ability to say the right things but not put into practice?

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Just curious. We are currently pursuing a re-screen for autism spectrum for our son, aged 8.5. We have huge issues around social skills - perspective taking, misinterpretation, misunderstanding, unable to carry on a conversation that would be deemed typical for a kid his age, etc. I was told this morning that he was one on one with the school behavior guy yesterday and was able to tell him all the proper things to do in various situations, explain the teachers role, etc. It was a conversation about not making excuses, taking responsibility, etc. But once my son is in a situation that is causing him stress - all those rational thoughts go out the window. It was said to me this indicates this is not a spectrum issue because kids on the spectrum wouldn't be able to sit down one on one and verbalize all the things my son did. Thoughts?

The huge issues at school are misinterpretation of situations involving other children, inability to ask for help, complete shut down when presented with tasks, virtual withdrawal from any kind of group work, will not stay in his seat - wanders around the classroom while the teacher is teaching (but is listening while he is wandering). We also have huge issues with anxiety and sensory overload (which we are seeing an OT for weekly).

Many spectrum kids are completely capable of repeating the social lessons they have been taught. One on one, simple description. Putting it all into practice is the problem. World of difference between repeating what you've been taught and knowing what it means / how to apply it in real life situations that rarely look exactly like a story. My son is exactly as you describe yours: able to verbalize what should be done, but unable to actually do it. It really frustrates him.

To me this is a typical misunderstanding of the way autism works that even experts have difficulty with. I had to explain to a professional yesterday that having someone to explain to me how public transport works and how to use timetables etc. would not only not help me but would be insulting - I know perfectly well HOW it works but that isn't the problem. The problem is sensory overload and too many people make me retreat into myself and I miss stops, working out how to get back to where I should be can easily prompt a meltdown.

It's good that your son understands the correct behavior, but that although essential will never be enough. He needs to develop coping strategies that he can fall back on in overwhelming situations and they need to be a compromise between the expected behavior and what he is comfortable with. Start by (gently) talking to him about why he acts as he does - not "why don't you do what you're supposed to" but "how are you feeling when this happens", it will be difficult for him to tell you but thats the key to moving forward.

As an adult on the spectrum, I can relate to this problem and I might be able to give you some insight. I give advice for a living, basically. I teach life skills and leadership training in a recovery setting. I know the correct responses to problems and the best ways to interact, but I can rarely apply it to myself. The reason is that autistic people require routines and regularity. I always tell people that a key to understanding me is that I always expect things to be the same.

No matter how many times I tell myself (or others tell me) that I need to do something differently, I will always default to the way I have done it repeatedly in the past. To force me to do it differently when I am not ready causes me a lot of stress and anxiety. Also, when it comes specifically to social skills, remember that our primary difficulty is social; this is largely because other people are not predictable. I may know the rules for appearing polite and for maintaining a conversation, but then the other person will say or do something expected and my best intentions immediately fly out the window. So, if you want your son to apply what he learned, you need to reinforce in continuously and at every opportunity in real-life situations until it becomes natural, but even then, an odd situation will present itself and he will probably fall apart.

Finally, I have never understood why the neurotypical world is so intent on teaching us social skills. From what I gather, social skills are merely a means of being more acceptable to the majority. This seems grossly outdated. Most developed countries do not expect other minorities to behave like the majority, at least not since the establishment of human and civil rights. I understand that at certain times social skills are desirable and sometimes they are necessary, but in a perfect world, others would be more tolerant of us rather than expecting us to change for them.

This is just wrong. It is exactly the opposite of reality. Spectrum kids learn social protocols on an intellectual level so of course he can sit down in a totally dispassionate moment and verbalize what he has learned. The ONLY way for the social behavior guy to know if your son has spectrum related social deficits would be to observe him in situations where he is interacting with his peers. then he could see if your son is able to put any of those things that he "knows" into practice.

When my little guy was first evaluated at 3 1/2 I think the psyhchologist and the OT thought I was NUTS because one on one with an adult he mainly presents as a precocious charming little boy. I saw the lightbulb go on for the evaluators though when they observed him in the classroom. His atypical interaction with his peers and his response to sensory overload made his differences VERY apparent.

This is exactly the issue I am having. My son who is now 12 and was diagnosed at 8 years old knows all the rules for everything, I have taught him as have others, however those rules aren't followed by him.

It's because my son can tell the professionals one on one what the rules of social interaction are that he can't get school funding, this and the fact that he reserves his meltdowns for home.

He has even said to me "Mum why won't anyone help me? I do my best to be good and to follow all the rules and no one helps me, they only help the kids that are naughty".

It breaks my heart. Start looking for another person to do the screening, document every thing you can. Write down or video tape all the behaviors etc. The more evidence you have the better.

