Already, it feels like we've fallen into all the old negative habits of school. Simon does not take initiative to do homework, he wants an assist before trying. My reflex is that it's because he'd rather be at his computer doing things that he likes. We've tried before to enforce a no-screen rule before the work is done, but the only thing that does is cause him to be immediately overwhelmed at the volume of work, and the delay it will cause in him doing what he wants. So the next logical thing is to simply prohibit computer time during the week, which he will take as a punishment not associated with any specific negative behavior, because that's what it is. It would only be a preventative measure to take one desire out of the equation, which he would not understand. It's a no-win situation.
My dark sense of humor is to joke that Simon inherited all of my worst traits. And I can see, with vivid clarity, the ways that he's the same. I didn't know about ADHD or ASD as a kid, but by high school, I wasn't that interested in the process of learning things that I didn't care about. I have to keep in mind that I don't think it was a personality thing, it was the way that I was wired, and that's probably the case with him. I should have aced geometry, but I hated it, and didn't take the time to really learn. I did better with trigonometry, probably because I just had the right teacher to reach me. My senior year, I don't remember what the class was, maybe an AP class, but the first week was about proving that 1 was greater than 0. What the actual fuck? It just is, I don't care the reason. I dropped that class like a bad habit.
This continued into college, where I did enough to get by, even in classes like TV production, where I frankly learned nothing new because it was just emulating what you could see on TV. (My instructor, may he rest in peace, was shocked that I used lighting for my half-hour show, because he didn't teach that, and no one else did it. I was just imitating "real life.") But I busted the curve on broadcast law, because I was infatuated with the subject. I see this pattern everywhere in my life. I never really learned electronics theory, despite the kit, because I just wanted the outcome, where I could make an LED blink or whatever. My eventual primary profession, writing code, took me years to get proficient at it, especially debugging, because I just wanted the outcome, not the learning process.
It's certainly possible that I'm projecting on to him, but when he's saying in the first week, "When will I ever need this in life?" all I can think of is me at the same age. What's different is that I was able to fake a lot of things on instinct, which I don't think he has. To be clear, he's not being an obstinate dick (at least, I don't think he is), he genuinely finds certain things challenging. Next month he's supposed to be evaluated for dysgraphia, which would certainly provide some answers, and hopefully a strategy to roll with it. This is the struggle, because intelligence has nothing to do with things like dysgraphia, autism or ADHD.
My therapist says that, if we can afford it, we should try to find someone who can tutor him after school. Diana has tried in the past to find people like that, but the schools can't even find enough qualified teachers, so where does that leave us? We are sending him to Mathnasium, which does seem to help with math, but it's the writing and basic problem solving that we're struggling with. Combined with a temperament that goes off the rails when software doesn't work the way he expects, things escalate quickly.
My way of helping sometimes is to just let him flail, but that results in output only if he's comfortable enough to at least start his assignment. There are so many things that he does that trigger me and I respond emotionally. I can be clinical for about 15 minutes, then I'm making it worse. It sucks. I don't know what to do. He's checked out after school, and frankly, I'm checked out after work. It's a toxic combination.
This is largely an unstructured rant. I'm not looking for feedback, because from others looking in, it's usually non-useful. I just need to get it out, write it down, revisit it, and hopefully have better ideas the next day.
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