My daughters main trouble spot is her attwntion span..and listening skills. When she is focused on something that has caught her attwntion (mainly drawing..she loves to draw and even had her first grade teacher saw she has never had anyone be so detailed in her drawings when doing journals)..its a struggle to get her to listen when qe are trying to talk with her..ask her a question. We literally have to take what she is doing away to get her to listen to us...and 80 percent of the time we qould get tantrums. and she's not the throq herself on the floor and scream type of girl. but she does this whining. and I've been trying to work with her on it but at times when i see progress sometimes i feel like i can't get threw to her at all. Thise are the main two...she also has a priblem sitting still but I'm used to it. dealing with it in the store while ahopping can get frustrating but I've learned to be patient with her. I struggle sometimes on when I need to be down right strict with her and when i need to back off. That's a big struggle for me. Knowing how to disipline and when I should. I always try and talk firat. Tell her..but knowing qhen I have given. her enough cues and her not following threw..that is MY biggest hurdle
Something I noticed with my son is that he does listen a lot of the time when he does not seem to be paying attention. He appears a bit distracted in class but still gets good grades and assimilates the information. Although it sounds odd someone else I knew that may have aspergers would draw and occasionally take notes on the margin of the drawing in lectures (at the university level) and he found that this actually helped him concentrate and assimilate all of the information better. He had very good grades, so something was working. The school sometimes needs to accept that not everyone learns by the conventional fashions and you can help them accept that and help your daughter at the same time. There are many different ways to learn something (drawing, making a story, hearing it, repeating it, teaching it, writing it, organizing it) and many different kinds of learners. Some just take it to one extreme or another.
Although I also find it annoying when my son is too focused on what he is doing and does not answer a direct question. With him I just wait and ask when he is done, no point in upsetting him or getting frustrated that he is not listening, unless of course it is something very important. Sometimes it helps to let him know something ahead of time or give him time to think about and answer the question. Aspies can take a while before they make up their minds about something (like what they want to eat for supper). Or I let him know that I will be interrupting his activity 5 minutes ahead of time (such as when it is time to go and do something else). I imagine most children in general do not like being interrupted from what they are doing. Someone wrote a book using a method where you would interupt whatever they are doing as a way to discipline them. I guess with AS it might be worse since we are often very focused in our own little world.
It takes at least two months for a behavioural change to take effect and become more permanant depending on the person. So do not give up if you do see some progress with what you are doing, it just takes a while to become a permanent thing. It will also happen that she will regress so it seems. Stress can make people regress in terms of recently learned behaviours. In general children are very adaptable so they will try several things to see what works. At times it appears that they regressed significantly but they are just trying out something else, if that does not work then they will go back to what they know. So it helps to be consistent.
My son also has issues sitting still, but I think that is mainly because of his ADHD. Oddly he gets headaches in car and I think it is because in a conventional car he has to sit still. He does not get headaches on a bus, but buses have no seatbelts. I was quite the opposite of that when I was young, I could sit still for very long but still found odd positions to sit in.
Yes I know there is a fine line between being too strict and not strict enough. I sometimes feel I am not strict enough with my son but my brother and his wife seem very strict with their kids. According to experts sometimes we try talking to children too much and they do not fully understand what we mean so they say we should just discipline them "my way or the highway". But as an aspie that quite likes their independence I absolutely hated that (and much worse) as a child. I would much prefer it if someone explained the reasons to me in a way that I could understand, but that takes a lot of patients that most people (especially my parents) did not have. Being somewhat independent and doing our own thing might be an aspie thing, which can be frustrating for a parent. But in my opinion it might be best to at least attempt to explain and if that does not work some parents try to give their kids "choices". Choices are really two things the parent agrees with but gives an independent striving child the idea that they have control over their lives. As a really bannal example: "Do you want to wear your fairy shoes or your princess shoes?" In that way they still wear shoes but they get to choose
. With older children a compromise works well too.
