When you name a coping strategy it becomes all the more clear what is going on.  At the same time it becomes all the more irritating when you see it.

Helplessness...I HATE this coping strategy.

Younger Boy was using it in full force this afternoon.  He didn't know how to do anything he was asked to do.  Things he had done a million times before.  Things he does every day.  Either no one told him to do them or he didn't know how.

He "didn't know" what to do on any of his assignments and "no one told him" he had homework.

I'm quickly losing my patience with this.  He DOES know.  It is his ploy to avoid what he is supposed to do and until this point in life it has worked for him.  It stops here.