He’s refusing to answer things he knows | Autism PDD
My son (PDD.NOS) has done this throughout his schooling. He seems to have different rules for different enviroments. He has decided in school, he won't use teacher's names and he won't eat certain foods for lunch in school, that he has had for years and eats every chance he can (like pizza). It's so frustrating when a teacher tells you he doesnt know something he's known and done for me for years. All I do is stress to the teachers, even if he doesnt respond initially, hes still listening and learning. At first, they werent convinced, but I would tell teachers specific things my son told me that only the teachers would know, and they relunctantly went along. I find this the most frustrating part.
So that's what they mean by lack of empathy then? That maybe explains why my dd wants to please dh and I and is more than happy to comply w/ requests (except of course when she's in a bad mood like any young child), but ds just does not comply many times. Sometimes he will. It's like he has to be in the right mood, and also want to do what I request. I have him on film and I say to him "Aiden say 'go'" and right on request he says "go." I say "Aiden say 'puppy'" and he says "puppy" w/out missing a beat. I went through all 8 words back to back that I knew he could say and he repeated them w/out missing a beat. And then other times on film I try that and he just ignores me or starts just making nonunderstandable sounds. But if he sees a puppy he will say "puppy." He LOVES animals (though he acts odd w/ them lol) and so he learned puppy as one of his first words and has never lost it unlike some others. So he uses a word when it matters to him or when he feels like it I guess. I just never realized that might be due to the empathy or lack thereof.
Amber
Amber
I have similar problems with my (nearly) 5 year old son, but he thinks he is being smart or is telling a joke by giving the wrong answer, or the opposite of what the answer should be. It was really fraustrating for a while, especially as he was being screened for kindergarten at the time. He seems to have gotten over it mostly, but I did have some success by just letting him tell his "joke" and then saying "Okay, but what is the real answer?" and then he would tell me.Georgina
WELCOME Bobbus! School food is not the same as home food! We have lots of problems with that one!! But usually not with restaurant food.....I suppose because they get to pick what they want.
In response to not answering or performing when asked.........sometimes if the question is given a dsifferent way they will answer. and other times the tester is not being perceptive enough to understand what is happening.
Jacob loved purple.....he HAD TO HAVE the purple cup and plate at meals, he HAD TO WEAR the purple shirt, HAD TO HAVE a purple backpack, lunchbox, comb, toothbrush......you name it if it came in purple he had to have it and no one else had better touch his purple stuff!!!!!!!!! Well at our parent teacher conference in kindegarten the teacher was going over his testing. She said he knew every color except PURPLE!!!!!!!!! UGH!!!!!!!!&n bsp; I just laughed and told her that she probably did not have the right shade of purple because BELIEVE ME JACOB KNOWS PURPLE!!!!!!
It is helpful when you get a good team together and they believe what you tell them......our kids don't often test well whether it is from not understanding the instructions, or them just not caring to do it at the time......they have their own agenda most of the time!!
It is possible with some kids that they are being oppositional.
On the other hand, I think that part of it is, the child retreating into their own world, and being unable to focus.
My GS is the "model" for this type of behavious.
There are days that I forget he has autism.
There are other days, like this past weekend, that it is glaringly evident.
I don't believe he does this intentionally.
This past weekend he had many meltdowns.
Fortunately his meltdowns, are soft crying, or removing himself from our space and sulking. No explanation whatever, with the exception of "I am sad"...unable to give an explanation.
He too, at his evaluation at 4 1/2, pointed to a dog when asked to point to a cat, etc. etc. etc.
We walked out of the hospital, and almost immediately out the door he pointed to a squirrel, and said, "Look Nana there is a squirrel, and I think he has a nut in his mouth".
How they gave his a VHF label, I will never know.
I suspect our kids will always have these days, but I believe they don't lose the skills, they are there, but something is preventing them from being processed and expressed in a typical way.
They just seem to have "foggy brain days".
It is one of the mysteries of autism.
