need help teaching daughter how to summarize - asperger's

I've sometimes wondered if I would have been diagnosed with Asperger's (mild) as a child, if I were a kid today. And that is interesting, as I always found all the details important when we had to pick out the main facts, etc.!

DD is younger and was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (when that was still a diagnosis). She has difficulty with this as well, but my main approach has been what you said, having her verbally describe it. "In 3 sentences, what happened?" Maybe try sticking to the standard journalistic approach of who/what/where/when/how/why, and then turning it into a paragraph or whatever format she is supposed to use?

How does she do with telling the main idea of the story? That's the first step to summarizing. You need to help her break down all that information into chunks.

Write the following for her:

What was the main idea? _____________________
What important things did the author say about the main idea?
_______________
_______________
_______________

Do that for each paragraph, page or section. Then show her how to group all of those by the most important.

Ok. Then break it down to smaller and smaller sections. What's the main idea of this sentence?  What's the main idea of this paragraph?  And yes, as Carpezio said, if she has trouble articulating that, it's usually found as the first (occasionally last) sentence in the paragraph. 

There are some fantastic ideas here. My son is a 9th grader too and he also has Asperger's but is very high functioning. We have the opposite problem with him though. He has a processing disability and is in the 3% for verbal learning but he is in the 98th% for visual learning.

He can summarize. His issue is elaborating! He cannot elaborate the details. We struggle so much with his writing. If he can look at a photo or drawing of something, he can tell you orally about fifteen hundred different details but when he has to write it down, all we get is a general summary.

I'm going to take some of these ideas but make them more detailed and see if it helps him at all. THANK YOU!!!

My DH, a teacher, suggests catching her at home when she's doing a multi-step project, like putting away dishes. Ask her what she's doing and she'll probably say she's putting away the dishes. Explain that she's doing multiple details--opening the dishwasher, checking to see if the dishes are dry, putting the dishes in the correct spots--but that she summarized what she did. Emphasize that she can summarize and look for other things to apply it to. Good luck!

I'm surprised I was never diagnosed to be on the spectrum when I got diagnosed with ADD Inattentive as a teen. But maybe they didn't have much to go on back then.
Though I don't believe in ADD anymore, my doctors did, so I wonder why they didn't test me to be on the spectrum cause I showed many signs.

As someone who hates to summarize ( cause it's way too black and white for me ) nor do I even understand it really. I would just write freely on what I read means to me.
Whether it's logic or not, I would just write. Without proper context / grammar/ organization ...etc
Cause I feel those stipulations get in the way of writing.

Then when I am finished I work on the organization and use what I feel is "facts" and all the other stuff a summary entails.
My boyfriend is going to school and had to do summary papers and he read a very interesting article about this way of free and ruleless writing so you get all the disorganization out and you don't feel so overwhelmed when it comes time to write your paper.

It's possible my essays would have gotten higher grades if I did this when I was in school.

And also when I take multiple choice tests, most of the choices look the same to me.
So some teachers agreed with me idea of choosing my answer ( after ruminating about it for 5 minutes at a time :/ ) and then explaining why I chose the answer I did.
I got better test scores after that that would be great if they had that option on the 504 plan. Unfortunately I didn't get the idea till my Senior year.

Some really great ideas!

My DD had the same problem in that she misses the main idea and would focus on the details. Graphic organizers helped - especially in written assignments. When reading she would fill them out as well. The biggest clue that she didn't have the main idea is when there was nothing to support it. She used a computer program - can't remember the name right now - that helped immensely as she didn't like to erase or start over. Patience on my part when I was "helping" her to see that when nothing supports it - it is not the main idea.

Another thing we always do is when we watch a movie, television program, and even cook something is to point out the "main idea". Even when I am talking to her I will explain things (this gets to be very old - she is constantly saying to me, "Let's discus this"...lol!) I will say either, "Bottom line...," "My point is...," "The main thing is..."

Good luck!