Work refusal at school- writing

[Anonymous]

I have a dual identified (gifted/ASD) child in 5th grade. He’s in a fully cotaught classroom and the teachers work together well implementing supports. My son prefers the gen ed teacher so he mostly works with her for support during independent work.
He has a serious block for anything related to writing and is very rigid. The teachers are very concerned.

They have tried a variety of strategies- choice board (for example “write 2 sentences” and then he gets a 5 or 10 minute break to read or play a preferred iPad game, etc), first/then, checklist, sending work home (he refused to take it so they sent it with his brother).

They have the writing task broken down to small steps (he is given a one page article, he is asked to find a face about the topic and highlight, then put the fact in his own words, then type or write that sentence into a graphic organizer). The teacher offers to scribe for him or help him use voice to text. He just completely refuses to do the work and will walk away, go under his desk, read in the classroom library and ignore the teachers request to come sit with her or at his desk to do the work.

He is completely capable of the task and when push comes to shove, and he finally does it (at the 11th hour after I’ve been involved or he has to bring the work home), he does it very quickly (not amazingly well but it gets done to a satisfactory level).

We are all very frustrated and don’t know what to do. My son doesn’t like writing and he says he’s not good it at but how can you get better if you never do it?

The teachers are looking ahead to middle school and talking about writing essays and paragraphs and he won’t even do a sentence! Help! Any ideas? He doesn’t care about grades.

[Anonymous]

He should type. My 11 year old hates writing by hand but once he got to MS and could type he started to literally love writing.

[Anonymous]

This is more common of a problem than you think. Are you in FCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a dual identified (gifted/ASD) child in 5th grade. He’s in a fully cotaught classroom and the teachers work together well implementing supports. My son prefers the gen ed teacher so he mostly works with her for support during independent work.
He has a serious block for anything related to writing and is very rigid. The teachers are very concerned.

They have tried a variety of strategies- choice board (for example “write 2 sentences” and then he gets a 5 or 10 minute break to read or play a preferred iPad game, etc), first/then, checklist, sending work home (he refused to take it so they sent it with his brother).

They have the writing task broken down to small steps (he is given a one page article, he is asked to find a face about the topic and highlight, then put the fact in his own words, then type or write that sentence into a graphic organizer). The teacher offers to scribe for him or help him use voice to text. He just completely refuses to do the work and will walk away, go under his desk, read in the classroom library and ignore the teachers request to come sit with her or at his desk to do the work.

He is completely capable of the task and when push comes to shove, and he finally does it (at the 11th hour after I’ve been involved or he has to bring the work home), he does it very quickly (not amazingly well but it gets done to a satisfactory level).

We are all very frustrated and don’t know what to do. My son doesn’t like writing and he says he’s not good it at but how can you get better if you never do it?

The teachers are looking ahead to middle school and talking about writing essays and paragraphs and he won’t even do a sentence! Help! Any ideas? He doesn’t care about grades.

What defines the 11th hour? Is it a deadline? A punishment? Midnight? Bedtime? What’s the tipping point?

I ask because that would guide how I reframe it to be an earlier time.

[Anonymous]

Dysgraphia?

[Anonymous]

It becomes more about the power struggle than the assignment after a while, doesn’t it?

What does he say when you ask him what he needs to get the work done?

[Anonymous]

Ask for talk to type or dictation. My ADHD daughter had this in 3rd grade. She had to work the whole thing out in her head but when she would go to write it would forget the precise thing she just thought. When the class would do writing, she would run to the bathroom and hide crying. Kennedy Kriiegar recommended using talk to type or dictation. We intervened with the school and got an IEP which required this accommodation. It made a huge difference. Everyone was shocked at strong her writing was when she didn’t have to physically write. Over time , she became more comfortable with typing. She’s a great writer now.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like my kid who is now in 7th grade and still hates writing. No magic bullet here. We just stick with it, reward doing work the first time and disincentivize work avoidance. We also have an extremely patient special ed teacher tutor on writing over the summer.