Hey everyone. Did any of your children have a problem learning colors? Or if they learned them would they sometimes not give the right answer when prompted when you knew that they had learned it already? Or shapes? Adam knows what a square, cirlce, and triangle is but everytime we go to speech or OT he won't show them what he knows. Same with some colors. Now some he doesn't know and seems to not be getting but I know that he knows what blue is....and yellow is. But it is like things that I know that he knows he is not doing for other people now. It's like he's making a liar out of me..LOL He will flat out refuse to answer sometimes and just answer NO when he is there. It's like I have to catch him in a good mood to get him to answer me. And if it is the speech therapist or the OT here lately he's not cooperating at all. Was curious about this because even though I KNOW that he knows some of these things....he will need to show others that he knows them especially when he starts school. Did any of your children go through anything like this? And more importantly....did it ever subside and did they finally start performing so to speak? Thanks,
Karrie
My son did that a lot when he was younger....even now he will say "I don't know" to things that he obviously knows, but he does that mainly when he does not want to be bothered and would rather move on to another task. My son is pretty easy to move along now when he says that. I tell him we have to try and get an answer and he'll do it to get me out of his hair. i don't think it's losing the skill, in my case, connor does it to get reactions out of people, during one eval, when testing his vocabulary, he giggled as he labeled everything a chicken. alot of the time, and it maybe with Adam aswell, they do these things to force an interaction with you, not the dr or therapist. while answering the whole chicken thing, he looked at me everytime , i didn't say anything so he would respond for me by saying, "no, silly that's not a chicken, what is it?" i think alot of it is, he knows it what it is but could careless, almost to say, i know it's a circle, you know it's a circle, why are we even discussing it. that''s a big issue with connor, he gets bored rather easily. during an eval in the classroom, they noticed while being off in the corner, playing with his animals, he was responding appropriately to what the class was doing ( the teacher had read a story and was asking questions about the story) he seemed to be multi tasking, he was doing his own thing but at the same time was, cognitively aware of what was going on with the rest of the class. i too think it's a part of this whole puzzle thing. just keep an eye on it and i'm sure as fast as it started it will pass, with us now, we just tell him to knock it off and answer the question.
It's almost like you were there. I had the exact same experence with Takoda. I was worried his ST would think I was a liar or a mom who was greatly exagerating my childs achevements.
I know with Takoda it took several months before he warmed up to the speech thypist. It also took me leaving the room. He was just a stinker if I stayed to observe. Also once the ST knew what he was capible of she started preschool testing and she had to make three atemps because he sudenly became noncompliant again!
He tried her patience and mine. Nelle GOD I wish that Adam would go in there with me outside looking through the viewing window. Everytime we try to get me out of the room he goes into meltdown mode and grabs my legs like a little leache. They finally said that it's just better for now that I stay in there because if he's throwing a fit the whole time then he won't be getting any kind of therapy. I worry about this though for Aug. when he starts school. Karrie See....that's another question... Is it actually loosing something or a failure to comply? This I don't know especially when he won't perform for me at times. But it seems like if I don't re-teach him....depending on his mood of course....he seems to pick it right back up again like he's always known it. It's so unusual. Karrie Karrie Welcome to my world. Alex knows all kinds of things, but he won't tell you unless he wants to. I think it has to do with is lack of empathy. My daughter would recite all kinds of things at his age basically to please me. Since he could care less about pleasing me or anyone else, he won't respond when I ask him to. Sometimes he will come out with something that I didn't even know he knew (letter sounds), but only briefly. I think its all part of the eternal puzzle that is Alex. Karrie,.... remember to keep in mind that kids will lose some speech or other skills TEMPORARLY while they gain a new skill. So try to hang in there! Tyler did the same thing, much of the time he needed the question to be asked in