ASD - Freezing up at school or working at an extremely slow pace?

[Blossom4538]

Hi all,
Dd (Age 7) has high functioning autism and often seems to come to a standstill with her work, down tools or not even get started. Even for something as simple as gluing something into her book, which she’s done before, she couldn’t do herself today? I’m wondering why? Is it anxiety and freeze mode, sensory distractions, processing delays? She often needs a lot of prompting, support and guidance and can take a loooong time to put pencil to paper and even write a small amount. She also says her hand aches. At home, we experience the same, but with hyper activity, talking over us, easily distracted and fidgety. Homework takes a loooong time.

She has Selective Mutism and cannot always verbally communicate.
No allocated teaching assistant or 1-1 currently, very concerned and supportive teacher.

Any ideas or experiences pls?

Sounds familiar. DS loathes writing. It exposes all his weaknesses -motor/thinking/sequencing/imagination. It has got better with age but only slightly. Receied wisdom says that touch typing helps a bit with this but DS has always messed about so school aren't keen to push/support it. We did the magic link handwriting system which gave him confidence with cursive script, after which he resisted slightly less. Then we had a year of a very kind and supportive teacher who undid some of the criticism of past years. He still produces as little as possible, although now doesn't meltdown as much when asked to write!