she will spend her time there playing with the animals and trying to talk to me.

Any advice for me to help with her talking and for her to keep focused would be great.

Thanks in advance everyone!

Well, you have your hands full. I'm a retired teacher and I'm on the spectrum...so....
It's sort of funny, in that I can relate to both your issues and the issues of your students/clients?.... I am assuming they are in their late teens or early twenties... I look back at myself at that age and cringe at my immaturity and naivete, as well as my self defeating behaviors. I still struggle with executive function isssues, but at aleast I know I'm struggling with them - in my early years, I had no idea that that was the problem, I t was part of my classic space cadet personality - no Aspergers dx back then! Needless to say, I did not finish school at the regular rate either...

Point # 1...capacity for insight. Are they at the level of being able to 'see themselves as others see them'? Can they interpret their own cognitive status? What is their level of Piagetian development? Are they ready to learn about themselves in relation to others...
Point #2...I have found that children on the spectrum do not develop these capacities at the same rate as NT students...they are much later. We don't become 'adults' at the same rate either...

Person#1's issues with her mother may be a limiting factor and causative of a situational depression - it really does not help to have a shaming/ blaming person in your life. Helping her to overcome the negative messages coming from toxic mom might help her - (basic separation issues that normally come during earlier adolescence may be in play here?) Also, What kind of learner is she? (kinesthetic/auditory/ visual etc...what is her fundamental knowledge acquisition style? it does no good to pick up a book and stare at the words, if the main abilities are auditory or kinesthetic...this is important information for her to know for herself. It is well nigh impossible to organize an essay when you cant 'get at the data' due to its presentation mode.
If she is an auditory learner, either reading everything aloud - taping it and listening back - to get the information and then writing down the main ideas as they come into focus or recording them as well... For kinesthetic types, writing stuff down as you read..-using.koosh balls while you read type stuff...graphic organizers for those who prefer visual modes....I've seen students do better with music playing or white noise makers or any number of 'aides d' memoire' ...this is a place for getting out of the box. The trick is for her to figure out what works for her, to believe in her own self understanding and then to stick with it... and to stick with it as a learning technique. There are analytical tests for this kind of thing.

Person#2 - I'm wondering if her verbal diarrhea might be a symptom of underlying anxiety or other emothional state. I only say that because I tend to suffer from the same thing....it's taken me years to learn how to shut up and listen - and I'm not all that successful sometimes. When anxious or 'trying to prove myself' - I'm at my worst. I might sense the annoyance of others, but I have no way of knowing what to do - or how self regulate...learning that 'doing and saying nothing' is okay has been a hard lesson. It really took some work and many, many practice sessions to understand. And yes, I cried and became defensive when I got 'read the riot act' to shut up etc. It takes a sensitive and kind therapist to help with these issues - or at least a kind and sensitive coach, who is there with the tissues and ready for the ineveitable meltdown that comes with feeling the failure - again....the trick here is goal attachment. If she can see where and how her behaviors are self defeating and keeping her from her goal...it might help...then again, it might not work for another couple of decades....

I might just be projecting myself here, but maybe it helps you...hope so.

just re-read your post and notice the term...'goals I have assigned for her'...has she bought into those goals and assigned them to herself? Nothing will work unless the goals are self acquired by the student...especially when there are challenges of executive function, cognitive capacity or other learning disabling conditions.

BornThisWay: thank you so much for your insight. Although you experienced your young adulthood in a similar way as these ladies, the point is you got through it and became a teacher, and that is what makes your advice especially valuable.

Person #1 has reached the formal operational stage in her thoughts, but is more concrete operational on paper. She has good social awareness but low self-awareness in other areas (i.e. what her strengths are - she sees herself as worthless). I talk with her a lot about her mom and she will often complain about her, but the focus of the session is to get the tasks I want to teach her done. I feel bad because she has no other outlet, but in one future session I will help her get set up with counselling and a learning strategist at her school.

She struggles with understanding concepts when reading and and in print. I completely agree in that she has to develop strategies consistent with her learning style...you suggested auditory strategies, which I never thought of...she does love to talk and so reading out loud might be a good idea. She has a keen eye for visual detail, so we have come up with some colorful mind maps using the concepts from a few pages of her textbook. However, her biggest trouble is getting motivated to do any kind of "busy work" in the first place and not getting distracted. I have texted her a "check-in" message to ask her about her assignments since she is quick to respond through text - hopefully this will encourage her to stay on track.

You are correct about person #2 - she is very anxious and seems to talk and repeat ideas to calm herself. However, she has very low self-awareness and totally neglects to see how her behaviors affect others. I think that your advice to help her through her anxiety - even if it means a meltdown - and to help her see where behaviors like this get in the way of her goals. I'm concerned that she might have a meltdown in a public place though - or even worse, if she is at her volunteer placement.

As for personal goals, the young adult selects their goal (with I and my boss' assistance, if they don't know) and then I come up with a broken-down plan of how they are going to learn this skill in a gradual way. There is an expectation at the end of the coaching sessions that the young adult will achieve when they are done. (i.e Person #1 will use a visual for assignment completion, etc.)

Does anyone else have anything to add? I'd appreciate a wide variety of responses

I was also wondering if you could simply offer the same accommodations to person #1 as you would a blind student.