the same specific way everytime or he couldn't answer. Like he knew his name but if someone said what is your name or who are you he didnt know what to say but if you said Tell me your name he would respond. Also it depends on where their mind is at the time and if they are able to focus or not. Tylers therapist has suggested allowing him to bounce on his therapy ball when I try to ask questions it helps him calm and concentrate. What if you try when he does this to ask questions about something spiderman and see if that gains his attention and if he will respond? Thank you so much everyone for all of your replies. Michelle you hit on something here with me. There are a lot of times while he is in therapy that I have to bite my tongue because they use different wording with him than I do on some things. And I realize that he NEEDS to learn all the different ways that a question can be asked. I talked to the speech therapist this last time about this very thing and she assures me that she realizes that he does infact know the answer to alot of these questions and that she is working on different phrases than I use so that he will infact eventually pick up different ways that questions can be answered. She said that she is using one form of questioning until he "GETS IT" and then she will start asking the same question with different words...until he learns that one etc. etc. He did pretty good this last time except he got restless as usual and so what i did was when he was good and answered questions or finished a task I would reward him with physical play like swinging him or a wrestling match and that really seemed to help him stay focused. Kinda like that therapy ball michelle? Sometimes I also get the feeling and of course I can't be sure of it but I do get the feeling that sometimes he's looking at me thinking "why are you asking me what color that is?. You know it's blue...I know it's blue..big deal" LOL I guess like what someone here mentioned...... that lack of wanting to please that my NT children had. As he gets older the little things like this that don't seem to matter much when they are really little seem to be really sticking out now. Don't get me wrong here....I accept the fact that my son is autistic and I am doing everything I can to help him but as he gets older there are times where I question his future with all of this. Especially since no one knows exactly how our children will be as adults regardless of the diagnosis. For those of you with older children....Is there ever a time where you stop questioning things like this? Their future? See.....I am perfectly ok with my son living with me forever...regardless of his outcome primarialy because i'm one of those mothers that will have a hard time once my children start to leave home...but there is a difference to me between choosing to live at home and having to live at home. And I also think sometimes that even if he is able to live independantly and is quite successful....he will still lack some social awareness i'm sure....so I question things like will he ever truely understand feelings like how great it is when he accomplishes something or on the flip side will he come across as uncaring and rude because he doesn't know any better. I mean can these things be taught? I know i'm way off topic here but I do notice that these things are not really talked about here very much and maybe it's tabu because I know that with myself at least I don't even like thinking about them let alone voicing it. I tell myself all the time...who cares if he comes across as a a**h*** when he is an adult or who cares if he lives at home forever but i say that because I love my son and accept him for whoever he becomes....but it doesn't mean that I don't question these things all the time anyway. Does anyone here understand what I'm saying? Karrie I have learned that my son has what i like to call show off time thats when he shows people just how smart he is . most of the other times he does what he needs to asking for drinks snacks ect. thomas ignores 90% of the people he comes in contact with . I don't try to push him . tome Niki, Yea I posted this when Adam was like 3 I believe. I thought it was interesting how some things have not changed like how I mentioned how he is lacking a need/want to please us or whatever. He has that a little bit now but not nearly to the extent that he should. Karrie All totally normal..control, fear of being wrong..and just noncompliance:) We had this big time with Sarah and the therapists would give the demand "what color is this?' very easy for her..but she refused to answer them so they waited her out and she couldnt do NOTHING till she complied and answered them..sometimes this would ensue hours of screaming defience before she would yell as loud as she could "IT"S ORANGE!!!!"