My child can ace a test on how to act in various situation it has been talked to him so much. In reality, he still will usually fall back on old behaviours or forget what was he actually knows. You can even ask him immediately after, and he will tell you what he should have done.

Thank you all, so much. It means a lot to hear everyone's perspective and to know that others face this challenge as well. Thank you! I am off to meet with the pediatrician. I am also going to make some phone calls to a couple different schools in our district, put some feelers out. He is NEVER observed with other kids. It was like pulling teeth to convince them that they should do something like a friendship group with him, led by the behavior guy. They just.don't.get.it.

Honestly, I do not know what I would have done if I hadn't found this site. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

cutiecrystalmom

Ask this councellor to sit down unobtrusively during lunch and recess time and simply observe how he puts those 'skills' to use. I had to ASK the special education teacher specifically in a second IEP meeting to do this for the very same reason. They added social skills to my daughters IEP immediately after those observations, no further questions asked. My daughter can tell you the social rules and, to her credit and hopefully to some of what we have been teaching her all along, she is incredibly polite and friendly and outgoing. Kids with AS can be all those things and still struggle in social situations - they simply look adept on the surface. They hide well.

The ability to verbalize the right thing to do in a social situation is called "comprehension" and is a subtest of the WAIS. New research has shown that adults with AS actually score very high in this area despite their inability to implement it. Whether the adults had this ability when they were younger is debatable, and if they did, whether they came by it on their own is also debatable. Anyway I don't think one could say whether someone is on the spectrum or not from this alone.

I happen to score high in this section but I'm inhibited by the fact that I don't necessarily process real time situations quickly enough to utilize my comprehension abilities. I bet your son has a processing deficit.



Probably because he does not have time to process what is really going on.



He might be working too slowly to even have absorbed enough information to know what he needs help on. When he does come to a problem he might proceed to think about it for a while like most people would, but that while for him is much longer. This might give the impression that he is not asking for help when he should, when he is really just not asking for help when other people should.


This is actually quite common in people with processing speed deficits because they are pressured to perform the task at a speed which is too quick for them. A person with a processing deficit doesn't necessarily have a more difficult time understanding a subject, they just processes incoming information a lot slower than others and others don't understand this and mistake the slowness for the person slacking off, especially if they seem bright otherwise, or difficulty with the subject. So the person eventually just starts to get anxious when they are presented with tasks they feel they have to perform in an impossible amount of time,and just shuts down.



They also tend to hate working in group situations because they cannot work fast enough or processing all of the incoming information fast enough.



I would have them test him for a processing deficit. How does he score on digit symbol coding?

Thank you for the very detailed reply, Chronos. We had a psychological educational assessment done at the beginning of the school year that identified his processing speed is delayed, so you are RIGHT on the money with that one. I have had this conversation with the school a few times, "remember his processing speed is delayed, so when he doesn't respond right away..." there were even recommendations to provide options that were not time based for him, but the school is not really doing this - they are either unwilling or don't know how? or maybe a lil of both. Their idea of modifying his assignments consist of assigning fewer questions than the other kids, but not looking at how he might best learn the info. I do a lot of adapting and modifying and explaining, and he is not overly resistant to doing the work for me when I take the time to explain in a way that I think he will understand better.

I'm not sure what digit symbol coding is?

My son has significant deficits in his executive functioning, he scored high on visual perceptual reasoning during testing, but a subsequent follow up with a developmental optometrist identified concerns with visual perception, including visual memory and visual motor coordination. We are addressing the sensory issues through OT first before adding yet another type of therapy to address the visual concerns. But the visual concerns are interesting as we did learn that he has an extremely difficult time copying motor movements which would explain a lot of the issues he faces in the team sports. He can't figure out fast enough how to make his body move, then gets frustrated and quits. He has naturally adapted to the role of "really good fan!" when watching other children play sports!

I think for the past two years he has developed the pattern of shutting down and not doing the work when it overloads/overwhelms him because the school has not really done much to try and address it. He knows that it works (either consciously or sub-consciously) so it is his go-to strategy. He tries to do it at home too, but we don't buy in. We just take the time to look at how we can explain it in a way that he will connect with.

Ok, that was my long winded way of saying yes, he has processing speed deficits

cutiecrystalmom

Learning isn't the problem, implimentation is and this is one of those core issues that people just do not seem to understand.

When you go into a social situation, NT's are going in with a subconscious understanding of the rules and expectations of a conversation. It isn't work, it happens naturally.

Those with AS aren't born with that programming. It can be learned just like any other skill though. The problem in implementation is where the misunderstandings come in. Walking into that same conversation you need to remember to look them in eye (even if it is uncomfortable), remember to respond apropriately to questions, decode the questions (they asked 'how are you?' - do they want to hear about my stomach ache or am I supposed to make up a lie - which lie? Is it just a greeting? Should I just say 'Hi' back?) then read body language to understand if I'm boring them, am I talking too much, too loud, oppps, look them in the eye...

