"Refereeing" Cheaters in Middle School

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My son is in seventh grade, with AS. His biggest issue in life so far has been 'refereeing' the behavior of others. He's the first one to run to the office to report any and all wrongdoing, no matter how serious it is! No rule should be broken.

This year he has decided to work harder at minding his own business, and is doing extremely well. Recently a girl who sits near him in two classes has been copying off of others, and the unfairness of it is getting to him so much that he is having more trouble concentratinig than usual.

We're trying to get him away from being a jailhouse snitch, and he wants to fit in better himself. He might wind up telling on this girl, which is fine, but I think he's going to need to find ways to cope when he sees this sort of behavior, which definitely increases in late middle/high school.

He wants to be a Catcher in the Rye, I'm afraid. Philosophies I can pass on to him that will help him get through the day?

Have a certain teacher that he can talk to privately about what he sees. If he interrupts in the middle of class to announce that the person next to him is cheating, then he wont be very popular. But talking to the teacher when other students arent around (after school or during gym class), is much less likely to get him ostracized. Especially if the teacher just uses that information to know who to keep an eye on. That way they can catch them in the act of cheating, and your son wont be directly involved.

A somewhat less effective, method is to have him moved to the front of the class, preferably in the corner. That way he really cant see what the rest of the class around him is doing. After all, see no evil, report no evil (poetic license used).

If he is reporting kids for breaking stupid rules, then change the rules. No adults should come up with random rules that are OK to break if your sneaky about it.

I agree that if a rule is so trivial, it is never enforced, then abandon the rule. However, getting good marks through copying others seems a sensible rule to me. Surely it's the person doing the copying who is the problem here, not the children getting irritated by it?

Perhaps he can talk to the rule breakers instead? OK, I realize that may not help with popularity, either, but it is a lot less of a black mark than talking to a teacher. And it can be phrased in a "protective" way, such as "I've noticed you are copying, which is against the rules. If I can see it, it's only a matter of time until the teacher does. If you are having trouble with the work, perhaps you should get some help, before you get into trouble."

7th graders can be brutal & mean-spirited........i'd suggest he talks privately to the teacher after class.

Thank you so much for your input. I think talking to the other kids would be a mistake for him, as refereeing has been the problem all along. He has elected to talk to the teacher privately, and he will be asking to move his seat as well. I think I will not take it up with the teacher, because he has to advocate for himself more.

Thanks again!!

This is one of the things I never understood about public schools. It's wrong to cheat, yet it's wrong to tell the teacher someone is cheating. It's wrong to let the teacher know someone did something bad, but you should tell the teacher if students are being bad. It's doublespeak behavior. Now your letting the school tell your son, hey you know we don't care if students misbehave or not, we just say we do to save face. Which most likely is the truth.

Your son shouldn't feel something is wrong with him for having a strong sense of what's right and wrong. There need to be more people like him not less. The school just would rather you assimilate him by telling him he should mind his own buisness, instead of him learning to self-advocate. I'm not saying you're at fault, what I am saying is stop this nonsense with him having to learn to mind his own buisness. You shouldn't worry about him becoming a "jailhouse snitch", you should be proud that he has the strength and courage to stand up to people behaving without morals or conscience.

What about the kids causing trouble? You know it's their own fault if he tells on them, his behavior isn't the problem, their's is. Unless you want your son to learn that having friends means subjugating all his morals and judgements, you should tell him you were wrong and he was right. I mean, teaching your son that friendship matters more than morality, is a fastline to him hanging out with the wrong crowd. I don't want it to take him smoking weed, and then ending up in prison becoming a real "jailhouse snitch".

All he's going to learn is what I learned, that the school faculty has an unwritten right to be complete hypocrites.

The problem with such rules is they are usually selectively enforced, something that I always had a problem with. Selective enforcement not only happens at school, but it happens at home too.

He has talked to the teacher about it. I guess what we are most concerned about is coping skills, handling these things with some dignity, avoiding outbursts and discussing them at an appropriate time, and with control. When he was younger, he was in a buddy skills group with a great OT, who helped with voice control, proximity, etc., but as he has gotten older, these groups are not as available to us. He is on the higher end of the AS spectrum, and actually does relatively well with his peers. Most of the groups in our area seem to address issues other than the ones we are dealing with.


Thank you again.

it's quite true, unfortunately, that once you get higher up on the spectrum, the services tend to be inappropriate or non-existant. Our son desperately needed a social skills group, but we couldn't find one that was appropriate. in the end, his therapeutic day school did him a world of good.

Most of the support groups I were sent to, claimed they were for higher-functioning Autism spectrum people. I went there and found out it was for lower-functioning Autism spectrum people, and then they basically expected me to play "babysitter" to the other kids. That isn't providing support, it's manipulating people who need real support.

That has been our experience as well. We have tried autism sports leagues, play groups, etc., and have found he doesn't quite fit in there, either.
He is very, very good on the computer. We have high hopes that he will be accepted to the magnet high school for computers here in Clark County. It will fit his interests, and I think he will flourish if he can spend more time with students who share his point of view and talents. (He's looking forward to spending his days with an army of fellow geeks!)

Yes, and as I remember, the 'unpopular' are the ones who have the rules applied rigidly to them and are least likely to talk their way out of it. In my school, for the bullies to snitch to the teacher about a victim was OK, even considered really, really funny. The other way around was not worth considering. Social skills trump rules.I guess that's just how life is.