I wouldn’t worry about middle school now. They still graphic organizers and a lot of help (at least at our public school).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dysgraphia?

this. OP you need to talk to special ed at your school. At a minimum get tutoring. I had my child take private handwriting classes.

[Anonymous]

I’d check his reading comprehension and listening comprehension skills. If he won’t do this task with someone scribing there’s likely a bigger issue. Often times around this age reading comprehension takes a nosedive for kids with ASD. I don’t know why exactly but I’ve seen it happen many many times. Usually a targeted direct instruction program or something like visualizing and verbalizing helps catch them up in a year or two.

[Anonymous]

I'd get a tutor or work on it at home. It only gets worse with writing in MS, and later HS.

[Anonymous]

I’ve had a few students like this. It’s not acceptable that he refuses to try and doesn’t follow directions, disability or not. I would have the school team develop a behavioral plan around this in tandem with you. He needs to have clearly defined behavior expectations at school and he should be earning points for complying. He should bring home a copy of the day’s behavior every day, or have it emailed to you. There should be rewards built in for effort on his part, and consequences for not cooperating. The time he wastes at school should be paid back at home during his free time. If he spends twenty minutes reading at school and not writing, then he spends twenty minutes in a chair in your living room doing nothing. He owes the time.

A kid I had once said he could tell the other kids were writing and he was going to be last to finish, and he was freaking about that and shut down. Ask if he can do the writing in a private room.

Have someone that is not a patent or teacher ask him what his thoughts or feelings are at writing time. Try to understand his views that way.

He sounds a little rigid, and you might need a therapist to work on that.

At this age, you are right to be concerned. He needs to follow directions. I’d require him to do double the assignment at home if not done at school. He’d have no privileges or dessert or screen time until he complied. I know there are underlying issues that make this hard, but he still needs to follow directions.

[Anonymous]

Are you in FCPS?

[Anonymous]

OP here. He has an IEP. He has typing accommodation as well as speech to text. The teacher will also help him formulate the sentence and wrote it for him to type or even type it for him. He won’t even do that.
He does not have reading or comprehension issues. He is a very proficient reader and understands what he reads. He is extremely inflexible and not open to the idea of writing. He just decided he hates to do it and that’s that. He’s very logical about it in his mind!

By the 11th hour I mean that they work on these long term writing projects in class where they so far they have taken notes about topic A, then turn the notes into a paragraph, then move to topic b, repeat, etc and then after a few weeks they have a research report they’ve done. It will be about half way through and my son will still be on the first paragraph.

The teachers are good and they will reduce the amount of work as minimal as possible for him to still complete. For example, the class might take notes from a specific article the first day and then the second day they have a variety of second sources to choose from for more notes. Then they work to organize the notes they’ve taken into a paragraph. By the time my son does anything he is so behind that they just have him do the notes from the first article and make the paragraph from that and move on.

We are all frustrated. I do not get daily reports and not sure if it would make the situation better if I followed up every day and had him complete the work at home if he doesn’t use the time in school. I don’t want him to hate school altogether but he has to do the work! He is extremely intelligent and this is behavioral and definitely not dysgraphia. He’s had multiple neuropsychological assessments and has autism and adhd. He is medicated.

[Anonymous]

This may be a weird thought, but it seems to me that you need to jar him out of his rigidity that he isn’t a good writer and hates it. Can you do something that shows him he loves it? Maybe take him to the beach and write a three word poem in the sand, life size letters. Don’t tell him why, just show him he wrote a poem. Does he text message with a grandparent? Have them start texting each other haikus. Maybe a letter to a hero, or to protest something?

My son has dyslexia and was seriously struggling in 2nd grade. He had been diagnosed, but hated reading and writing intensely. He wrote one poem for his poetry unit in class, and I entered it into a writing contest for dyslexic kids. He won, and the prize was a Zoom call with a dyslexic poet who talked about writing when writing is torture. My kid is in high school now, but the experience of winning a writing contest means he can’t say “I’m terrible at it” (he still does, but in his heart he knows he can do it, even if it’s torture).

Good luck! I know it is really hard.