I was lucky in that they had to fix this area and I could sneak off to the store:) WOW...I found this from a long time ago. Interesting and a lot of some of what I posted here still rings true...like a lack of wanting to please us etc. Karrie Some kids with autism find it hard to take a skill they have learned and use it in a different setting. I am constantly being told this at my childrens autism specific school when they tell me he hasn't reached a goal that he does do at home. (sometimes I think he is just bored)The other thing maybe that your son has learnt scripts and so if someone else asks him a question and phrases it differntly he doesnt understand. For eg you might be saying to him "Where is the the yellow block?" and so he has learnt that you want him to show you the yellow block . Then someone else asks him "Show me the yellow block" and he has know idea what is expected of him. My son is 7 and has a fantastic memory but his language is very scripted. He has learnt a lot of things off by heart but when someone strays from the scripts he knows he can be quite confused. This is the same child who has taught himself to read, use a computer and some basic math. He is even learning to play keyboard and can read music. Sometimes he will repeat the last thing said to him if he hasn't understood ( because he knows some kind of response is expected from him) Other times he will answer yes or no inappropriately just so as to give us an answer so we dont keep questioning him. I have been reading a book I just bought "Teaching The Child With Learning Disabillities To Find Social Success" and found this quote very interesting and it might be relevant here "Under most circumstances we expect others to be consistent in their performance and behavior. Once a person demonstrates that he can do something we make the understandable assumption that the behavior has been mastered and that the behavior will be performed consistently in the future. This is not a safe assumption when dealing with children with learning problems, whose performance is often characterized by significant incosistency and irregular progress. This inconsistency is often misinterpreted as laziness, lack of motivation or manipulation"(Richard Lavoie) Liz I didn't read all the replies, but just thought I'd say I know this phenomenon very well! At the 4 year old well-child check-up here, they ask color questions and my son would just say Blue no matter what. These questions were completely uninteresting to him, and he had no interest in showing off his knowledge, so he just threw out any old answer to get people off his back. When he did cognitive tests as part of his evaluation at age 6-7, he wasn't too cooperative either, but he has shown steady improvement in wanting to show off his knowledge ever since he started first grade. The other day his new special ed teacher asked him if he knew what an owl was, and she says he scowled at her. I talked to him about it afterwards, and he basically said he was insulted, of course he knew that. So I told him a more appropriate way of reacting -- that he can tell her he knows in a friendly voice but he must always try to answer her questions. He's 9 years old now. Good luck with everything. I agree with a lot of the posts here! I also wondered if there was a tiny bit of "fear of failure" going on as well. I wonder because I know that happens to my ds. We did a reading eval on him in May and he was most uncooperative at first. The evaluator was AWESOME and had worked with lots of kids with autism and was very able to use his creativity and make every part of the test about pirates. The test lasted longer than most, but she got him to comply somewhat. She told me that she could TELL that he knew the answers but that he was terrified of getting the wrong one and had a huge self-confidence problem. She said she had been evaluating kids for over 19 years and he was one of the brightest kids she had ever evaluated. But, unless he got over the self-confidence issue - he was going to have a rough time. We have worked on that issue all summer and made sure he knew that it doesn't matter if he gets the wrong answer - the important thing is to try your best! We've taken this approach with staying dry at night as well - and he has had 4 dry nights in the past 2 weeks! Anyway, it might not be the issue for everyone - but just in case it is for someone, I thought I'd bring this issue up. I had never really thought about it until the evaluator mentioned it and now I see it very clearly! I also think that auditory processing problems may come into play here. My son probably wouldn't necessarily catch the whole question, and wasn't motivated enough to ask for a repeat, if he even knew how.
Luke is the same exact way as
far as knowing thing,s but then not showing anyone else that he knows
them! Last week at speech therapy, the therapist asked him to
choose a cow (she held up a cow and a pig) -- and he chose the
pig. Cows are his favorite
animal ... he KNOWS what a friggin cow is! All along, Luke has
been very reticent to show us what he knows. He even rolled over,
crawled and stood up in his crib before he ever did those things in
front of us. (I know this be/c I'd hear him moving around in his
crib, so I'd peek in his room to see what he was doing! The
little sneak!) He has progressed, regressed, and progressed
numerous times ... the therapists tell me that it's normal for his
diagnosis. I just hope that some day he'll progress and not
actually temproarily "lose" what he's just learned!
answer verbally but can point them out when asked) When she first learned
she used to have a lot of trouble recalling the correct answers sometimes,
especially if she was tired, hungry, too much background noise or had been
sick. Now she regularly gives the wrong answer intentionally to test peoples
reactions to this. Often if the person reacts to her at all (for eg by saying
no) it will cause her to want that reaction over and over so she will get stuck
in a loop and continue to give incorrect answers.
It could be either of these things for your son, or of course something
entirely different 
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