Slow moving

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My aspie 10-year old moves SOO slowly to do everything! We have to constantly remind him of routine tasks, like dressing, brushing his teeth, hair. Even getting out of the car takes forever!! I often have to walk around to the passenger side, open his door and remind him to unstrap his seatbelt. It seems to take him forever to lift first one leg out and then the other. Every day he seems to move slower. He's high functioning. Some of these aspie issues have gradually crept up on us over the past year and get quickly worse.

We've tried charts and a timer, but he just resets the timer when he runs out of time. He has an alarm clock, but he ignores it even though it's driving everyone else insane. If I ask him what he's doing without actually looking at him, he'll tell me what I want to hear ("I'm putting my pants on, Mom! Geez!") but when I check back later, he isn't doing it at all. What is he doing? Nothing. Staring, zoning out. We have to 'babysit' him through every task, remind him with persistant, firm direction of each step and make sure he follows through. We're using token rewards but he doesn't seem very motivated. Sometimes, I have to dress him and propel him out of his room. I get little to nothing done on my own. The school has similar issues with him staying on task and he often falls far behind.

I wonder if his anxiety meds have flipped his hypersensitivities into hyposensitivities? But all attempts to reduce them have them resulted in panic attacks and meltdowns.

Advice please!!

I'd love an answer - or at least ideas - about this too.

My stepson is 15 and we have an almost identical issue.

In the morning my SO has to knock on the bathroom door a half dozen times to get him out of the shower so his brother can get in. It takes a huge amount of time for him to get dressed, take his meds, get out the door and to the bus.

But it's not just a morning thing. This is constant throughout the day and evening. Trying to get him to bring his plate out to the kitchen sometimes takes a half hour. Emptying and refilling the dish washer (I can hear his father pushing him to do this right now!) can take the better part of two hours, and that's with someone promting him every three to five minutes because he's fallen into a trance of some sort or gets distracted staring at one of the cats, or even a wall.

This is a serious issue at school! High school has much less hand holding than elemenary and he sometimes falls way behind. It took him three afternoons, a full weekend and a snow day for him to write a simple one page essay with all the info laid out in front of him. Yes, a big part of the issue was that he has trouble assimilating info and dumping it back out. But the worst part was that he spent 90+% of his time staring into space and not doing a thing because that's his normal speed.

I'm really worried about him going to college (I'm sure we'll be able to get him through high school, but it's going to be hard), being able to write a simple paper in college is not something I think he can do if he can't get past this. Then there's the whole job thing. He, through his high school, works at the local grocery store stocking shelves a couple hours a week. Because he's so slow he's constantly being spoken to and gets extremely beligerent about it.

If this only happened with things he found 'stupid', 'annoying' or 'beneath him' such as stocking shelves, writing essays or doing the dishes, I'd think it was only about things he didn't like. But that's not how it is. Even when he's given an hour to play video games, he will move so slowly in getting to the shelves, finding a game, going back to the other room, organizing how he wants everything and starting it all up. You'd think with something he loves so much he'd rush through the mundane to get to it, but he regularly will spend half of his play time getting ready. That's after knowing for over a half hour that his play time was coming and he could have done all of that set up while his brother was still playing.

I'm new to this whole thing and his speed is one of those things I really do not understand. Otherwise he's a wonderful boy. I'm very lucky that he is not at all agressive in any way, nor violent or pushy about anything. Sometimes he has a (VERY) mild tantrum when he doesn't want to do something, but that only consistes of a little whining, some hand flapping and possibly some yelling that he doesn't know or understand something. Usually the yelling is quelled with a look. He's an absolutely wonderful boy in so many respects, but this speed thing makes me worry greatly.

Thanks for any help and for letting me vent!

There are probably a combination of things going on, but I'm going to discuss just one here, because that is the one I relate to the best. My son has the same issues, but not as extreme, and it should be noted he isn't on any medication.

What I DO know about my son and processing speed goes back to the IQ test he took when he was being assessed for ASD. One of the components was processing speed. And his score on that was very low, significantly below 100. Other things he scored as high as 150 on, but processing speed was around 8 0. That is SLOW. And a signifcant impairment. And, apparently, common in ASD. Some ASD have super high processing speed, and others very low, but a normal speed doesn't seem to exist for ASD.

Which means that the core problem isn't going to be fixed. You can improve attention span, focus, and so on, but not the fact that in pretty much every way you have a person who moves and thinks slower. I am like that myself; I'm always still fumbling with my wallet long after the next customer is done. It CAN be accomodated for. Just know that trying to speed the person up is going to be counterproductive because they just aren't built that way.

I sucked at typical teen jobs like waitressing, but found my way once skill was involved. I'll never do speed, but I DO do quality. And that is important to know when finding your path in life. Some paths just won't work.

My husband has similar issues but he's done the same as I have: focused on quality. He's an engineer and an extremely well respected one, just not one that can get rich working for himself because he isn't fast enough.

So ... while it is a good idea to make sure medication isn't slowing things down, and to help your child learn skills for staying on task, you also have to teach them to adapt for the real fact that they will probably always be a little slower.