I've noticed a pattern in the way that many people approach educating non-neurotypical kids. They come up with strategies that would generally work really well for someone who is Type-A, neurotypical. I see this frequently with things that experts (to use the term loosely) suggest will help Simon in terms of organization and execution around school work. Even in grown-up work, I've had jobs where "project managers," one of the most dubious of professions, are prescriptive about the way that engineering teams should organize and do things. It only leads to friction and wasted time.
I can't speak for everyone who has autism, and won't try to, but I can tell you that if you want me and a group of people in my charge to do something, you should just tell me what the outcome is that you're after. I'll keep communicating with you and start a feedback loop as we go to make sure that our assumptions are challenged and we course correct to the real outcome that's right for everyone. If you're going to give me a bunch of spreadsheets and mandate ceremony and structure, it's not going to go well. It's not even the busy work that you're creating for me, it's the fact that you're trying to impose same on a group of people who are every bit as different.
Getting back to education, I don't know how you solve for this. Individualized education does not scale in public schools, because they're underfunded and understaffed, and the depth of knowledge and capability of the staff they do have varies wildly. (And sometimes, you get psycho elementary principals that think kids and teachers need to be "managed" at all times.) It puts parents in a particularly shitty position, since we can't figure out what's best for our kids, but we can see what doesn't work plain as day. We're both the bad guys and the entitled. You have to fall back on a strategy that involves throwing everything at the problem until you find something that works, which is not efficient, and totally demoralizing for everyone involved.
What I know now about my own education is that my interests were almost totally driven by getting the degree. I was outcome-oriented even then. I'd guess that 80% of the subject matter I had no interest in. So I did only slightly more than necessary to get the degree, which, as it turns out, almost no one asks about, let alone what my GPA was. High school was kind of like that too, especially by my senior year. The thing that's scary about Simon is that he's already there, in some ways. He always asks how some bit of homework is something that he'll need in life. Yikes.
I don't like all of the prescriptive things from people who are box-checkers. I don't think that way, and I know that Simon doesn't either. He completely disregarded his packing list last trip, and packed one shirt for three days. For the record, I don't think that Diana is Type-A (she's too creative in a non-derivative way), but she's list oriented, while I think that anything that's important enough you'll remember.
If I may project for a moment, that may be the core issue. Many of us spectrum dwellers execute well against the things that we deem most important. Throw ADHD in the mix and this is even more evident. The trick might be to figure out how to promote things in our heads to be the right level of importance. I don't know if that's even possible. Intrinsic motivators tend to crowd out all the other things.
Sometimes I do encounter some text written by someone with ASD, and they're like, "This totally works for me!" But we're all so different that these "solutions" don't always transfer well between people. So here I am, that guy, dismisses the suggestions but doesn't have a clear path to the thing that ultimately helps me.
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