Did you ever get accused of not paying attention in class?

Post Reply New Topic

So this I think relates sort of to the eye contact issues...I remember teachers a lot of times thought i wasn't paying attention because I wasn't looking at them, but that didn't mean I wasn't paying attention. I remember one time when I was pretty young a teacher chastised me for not paying attention and said to look at them and pay attention, so I informed them that I can't hear with my eyes...which they took to be me being a smart a**, but I was legitmately confused about how looking at the teacher correlated with listening. It took me quite a while to figure out that was normal and most people look at someone if they are paying attention to what they're saying.

Still am bad at it, but now I know it helps if I explain it to them...

That's so true! I can't hear with my eyes either. I have to de-focus or just look away.

All the time and later on I wasn't paying attention to them. I use to put my head down a lot like I was sleeping or whatever(I think I did this mostly I was just tired, sometimes I just didn't want to be there tho and it seemed less overwhelming) but I'd still listen to the teacher lecture on usually, if I was actually present in the class I'd usually do pretty well on the tests even tho I didn't seemingly pay attention or do my assignments. Some teachers hated my guts and did not tolerate me in their classes, it was strangely personal for someone that wasn't a distraction and I never quite understood it.

I often didn't pay attention in class especially when I was older. There's only so much someone can take. Listening to someone else slowly reading a book I've already finished is not a productive use of time. Listening to someone who doesn't know what they're talking about mangle language and logic is torture.

All the time, especially once I was in high school. Then teachers just gave up on me.

I'm sorry ... what was the question?

This happens with my daughter. Only sometimes she really isn't paying attention. I have told her teachers to ask her a question and if she can answer it to leave her alone and if she can't to try to help her focus.

It happened all the time with me as a kid, too, only I wasn't paying attention. I have never been able to control my attention very well. A teacher could say something that would remind me of something and before I knew it, I was off in imaginary land, no longer paying attention to what the teacher was saying.

A wise friend of mine once explained "I can either look at you or listen to you. I can't do both. You choose."

I would find that when I was sitting in a long place for an extended period of time, 20 minutes or more, my mind would venture so far out from the real world, into the depths of imagination-land, basically on its own without any prompting from me, such that I would essentially become unable to hear anything being said. And then I would realize that for the last 20 minutes or longer that I had effectively blocked out what the teacher was saying so much that I may as well have been literally deaf during that time, since the result would have been the same. i would literally not hear what the teacher was saying. In high school, teachers could bring me back if they caught on soon enough, in college I was not aware of techniques I could use to block it - largely because I was in denial of the fact that this was a serious issue - and so then it caused very serious problems since professors typically do not have the time or interest in bringing every daydreaming student back to earth during a class. So for non NTs, developing strategies to deal with this is a vital, vital part of college prep.

When I was younger, I never paid attention in class. Like, when the teacher was reading a book to the class, I would zone out. I did the same thing when we went to watch a play. I think concentrating took too much effort.

I can't remember being accused of that more than twice, so never near as often as I actually didn't pay attention. Even when I'm interested in something I have a hard time paying attention because my thoughts will go their own direction, thinking of something else, or focusing on something about the topic, not ready to continue with the rest.

I completely agree about the nonsense about eye contact though. I am far more comfortable and more likely to take in what is said when I'm not looking at people.

Do you have strategies? The only thing I could ever come up with was meticulous note taking in a very organized outline structure. Focusing on completing the outline forced me to pay attention. My son, however, has dysgraphia so this will not likely work for him. He, like me, is sometimes unable to control his attention, and he is going to start high school next year and I am worried about the transition.

I paid attention too much in class. I used to call out the answers all the time.

I was the same way. The teachers thought I was always intentionally dismissing class, but the reality was I saw no reason to look at them unless they were showing something like an example. In my case, all the time I tried to use to focus on them with my eyes resulted in me not completely getting everything inside my head (too much information at once), and when I asked questions regarding what was said (which is something I was told to do), I was usually either yelled at because they had just said it, or wouldn't repeat themselves for the same reason. And then I'd get a lecture about how I 'never listen in class', or some other ignorant thing. Then I'd struggle with the work itself, and not because of any one thing, but because of numerous tiny things all the time. I never measured up to anyone's expectations during school, and people weren't shy of reminding me of that either. Needless to say, the reason I never was able to do better was because of my AS, but even more because I felt like I was never good enough, with all the constant "you can do better than that, and we expect you to", and other such crap. I feel like I've always been a disappointment as a result.

I got accused of not paying attention, yes. Wasn't a problem for the first few years at least. Some time after that, I started having a lot of difficulty turning their spoken words into thoughts, and in the end I really wasn't paying much attention, having lost the plot so completely. I took to clowning around to alleviate the boredom of sitting there, and kept getting into trouble for that.

Sometimes, but that's because I'm actually not paying attention. I find it very difficult to concentrate in class. My mind is always wondering, and when I zone out my "autopilot" engages, whose job is to follow the teacher's face and nod every few minutes. I learn from textbooks much faster than I do from lectures anyway, so I don't even bother.

It happened to me a few time that a teacher would accuse me of not paying attention (which is true), but I would challenge them, then they'd ask me what they were talking about, and I can play back in my head the last 4-5 seconds of what they said even if I wasn't listening, so I'd answer and they'd leave me alone. I've surprised a few teachers with this, although it works best with subjects I'm already familiar with.

Yes, but that would be because I wasn't paying attention. School was a very overstimulating environment for me and every single minute spent in it drained the life out of me. I never learned anything in the classroom besides maybe memorizing the occasional slide show. My times in class were spent sitting there wishing it was over every second of every minute of each of six 50 minute classes I had to take. Probably why I ended up not being able to cope with high school at all. College is better in that I don't have to go extended hours every single day and so there isn't that constant input leading to burnout quickly, but most of my learning still ends up being outside of the classroom because these environments in general are not ideal to me.