Hi Grinity,
Thanks for your thoughts! I have thought about auditory processing. He had speech issues as a preschooler - it seemed more like a fine motor coordination thing with his mouth than anything else. He passed all of the hearing tests fine. I took him to a friend of mine who does vision therapy and had him evaluated last year - she said that he had a couple of issues - can't remember the details - one was getting his eyes to refocus on something and getting them to work together. I watched her doing the testing and it was pretty obvious that it took him a really long time on that stuff. I never did the therapy - kept waiting for a time that was convenient to open up and never could decide if I really believed in it or not, but maybe it would be worth a shot.
He loved Magic Tree House books in first grade and read those all quickly. His favorites that he tends to read over and over again "Why Pi?" - something about applications of math to the real world historically - and "The Big Bang" - that one is so dense it is hard for me to even contemplate the issues it raises. I try to get him to read more fiction and things that others of his age might be more inclined to read - he read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and liked that one, but mostly likes series of books. He is reading some Pokemon ones now - kind of likes them. My older son had a big spike in reading towards the middle or end of second grade, so kind of thinking that might happen with this son also. My oldest is not a math guy though.
His school has tried to give him some exceleration with math, but even going up a couple of grades (they get the materials from higher grades and give them to him in second grade) does not help at all. His teacher taught sixth grade last year and said he feels pretty sure that my son already knows most of that as well, so they have kind of run out of ideas for him for elementary school and he is only in second grade. Hard for me to figure out what to do!
Thanks again!
Anne
