your technique for getting on with work

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What is your technique for getting yourself to move throught the steps of homework, work, research, etc?

My 13 year old son is very capable, and with the help of ADD drugs, manages to work through homework fairly well. But there are days, usually when he is NOT using any ADD drugs, when he just gets stuck. It's not necessarily an inability to think things through -- it's more like the inertia problem that is often talked about on this forum. NT's go through steps to finish homework, do their work at their job, etc. because we want to be done so that we can do other things that we like to do. This seems to have no bearing on people on the spectrum -- they seem to get stuck, and will gladly just sit there staring at a paper and not ask for help, won't take a break, and also won't push themselves to finish the job at hand. It's definitely perplexing to us NT's.

I wish I could give my son some technique that he could at least TRY to help him go through the steps to finish homework.

The obvious solution then would be to give him his medicine. I'm *ahem* well over 13, and I'm completely bloody useless unless I take my ADD medicine every single day. It's just a fact of life, and I've given up fretting over it.

Yeah, your son is lucky--ADHD medicine works for him. It doesn't work for me; and I don't have the money to go experimenting with more than the two types I've tried. Don't mess with what works. If you're going to teach him organization/planning skills (100% a good idea), do it while he's taking the meds. He'll learn them better that way. Maybe he'll learn enough to lower the dose; maybe not. Life could get easier for him either way.

Thanks for the replies -- I agree, just use the meds. Sometimes we forget to give them to him on the weekends, and as painful as that can be for everybody, it's also good to do periodically to see if he has improved in his skills to do things without the meds. My fear is that some day he will have been through all of the various meds, and will have to learn to live without them. But for now, something is working (Vyvanse) and life has improved radically. How long this will last is anybody's guess . . .

Skills acquired while on meds still stick around without them, you know! While they often aren't as easily used without the medication to help (and can even be impossible to use when not on meds), it's not like stopping the meds suddenly erases all the gains you made while you were on them. This is one of the issues I have with some psychiatrists--they think only about the medication angle, and forget that there are cognitive processes going on. Learning is as important as, and in many cases more important than, medicine. In most cases, learning isn't a replacement for meds; but in most cases, meds should not simply be used alone. That goes double for ADHD.

Sorry. I don't fit that model. I love my job. I would do it 24 hours a day if they let me. Somewhat obssessed by it.

Francis, may I ask what it is that you do? I have another older son who is in college to become an urban planner, and like you, he LOVES what he does and would do it forever if he could. Oh, that my younger son will find something like that!

I agree, Callista, that skills learned are there, with or without meds. If I didn't believe that, I would give up trying to teach anything to my son when he wasn't on his meds. I think that he learns stuff no matter what is going on -- it's just the speed or WHEN the learning kicks in that differs.

Sorry to hijack a bit but does anyone have a link to a thread about this or some other information?

This sounds a lot like one of my main concentration issues. At work i can spend ages staring at an email working out how to reply, then not working it out any more just staring. Some work i just seem to phase out of. I can waste a while day because the thing i really need to get done falls into this catagory and every time i try it, an hour later i've still done nothing.

I remember my parents forcing me to sit and do my homework for an hour and i'd look out of the window or think about things for an hour with nothing done.

My psycologist has mentioned we should discus meds at our next meeting but that's a huge step for me and i want to investigate every aspect of training and coping mechanisms and techniques before i go there.

It's just easier to learn when you're on meds, that's all...

Jingo8 -- sometimes I wonder if something like an alarm every five minutes would help. Just something to jar a person back into reality after time spent with their mind wandering. It may not be helpful, but it might.

Meds are helpful, for sure, but I definitely think that it would be better to have any person learn coping mechanisms for how they ARE, in general, rather than how they can be on meds. If there were possible ways to deal with this issue, it would be beneficial when one is NOT on medications, and probably astoundingly beneficial when one IS on their meds.

one step at a time, just like Ellen in finding nemo, where she says, just keep swimming. annoyingly trite but true.

What follows is the second of a mysterious double post.

I see no option to DELETE.

dp

Last edited by dupertuis on 20 Jan 2010, 7:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Don't know how effective words are with him, but I wish someone had made me HEAR the words:

If you don't learn how study, how to motivate yourself to work now, you will find it very difficult to discipline yourself to do what you WANT to do, for the rest of your life.

Think of learning how to go through the paces to perform a task as a form of calisthenics, for toning the ABILITY muscles.

dp

I really wish i had a technique.

Don't know if this will help or not but it works for me:

Try breaking down large tasks into smaller ones; if the routine being used isn't working try another one--sometimes the order you do things in will make a huge difference; remove tempting distractions until whatever task being worked on is completed.

Electrical engineer specializing in fiber optic communciations. I get to play with data streams, patterns, bandwidth spectrums and lasers all day.



Thats my strategy when I have to do things I don't want to. It works pretty good for me.