Case Study 1

I met Max at a workshop I held at the library on writing college essays. Max stayed behind with his mom and introduced himself while she smiled in the background. Max was a junior at a huge public high school and was not turning in his homework, zoning out during class and basically finding most of what occurred in the classroom irrelevant. While he had perfect scores on the ACT, his grades were bad, based on missing so many assignments. Max’s mom struck me as gentle, patient and fed-up. She took me aside to explain that Max was on the spectrum, but also had a number of other health problems that affected him. He was suffering socially because of his Aspergers. She expressed concern about his being able to graduate but also about his attending college. I suggested we focus on the issues with his grades and then see what else needed remediation. Max’s mother was qualified in the therapy needed when he was younger but as a teenager he was starting to rebel.

THE BACKPACK

A very contentious subject between Max and his mother was his backpack. Like most high school students Max refused to put anything in his locker but carried around an enormous backpack filled with books and folders. Although his mom had set up an organizing system with a different folder for each class, Max seldom looked into any of his folders, wrote due dates in his planner or turned in completed homework. His backpack contained massive amounts of out-of-date handouts and several unfinished lunches. 

We set up a system, Future Work and Archive, in two folders. Dragging the trashcan over, the third category was called Recycle. It took several weeks for Max to trust me enough to throw out stuff without asking him. It’s crucial to respect and observe children’s boundaries, especially those of teenagers. Soon he allowed me to toss without checking although I made sure to show him anything that seemed worth preserving. Ideally he would do this himself, daily. I coached Max twice a week when we worked on his writing assignments, his college admission essays and executive skills like keeping an up-to-date planner.