Building just isn't a priority anymore

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by JuliaGreen

Those with autism can also experience trouble with staying on task, due to a low tolerance for frustration or a higher than normal level of distractibility.

It's interesting how the same person with autism can behave like you described with some tasks (usually ones they wish to not do), but have some of the most intense and dedicated focus on other tasks (usually the ones that interest them).

[Tom Ore]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

I agree with this, but our team has an issue with this. You see, around 50% of our team is autistic, which for the most part is a very good thing, as they are bright and help a lot, but the problem is, with their autism comes some difficulties. One of them is that they don't/can't work on something very long or don't ever show up to practice, and the second one is a few of them don't like the idea of "Gracious Professionalism", and try to drive the robot like a battle bot while being extremely rude to our alliance members and the judges. If we try to do this sort of thing to them, they can essentially sue us for discrimination, or worse, have the team broken up!

I have an autistic son so I appreciate the struggles you are having. I'd love to hear more about how your team came to have so many autistic kids on it.

It can take a lot of energy to work with the autistic kids - trying to keep them on task, modeling good behavior, trying to cope when their behavior is not the best. It's a big undertaking and all this is in the middle of that other thing - trying to build a robot in six weeks. Very impressive.