Even the most basic of interactions requires quite a bit of mental energy to shuffle through all those things we have learned. It is an exhausting process. This is where meltdowns come from - every single day has the same mentally draining effect as writing a college thesis or making a major presentation at work. Keeping up with NT's is simply hard work.

These things will never 'come naturally'. He may learn them and become proficient at them to the point where he 'fits in' but it will always be a manual information retrieval process. Learning these social traits will never be 'second nature' - they will always take conscious thought. The only way to 'handle it' is to give him the time and the space he needs to recharge so he can continue to tackle his day. He will develop stamina to handle more and more as he ages. Trying to force him to handle more when he isn't physically able to will not work and will only make his meltdowns worse.

I LOVE this draelynn! This is one of the best concise summaries I've seen and I hope you won't mind if I use it!

The school district Autism Teacher Specialist provided myself and the school with the Oasis checklists that identified all the areas that children on the spectrum may have difficulty with. It was eye opening to see where the school and home concurred (LOTS on the social skills checklists) and how much other stuff we see at home that the school doesn't. I commented that could be an indication of how much he is trying to hold it together while he is at school. I don't try to place too many demands on him at home, allowing him the time to "jump it out" when he needs to (and even suggesting it at times), and just give him some support and encouragement at home. I do a lot of back and forth verbal cuing between him and his sister to *practice* what to say in various situations. Sometimes it transfers, sometimes it doesn't I am currently looking at grabbing a pack of index cards and working on basic social cues with him, putting them in a recipe card box that is labelled and we can pull them out and work on them regularly and when situations come up. I want him to help me create them as well, letting me know what he thinks would work in different situations. I find that the written word has WAY more meaning for him and we have more success if it written than verbal.

We are still trying to get the school to give us info about the school day so we can assist with creating a visual schedule he can keep on his desk to refer to throughout the day. We wanted a heads up about math lessons the day before so we could work on it a bit at home before they introduce it at school. So far, nada. Sigh.

They are trying to provide him with physical movement breaks but are only doing it on *their* schedule, so he is quite perturbed because the lady always comes at silent reading time (something he excels at!) and then wonders why he balks at going! They won't let him go on his own due to liability issues, and because he is not designated he only has access to an aide when *they* can accomodate him.

Sorry, yet another long winded post full of frustrations....

If you feel it will help, please feel free to use it.

The best advice I can give is try and identify his most stressful school day activities. For my daughter it's anything that requires sustained writing - usually language arts. Free social time can be very stressful - after recess or lunch periods. For your son, pulling him out of the subjects and activities he enjoys is not only counterproductive but, to him, it could almost seem like a punishment. The learning part of his day is probably the easiest and most fun part of his day. Your son is verbal... ask him! Some kids can identify when they are running low and heading for meltdown, others can't. You can recognise it at home - help him recognise his need for some quiet time. Schools are notorious for accusing kids of using and abusing this sort of 'privilege'. I wish there was a way for them to experience the overload of sensory input and the social minefield just once. If they could feel how overwhelming and physically and mentally draining it could be just once, they may change their minds.

Digit symbol coding is a sub test designed to help identify processing speed strengths or deficits.

The person is presented with a row of symbols, sometimes shapes, sometimes numbers, and has to copy them down or identify from multple rows the corresponding row.

It doesn't involve much thinking, just searching, identifying and copying.

I think giving him more time is more appropriate than less questions unless they give an excessive amount of questions and most of the children are struggling, then they should just cut down the number of questions for everyone.

High scores on the comprehension section of the WISC were cited as a reason my daughter could not have AS at age 8. She did similarly well on the corresponding section of the Stanford Binet at age 5, with a "social reasoning" score of well above her age. She "couldn't possibly have AS"... Of course, this is wrong and she was recently diagnosed with AS at age 14. The fact is, although she knows the correct reasoning when the problem is given to her in a verbal format, she can't interpret the incoming signals in an actual situation. She can think her way through them, but this is too slow for practical purposes.



Yes, this. My daughter also has very low coding score. It's almost 5 standard deviations from her verbal scores and is actually a giant, glaring deficit. But nobody could see that - they were too dazzled by the verbal scores and stuck on the abstract social reasoning ability.

In my experience, 'professionals' are not necessarily 'experts'... There is a lot of misinformation and stereotype out there about AS. Many people we've encountered expect a complete inability to understand social situations or reasoning... and that may sometimes be the case... but there is in fact a large range of impaired ability and impaired does not necessarily mean total lack of... if that makes sense.