Any ideas to speed child up?

[confusedofengland]

Ds2 is 8 & in Year 4. He has suspected ASD & has an EHCP at school, with 32.5 hours one-to-one TA.

At parents' evening, his class teacher told me he is bright but he is just not producing enough work. He is very slow, more so in English than maths. She said if he could produce the work, he would be at the right standard for his age.

The main problem is that he gets easily distracted & often goes off into a dream world. He also gets distressed if he makes mistakes & if his work is not perfect will rub it all out & may meltdown if not allowed to do so.

Does anybody have any tips of how to help him speed up? We tried timers, but he gets distressed at being timed. Today I set him a challenge before school to be quicker, but he was unable to meet it. I don't know what else to try!

That’s very inappropriate feedback for a child with SEN, I’d say. I would be tempted to ask the teacher if she has any cures for autism while she’s at it.

I doubt you can 'speed him up' as such.
However:

• A prompt to stay on task from his TA.
• Work on accepting mistakes, e.g. art, or things where trial and error are needed?

Suggest you post on the SEN board.

You say suspected ASD - have you got professionals to talk to as part of the assessment? This is the ideal thing to discuss with them. You might want to post on SN Chat, your DS may be doing his best already and any strategies need to bear in mind the distress.

My DD hates being hurried and gets very upset - she's under assessment. That's why I say SN chat and ask his professionals.

Thank you, I will try on the SN Chat board. I thought I'd try here for traffic but I can see it perhaps needs people who have similar experience.

I did also feel it was inappropriate feedback & that the teacher didn't really understand his needs. But I can see how it must be frustrating to see a pupil who is fairly intelligent not getting the mark/level he could, purely because he is slow. I am still waiting for our termly EHCP review meeting, which was postponed due to the lovely SENCO being ill. Hopefully there we can talk in more depth. I just feel kind of helpless for now & like I'm not doing enough for him (or any of my 3 DC), I an trying but there is just so much to do & I think I'm drowning

yes, it does sound like you have a teacher that doesn't understand much about children that may have ASD.

My dd is slow, especially with new things, she has slow processing. I find my dd is much faster if she has pedantically clear instructions, if the task is somewhat familiar, and the setting is familiar. If you change any of those things she'll take longer as she can't rely on her memory to part of the job for her.

I'd question how much the TA is supporting to get the work done, maybe the TA needs some help with strategies to support your DS to complete the work. May be worth getting into that at your next meeting.

At home, I'd mostly try and boost them up - what we can do is try and make sure they have the confidence to give things a try as much as possible, I try and praise my DD for anything as they imbibe a lot of negative messages about being slow etc at school.

OP, I have a son with ASD. He is always prompt. Always.
But he struggles with written work. It’s the fine motor skills which can be an issue too. He is very clever, but does struggle to produce work quickly.
I have another son, NT, and I always say he has one speed only. Incredibly slow. And I mean very very slow. At everything. If he was on fire he would saunter to the hose. I have never seen him hurry once in his 13 years.
I also know someone very well and they have a 15yo with ADHD. They can concentrate for about 1 minute. That’s it! Clever kid, but it’s a struggle.
Some kids and people are just like this. Some have special needs,, some don’t. It’s about finding what works best for him.
I agree that timers etc sound very stressful for him.

Ask about speech to text or touch typing
These help with out the need to write

Also does he have written instructions

So date - title underline

Start with introduction

Main character/setting

Tick box sheet for his level

Capital letters
Fullstops
Adverbs
Paragraphs

Etc so he can focus

Some more great ideas, thank you. I'll make a list for the meeting.