7y/o son won't do schoolwork

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The title pretty much says it. My kiddo is in 1st grade in a gifted program. He is diagnosed, verbal (with a severe pragmatic speech impairment) and has an IEP. Last school year we had an issue with him refusing to do anything in class. By the end of the year the main issue was writing, and we had worked on a few accommodations to help him.

This year, all of those accommodations are in place;
-he's allowed to type his writing, to limit overwhelm from handwriting as it's particularly difficult,
-he's allowed 5 minute sensory breaks, including a quick run of laps in the gym,
-he has a parapro to help him stay on task, generally navigate his day, and also to help him with writing (summarization and choosing a topic are really difficult for him)

He was doing well until last week, when he started to refuse to do his writing work again. Come to find out, the teacher was limiting how much he was allowed to type, because she wanted to work on his handwriting. I informed her that those need ti be two separate tasks, and she dropped it. I thought that would be the end of it, until today.

Today I'm being told that he refused to do his work this morning, then ran away from his parapro after starting to work. The teacher told me he turned it around, and was working again, but after recess came back and refused to do his math (his favorite subject)

I have no idea why he's refusing to do his work, as he has no problem doing these things for me at home. The work isn't above his level of ability (he tests in the top 90% for math in his class, and has the highest reading score).

I don't know where to go from here. I feel like we have tried accommodating everything possible, we tried the assumption that it was"willful behavior" as the school out it, and punished accordingly (loss of privileges). Anyone have any suggestions?

Sometimes when something is tried that goes against what the child expects, it takes awhile for the child to recover from it.

If your child was aware he was supposed to get an accommodation for writing and then had to fight to get it back again (even through you as a proxy) it can take awhile for him to settle back down to doing the task without resistance and it can leak into refusing unrelated things b/c the atmosphere has been poisoned so to speak. So my first instinct would be to see if the para can get some "good days" strung together in a row--that may fix it. I would also advise them not to try anything to challenge him beyond the usual right now until he can get back into his rhythm.

Sounds like an expected reaction to unexpected changes. What I would suggest is going back to to how it was when he was doing fine, then to start to ease in things like typing less to working more on hand writing. Let him know when little changes such as the one listed above, so he can be expecting it, granted you didn't specify, but was this change planned, or was the teacher having a spur of the moment idea?

I'm wondering why he gets overwhelmed by writing and not by typing and noticed you didn't mention any occupational therapy. If he has fine motor problems, which I am guessing is contributing, it would make more sense to address that directly through OT, and there could be some appealing activities they could have him do to help, too.

Being pushed to do something difficult is unpleasant, especially if you're already trying your best.....and don't feel able to do more. I would try to help him feel you and the teachers are working together and will try to fix problems when you know what they are.

It's confusing, and can be frightening, and frustrating to have ideas in your mind and be unable to communicate effectively. Intelligence isn't always enough to allow communication, and even though OP your child is verbal and just has pragmatic language problems, that's enough to have a big effect.

So having written the above I reread the original post.....what is being done to address the severe pragmatic language deficit? I don't think it will be easy to make progress on gaining cooperating with work without addressing that. And I think that is more important in the long term than working on handwriting now.

Just to see how he reacts, dont let him do anything else until he does the schoolwork that is required at that time.
This is just to get some idea into why he won't do what he can do.

While this may sound sensible I don't think it would have worked on me in this situation. It is an experiment and I react poorly to being manipulated. Plus if he is autistic, and believes it's wrong, chances are he's more stubborn than the adult, and may not quickly forgive. Plus you'd need perfect communication from school about what he did to make that work since it's at school that he's not doing the work, and home is what you control. I would not do that.

People do this all the time with kids, and I wouldn't put autistic kids into a special protected box where they are not to be tested and stressed to figure out what is going on and how to help them. The fact in this case is that the child knows how to do the work, esp the math is his favorite. Why is he not doing it is unknown, so it is worth a test. does he have a meltdown? What happens after the meltdown? Does he do the work instead of melting down? Maybe some factor is preventing him from doing work, but maybe it is his willful behavior, but the loss of privileges is not enough to get him to do the work. Maybe he doesn't want to give in and thinks he can get his way if he hold out. I think it is a bad idea to be too soft on autistic kids from young age, they are not that fragile.

That didn't work with my husband either. He would just sit and think instead and day dream. Sometimes you have to let your kid fail and let them suffer the consequences. Then they will realize but what if they still didn't care?

I completely disagree with you but that's what makes Wrong Planet special, though at times frustrating: people have all kinds of opinions.

However since you feel that way, would you want to suggest how to do this? If I understand correctly, the OP has no trouble getting her child to do work at home, it is at school where the child sometimes refuses. Are you suggesting she suggest they not let the child do anything else until completing work? Schools usually try that early. I'm just not sure how you'd suggest the mother control school behavior (the child's or the staff's) this way, even if it were a good idea.

I'd be better off if I'd had a bit more softness growing up. I think my daughter is better off because she got that. She communicates better and has a better understanding of social interactions. It could be a coincidence but her ASD seems to me milder than mine, and Professionals have told me it's because I didn't have early services or support so this is where I am coming from.

Many autistic kids don't do well being manipulated, and some are not fragile but others are fragile, I don't trust generalizations. They are only sometimes true.

I am highlighting this part, again, because I really do think it is the key part. The child was doing fine until the teacher decided unilaterally it would be preferable to work on handwriting x% of the time, instead of allowing the child to continue typing when he felt the need. The teacher did this without consulting the parent b/c she assumed she knew best, the heck with accommodation in the IEP, and never mind why it was put there. The teacher, I am sure meant well, but I would not trust her in a million years to have the judgement necessary to test something like refusing him to do anything until he does the required task. What if the child melts down? Will she know how to handle it? I doubt it. In addition, the child is needing to recover from this intervention and I think this just fans the flame. As another poster said, his response was the expected response to the unexpected. Adding more draconian rules, is just going to make things worse.

Obviously this is just my opinion, but any time this kind of strategy was attempted with my child, that is exactly the type of result they got. Some kids do need a softer approach changing things around and amping up the strictness each time is very detrimental to this kind of child.

Not sure if any of this sounds familiar to the OP, but my son didn't get a diagnosis until late; end of 1st grade, and was scraping by with a minimal 504 until he was practically falling apart in 4th grade, where we took matters into our own hands and got a private diagnosis.

We found out the school had actively lied to us about my son's level of pragmatic speech, and had basically knowingly withheld needed services for years. Imagine what that must have felt like for my son when he finally figured out that his needs were real and he could have suffered significantly less!

Inside that framework - under the 504 - is where we had a similar situation to yours. My son was allowed a "free pass," that is the opportunity to take a break once a day. He invariably took this break at 2pm like clockwork and went to the social worker's office. His behavior noticeably improved at home (he was a hold-it-in-for-Mom kind of a guy) when this accommodation was finally figured out.

Suddenly, there was a week where he exploded every single day after school. We came to find out that, without asking us, the social worker had told him that if he could stay out of her office until Friday, he would get a (much desired) Lego minifigure set. Obviously, he complied and we were seeing the backlash.

When we went to the school and got his privileges reinstated, and even though things had gone swimmingly before the social worker messed up...things took a LONG time before we saw consistent improvement in his behavior at home. DS doesn't trust easily on a good day, and if you betray his trust, it takes a LONG time to gain it back.

Have you tried asking HIM why he's not doing his writing and math work?