Difficult to putting thoughts into words..?

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I was wondering if anyone has experience of the following.
My AS/ADD son (11) has difficulty expressing his thoughts. If I ask him a question e.g. How was maths class today? he cannot give an answer, he will hmm and haa and get flustered. He has a default response for everything "I don't know". Now, he is very bright, loves school and his teachers tell me he is coping, he thrives on the routine. But even they have noticed that any sort of direct question will not get an answer. Conversations with him are like pulling teeth, leaving us both frustrated ':(' He has told me the words are in his mind but get lost on the way to his mouth? (if that makes sense?)
Is this typical of expressive/receptive difficulties?
How can I help him?

(Also he takes concerta for his ADD would that affect his conversation skills?)

It's typical aspie to struggle to label feelings. I read that in Tony Attwood's book.

I find it hard to put feelings into words when I am anxious, and it took a psychologist to tell me that what I was feeling was actually called 'anxiety' in the first place! It's easier when I am calm.

Once when I was very stressed, our travel agent said, "Hello, how are you?" and I stood there filled with fear and finally managed to say, "I... don't know the answer to that question."

It makes sense that the words get lost on the way to his mouth. I can't speak when I am in severe sensory overload/shutdown (whereas I am otherwise very articulate, even about feelings). At the end of the day, it is very possible that he is in overload.

Leave him alone for a while, then ask him gently after an hour or so if he can write down how he feels or draw how he feels -- but only if it's OK with him. It's possible that he may be able to do that.

But don't make him do it. Pressure doesn't help.

I don't know if this relates to what your son is thinking (especially since he mentioned the "words getting lost"), but when I was a kid (K-3rd grade) I found questions like that confusing. It seemed like someone asking, "so, I see you put on your shoes today. How do you feel about that?" My thought would be, "I don't know, it's like every other time I put them. Nothing special. I don't know what to say."

I'm not sure, but I think for me at that age an easier question to understand would've been, "so what did you learn in math class today? and did you like it?"

Just a thought.

My wife has learned to ask very pointed questions if she wants an answer. I tend to answer exactly the question that is asked, not the one that is intended. Asking me "How was work" fills my head with answers that could be given for every event that happened. The answer of busy or not seems too shallow and does not describe it fully so I will start a rundown. But if she asks me "Was work busy tonight?" I will answer with a yes or no. People think I am being a smart ass, but I just process the question that I am asked.

I have a 5yr old daughter who has a language disorder (receptive/expressive). She has no diagnosis as she is still undergoing assessments. She is very bright but struggles with language too, mainly with questions and conversation. At her very young age it is difficult to tell what is going on so I found this post interesting.

She definitely has word retrieval difficulties, you can see her fishing desperately for the word in her mind. She invents her own words for things - usually fantastic descriptive words. She finds abstarct concepts really hard to understand, far better the here-and-now concrete facts and what is real and tangible.
Conversations don't happen. She finds it so hard and she covers up by using a distraction such as changing to a familiar topic that is well-rehearsed.
She can be quite articulate on a good day but has many days when it all falls to pieces and her language fails her. This is what puzzles me - that her language is up and down.

I've been researching language difficulties and I am always drawn back to the ASD spectrum. My daughter does not tick all the boxes for any particular area so it's not clear cut. She does however seem to share certain traits. I'm hoping I can learn more from this forum about what it is like to have problems with language and how best to help.

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Oh, yes, I know what you mean! The most difficult questions are things like, "So, tell me a bit about yourself" (with new people) or, "What did you think of the movie?"

Luckily hardly anyone asks me, "How was work?" (I live alone); my mother usually asks straightforward questions, like, "Did you work late?"/"Did you see clients today?", "Are you very tired?", "Do you want to lie down for a bit while I make supper?", etc.

I have the same problem with spontaneous speech; it's very difficult, and most of the time, if I'm put on the spot, the only responses I'll be able to come up with are along the lines of "I don't know" "Go away" and "Leave me alone".
It helps me to be given time to respond- just silence, no questions from the other person, because even if the questions are intended as helpful prompts, they are just more to process.
Sometimes, though, questions can be very open-ended: this was a good example:

and trying to answer them can be overwhelming. In that case, narrowing things down really helps.

My experience with children is that most have trouble with "how was school" type questions, particularly boys. ASD kids tend to grunt a non-verbal or mono-syllabic response. As others have pointed out, this kind of question, even if pared down to a particular class, is almost impossible to answer if one is literal. When my kids were younger, I used to ask them to tell me something good that happened at school (or the best thing), and then I'd ask if there were any problems/issues that happened (I didn't want to frame it as "the worst thing that happened - it seemed too negative). These questions got much "fuller" responses, even if it was totally unrelated to academics. Often, what we really need to hear from our kids doesn't relate to academics anyway.

As my children got older, I switched to a more traditional "how was your day" question, for a number of reasons. I think it's important for them to start to learn how to handle questions like that from people, and I am able to tell, from the fairly limited responses I get (reality check here: usually, the answers are just as limited as they were when the kids were little) whether there is a problem, and I can pursue it. Even a grunt has a tone that tells me if there's something wrong. LOL! Teenagers tend not to want to share as much as younger children do, except for when they do (usually in spurts, late at night).

My ASD son has actually, at times, been quite helpful in explaining to us what his barriers to communication often are. One, which may be affecting the OP's son, is that he doesn't usually think in words, but more in pictures. Consequently, when he's formulating a response, he needs to "translate" his response from the picture to words. He also needs to have more time than we often expect people to need to process information, so he may need more time to formulate his response. If he feels pressured, it will make it more difficult (maybe impossible) to answer a question. There are often times when it is useful, as others have suggested, to "give advanced notice" that you will want certain information, and then come back to the topic, so that the person has time to think about, process, and respond to the question.

I agree with the other posters that open ended questions of that nature are just difficult for kids to answer. My NT 7 yo son has just as much trouble with them as my 4 yo ASD son. To get them talking about their day I ask really specific questions. "What did you do in Mrs. M's class right after breakfast?" "Did you go to Mrs. L's class for reading group today?, What story did you read?" "Who did you play with on the playground at first recess?" "Which classroom did you go to for open school day?" Knowing a little about their routines of the day helps me ask about specific parts of the day which are much easier questions to answer. On the good days, this will start a conversation and I might actually learn a lot more than the answer to my immeditate question but that doesn't always happen.

Yes, I think it is very typical. My son, daughter, and husband all have this difficulty.