I know where I went to school, the one blind guy on campus was assigned a "buddy" in his class (he was part of a fraternity, and they volunteered this idea and to take it on.) That person's job was to help take notes and read him anything that needed to be read aloud. They also engaged some of the theater and communication students to read the texts into a tape recorder. It might also help her to have a "teammate" in the classroom to keep her motivated and on-task, especially if you made it so that the teammate reads the material out loud and she takes the notes for both of them, or that they trade reading aloud and note-taking - so it is a cooperative effort they both benefit from.

This could also mean that she has a scheduled study period at school and away from home, which will mean that she is less likely to lose her "school head" for her "at-home head." Many people with AS struggle with this - and in reality, you can compartmentalize in this way more successfully in the "real world" than you can at school, so I haven't felt like it was a skill to push for my son to learn, for instance.

As for the non-stop talking, I'd look through this thread: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt234838.html

Thanks for the reply - I'm glad you feel my insights are helpful. On reading your description of what you are doing with #1, I had a another thought.- actually a memory of what I would do with my students back in my days as an aide -and also as a teacher to some extent. - Task Mapping - We taught this in the middle elementary grades, but it might be something she missed out on mastering at that age. It normally becomes an internalized skill of the executive functions in the mature adult...

It is a skill in and of itself - and it can be learned and is usually very effective with a student who is comfortable with concrete operational activities - thus its introduction in late elementary and or middle school (when your student might have been focusing on other issues in the classroom).

When working with a student who has difficulties staying on a multi-step task, we (both the student and myself, with me guiding) would begin a session by making a check list or task map of what was to be accomplished in that session (I frequently worked one-on -one with LD students when I was a classroom aide) . Only after creating the list together, would we tackle the actual work at hand...yes, this took time, but those few minutes at the start saved many minutes during the job...As we worked through the task we would check off, or erase from the whiteboard the steps that had been finished...This, (and having a clock) helped us to stay on course and get to the goal.

I cannot stress enough how vitally important that the student be involved with creating the list - mastery of process comes from ownership of process...and remember - a fundamental issue of people with executive function delays or breakdown is difficulty with creating and staying on the path from goal setting to attainment. Determining the minutiae of knowing precisely '"what is the next thing to be done" ...and then seeing it down on paper and then crossing it off when finished - this creates success! This is true self empowerment! I would see kids going from feeling like zeroes (which is what the teachers were giving them), to 'hey! I can do this..." and being able to accept that they had done something well.

An academic task that seems easy and natural to most folks can be a maze of confusing side tracks to an Aspie....Unless we are focused (and if it's not a particular special interest, it can be hard to maintain the focus) - Anyway, unless there is something that pulls us back to the task at hand - like a list on the board- we tend to flounder all over the place - It can be loads of fun too! We have very rich journeys because we wander down side tracks and discover all sorts of neat stuff, but somehow never get where we thought we were going...and then cant' figure out how we did not get there. This can be a source of amazing creativity, and there is certainly a time and place for it - but it will not help when the clock is ticking, there is a lesson to be learned and a paper due at the end of the week. So, creating and using a task map can help to cut down on the joking around and perseverations....Caution - some wandering about is going to be inevitable, and relieves the strain of the task - it's called a break - make sure she learns to schedule them in - keep the process elastic enough to be successful.

So introducing her to the tool of task mapping and teaching her how to make one - NOT providing it it for her - allows her to accomplish something valuable for herself. And THAT will do more to create a foundation for true self-esteem to flourish. After all, her feelings of worthlessness may be just be her honest self assessment - magnified by the toxic relationship with her mom or other social failures she has endured. Gaining a strong tool like task mapping can be a first step to real independence. And knowing when and how to create a task map is an accomplishment that can be applied to many aspects of her life.

If you''re already doing something like this...forgive me for bringing it up...but make sure SHE OWNS this list...it then becomes her responsibility, not yours. And the idea of helping her set reminders on a smart phone (make sure SHE is the one putting in the data and setting up the program)...that also creates ownership.

I'm going to take a break from this site for a little while, but I really, really appreciate both of your suggestions.

#1 has really improved over the past little while. Her work ethic seems to have changed ever since I taught her how to break down each task as well as schedule in her study sessions into a calendar she keeps online. The check-in was extremely helpful as it gave me a good sense of where she was at before our formal session. Her formal session this week was excellent and she has improved her motivation and focus greatly...and now is spending almost all of her computer time tackling her essay. She is now completing all of her homework for the course each week, and not only that, but in thorough detail...yay! We also decided that she will also no longer be studying at home, but at the local college where she is able to to focus and get away from her mom. She finds her own school library to be too noisy.

#2 still struggles with listening and not talking. My boss is adamant that she learn this (often to the point where she often has minor meltdowns around my boss) but I am a little easier on her as I do think there are better ways for her to focus - and I came up with a great idea for her. In my last session she was more focused than usual due to a visual I made with the topics to be covered. Even though she went off on her own track a few times, we still covered everything, and really, that is the goal of my sessions with her. She does need to improve her self-awareness and understand that whining and crying is not well accepted in the adult world (she is 19) and especially not at a job.

Thank you both!