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So once again the homework battle has reared its ugly head and is threatening to engulf the entire family like the hydra that never dies. I really don’t know what it is about homework that upsets Highschoolboy so much. It’s not like he doesn’t understand that he is supposed to do his work. That work does come before play and that play is part of life not life itself. Understandably he wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it, but that is not how the world works and he is no longer a young child, but a teen on the verge of young adulthood replete with all the rules, regulations, obligations and freedoms that come along with growing up. So I ask myself just what is going on with HSB. It’s also not because HSB doesn’t like school. He loves school. He loves going to school and being around his peers. He loves interacting and talking and joshing. He loves learning and creating. He does enjoy human contact and the world around him. So it is definitely something else.
We know that by the time the spring comes, HSB has been in school since September with minimal breaks and short vacations. We know that this being his junior year in highschool all his classmates are truly on edge about the upcoming college boards and college application season to come. And come it will, quicker than anyone thinks. We know that he is reviewing on the weekends for the ACT , which he studied for last summer, on top of his regular school work. We also know that the fun he was having in bowling has stopped, because the season has ended, and that he misses it. We know that we have just passed a stressful period of the snowicane and several days without heat and electricity, but we have moved on. Yes there are many factors here to consider but it is really hard in the middle of a fight to consider why he is being so resistant to doing what he knows he is supposed to do.
But let’s think about it for a moment. Being”on,” as I call it, is very stressful for most aspies. They have to negotiate a world that is social, academic and confusing on a daily constant basis. They need to figure out how to deal with multiple groups of people and multiple teachers and multiple types of peers. They need to know how to ask the right questions, deal with the frustration of not understanding the assignments, and even process the noise level in the cafeteria. For someone like HSB who has a tremendous sensitivity to noise, the sheer act of going to the lunchroom to buy a sandwich is a challenge. He does prefer to bring lunch and I don’t mind sending him with his requisite pb&j. It gives him comfort and allows him to eat when he wants, but this past week everything has been topsy -turvy and I just now got back to preparing his natural peanut butter. (You have to mix everything together and while it doesn’t take that long in a food processor I had other priorities and thought it not so terrible that he try to negotiate the cafeteria for a few days) Perhaps it was just too much for him.
The stress at the highschool is also palpable among his peers. The February and April breaks will be spent on college visits and study dates for the upcoming boards. The students talk about it on a daily basis and it is even emphasized by the latest meeting with the guidance counselors. Letters are sent home telling students how to prepare their college resume and how to access the on-line system to keep the information all in one spot. He actually refused to go the college prep meeting with his guidance counselor and myself. We talked about his senior classes and what he still needed to graduate and where he would be applying to college. HSB didn’t want to come and I didn’t force the issue. I did ask him what he wanted for class choices. He gets to pick electives for English and social studies. He told me his choices and I relayed the information and we talked about his college choices. It wasn’t a difficult discussion we had been through this with collegeman so we (the guidance counselor and I) knew the post-secondary choices already. But I think in
