Argh!!!

Living with a 16 year old high-functioning autistic child is really, really frustrating. Every day I ask him if you did his homework. "Yup." Did you turn it in? "Yes." Did anything happen at school today? "No."

Tonight I got a phone call from his homeroom teacher. It is time to do his IEP (just paperwork). The teacher had spoken to Matt and Matt wants to do it himself without me involved. The teacher just wanted to verify that this was okay and that Matt had spoken to me about it. Of course it was okay and of course Matt never said a word about it. I spent half an hour talking to the teacher about Matt, what he is like at home (very different than at school), and about his possible future.

So then I go out and ask Matt if anything happened at school today? "No." I asked him the same question three times in a row and he finally said "Nothing happened, just the usual stuff." So I said no, something special happened at school today, what was it. Then he remembered that the teacher had spoken to him. Why didn't you tell me sooner? "I don't know."

Apparently school and home exist in two different but parallel universes and knowledge about the one cannot be transmitted to the other. When Matt goes to school he doesn't know what happened at home, when he goes home he doesn't know what happened at school. It is a truly amazing and very frustrating phenomenon.