We had an appointment this afternoon with our daugher's teacher and the school's behavior specialist. They are both spectacular. We talked about the choices we've been giving her, and how to strategize about getting a better response from her.
We talked about how important it is to offer her simple rewards for doing her work, and how having more choices might help her get those rewards. We've had a reward system that we've been trying to use but she doesn't get them very frequently. Our new goal is to have her earn rewards every day. I talked with her before bedtime and asked her to try to think of rewards we could offer her that would help her do her work, I'm cautiously optimistic that she'll have some ideas tomorrow.
Meanwhile tonight we got more ideas from her teacher, she made a menu of activities that we can pick from each day with the idea that if she does enough choices from the menu she'll get her reward. The ideas are fantastic. I shared some of it with my daughter before bedtime and she got really excited, she actually got a little mad at me that I wouldn't give her the math problems to do right then.
So I'm feeling a little more optimistic. We didn't actually get any schoolwork done today, but I feel like we made a lot of progress nevertheless. I'm very grateful to the educators who have taken us into their care. I'm hoping that tomorrow or Monday we might be able to start turning a corner.