"Miss says I _HAVE TO_ do it"

[BeyondStrongAndStable]

Any advice how to deal with this? I have an asd diagnosis and my DS has plenty of signs but I haven't sought diagnosis yet as he's coping quite well.

This morning it was taking seeds. We have a packet ready to plant at home, but "Miss says I have to take seeds in"

Sorry Beyond, I don't understand what you're asking (it's been a long week).

no problem.

He takes things the teachers say incredibly literally. Any suggestions by them are interpreted as things that must be done, or else the sky will fall in.

Ok, so what did the teacher say?

We had a lot of problems with verbal instructions (forgotten, mis-heard, wrong emphasis) at primary.

Maybe a communication board at home he can write on when Miss says something so you don't end up with the need for compliance coming 30 seconds before you leave the house?

My ds has an over compliance issue that makes him vulnerable so staff are aware to be careful how they word things to him. This should be a school wide things.

So they should be saying "we are going to plant seeds so if you some you can bring in then please do it"

Ds is related to the literal language but it also extended to things like the fake launches of events for English and ds would believe it was actually going to happen! (Yes ds, a spaceship really landed in the woods by the field )

In your case I would have said that he could take the seeds and praise him for listening and following instructions and teamed it with a discussion on how instructions can be followed at times only if it's possible and talked about the difference between laws and people's words during requests.

DS is getting stressed if recorder practice takes longer than 15 mins because his teacher says 15 mins is "more than enough". He skipped practice this morning because he had done 2 days of "too much". Then he was all out of sorts, I think because he was out of routine. No amount of me saying 20 mins is fine, will make 20mins fine.

I don't really have any suggestions. DP has had some success with reductio ad absurdum, eg how many flowers are you going to grow? Estimate 3 per child, that's 90. How many seeds in a packet, say 100? So if every child takes in a packet then how many seeds will there be? 3000. Do you need 3000 seeds to grow 90 plants? No. So how about if only 5 children take in seeds and they share out their 500 seeds, will that be enough to grow 90 plants? Yes. So can we agree it's fine for 25/30 = 5/6 of people not to bring them in? But I think maybe with DS it's more that doing the maths calms him down.