Gifted Issues Discussion homepage

Hi Everyone,

Really need some advice on this. I have an 8th grade son who (years ago) was accelerated by six months (he was born in February) into an adademic preschool that had an age three cutoff. The preschool went through grade K and he left K having read most of the Harry Potter books (and just about everything he could get his hands on). After K, he went directly to grade 2 since in our town, half of the first graders are still learning letter sounds. Since then, he has never gotten out of first gear, except when he wants to and cares, which isn’t all the time. Since he was so happy and well adjusted, things seemed great, until now. He has off the charts EQ, has tons of friends (including girls) and is extremely extroverted in a nice way. For the first time, he is getting lousy grades (Bs in heterogenously grouped classes) because of sloppiness. His teachers are mediocre at best and think that Bs are OK (other parents are fine with that too) but this was never a problem with his older siblings since they learned on their own and got the As. He just isn’t disciplined for subjects that aren’t important to him; but grades matter on a high school transcript. We are really worried about HS because our public high school is sink or swim. All of his 8th grade teachers have recommended him for honors classes next year but given our experiences with our older children (who were very disciplined in their academics and also accelerated by a year) we feel he is just going to get dropped off the edge of the pool and sink to the bottom. So we are considering private school or private school after grade 9 (with a repeat of grade 9 to wipe the slate, since his age will hide the extra 9th grade year when he applies to college). Private schools seem to coddle the kids more and while I hate that about them, this may be the only way he can get into a good college. The nearby Catholic school is affordable and very high quality so it fits the bill (though we aren’t Catholic).

The third option is to let him take non-honors courses. In our high school, these are a waste, but he is the type of kid that learns most of what he knows on his own and he could probably get As in non honors courses. He is the kind of kid who probably would have been great 100 years ago. He is an inventor, hugely entrepreneurial (has started several resale businesses totally on his own volition that we discovered when we found his inventory) and has tons of friends. He just marches to his own beat. He’s creative and we don’t want to beat that out of him.

We don’t know what to do and are worried he’ll never get into a good college. He has seen his siblings get into good colleges and he does want the same for himself.

We have no doubts he’ll be able to hit the numbers on the SAT and SAT subject tests, but keeping the gas on his grades in a traditional public factory school is probably not going to happen given his personality.

I’d be grateful for any thoughts and perspectives from people here. I have no doubts he is going to be successful financially and personally someday, but we really want him to go to college with other intellectually curious peers and state U in our state isn’t going to give that to him. He’s also a really nice kid, always lending a hand to everyone (volunteers for chores, helps his classmates at school all the time) and is really loved by his (unfortunately mediocre) teachers.

When my son, who had a two year skip, finished 8th grade, we decided to homeschool him (at a high school honors level) for two years to give us some time to figure out what to do about high school. He ended up deciding to enter the local public high school with his agemates in 9th grade.

The first year went well because it was new and exciting, but halfway through 10th grade he ended up withdrawing from two of the most "meaningless" classes to homeschool because he couldn't stand it any more.

This year, in 11th, he is taking three AP classes at the high school and four classes at home. His grades at the high school are not good because he neglects to do homework that he deems to be not worth his time. Ugh.

We are playing around with the idea of sending him to the local community college for a quarter or two next year and then graduating him from our homeschool so that he can have a partial gap year. The hope is that the new environment of the CC coupled with nonstandard coursework might hold his interest enough to get him through high school without too much more damage to his GPA.

All of this is to say that there are no easy answers. By the time the kid is mature enough to set aside his "principles" long enough so that his GPA doesn't take a hit, he has totally outgrown whatever the high school can provide in terms of intellectual stimulation.

In other words, for my son, the reasons for the poor fit in high school have changed, but the poor fit remains. My son wasn't ready socially for high school at the end of 8th grade, but by the time he was ready socially, he had outgrown it academically. And by the time he is ready from an executive functioning standpoint, he will have aged out of high school altogether.

You may consider a couple of points:
1. reducing the challenge level of his academics may encourage him to coast even more, which may have the unintended effect of diminishing his development/implementation of study skills further.
2. middle school is a key developmental period for learning how to navigate increasingly complex social situations, and for beginning to work toward a balance of tasks (school, in this case) and relationships that is personally satisfying, and in alignment with one's own values. Work-life balance, in other words.
3. it may be that his personal goals are not what you think they are, or that he is still working through the line from present choices to future goals. Some additional patient, open-ended listening to his thoughts may help clarify this point.

It is not uncommon for gifted kids to be selective consumers. If he feels like the school is being disrespectful and wasting his time he is unlikely to put in the effort.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Kai, When you accelerated your son originally, did he continue his friendships with his age-mates? What age did he skip? Because my son skipped at such a young age and became friends with his grade cohort, and because he is quite athletic and has "played up" with his grade peers (this is allowed in our city youth sports), his friendship group is his grade-peers, surprisingly even girls. He is extremely gifted, but we have no doubts whatsoever that it is his EQ that will carry him in life. It's remarkable, but you can drop him in a room of strangers, and by the end, he has a posse. He would hate being home schooled (we actually have a lot of experience with homeschooling, though it was all or nothing and my other children were only "out of the system" for two years). Your partial home-school concept intrigues me as he might be able to keep his friends, but I have a feeling it might not fly with the local factory high school administration. He is the kind of kid that seems to know everything about everything, but just isn't interested in putting the effort into getting to the A if it doesn't interest him. But if you were stranded on a desert island, or starting a new company, or unconscious in a hospital, he'd be the one you'd want to have by your side.

I mean this in the kindest way possible, but I am honestly exhausted by your expectations just reading this post.

You have a clear and fully-defined view of the pathway forward, but your DS does not seem to be complying. You're trying to think up Plan B and C and D, but they are still deeply embedded in the Plan A vision. I get this, I really do. These kids are so challenging and confusing, when you think you’ve finally figured out what you are doing, it’s hard to let it go. But I think you really need to let this go.

I came into parenting with a ton of plans about how to make sure that my kids did not have to live through all the things I hated about school. But my kids are so completely unlike me that those plans ended up being pretty meaningless. I learned the hard way that sometimes as a parent I really need to just stop, step back, take a deep breath, and try to take a new look at my kids and their environment, one unclouded by prior assumptions and what worked for me, or worked for my other kid.

What might you see with a fresh set of eyes? As a complete stranger who knows nothing more than what you've written, here's what I see:

* An extraordinary young man, successful and high-achieving in life. He's happy, has great friends, and is himself a great friend to others. He’s kind, helpful, loving and lovely.

* He's a hard-working and ambitious entrepreneur, creating businesses that involve making plans, putting in the big effort and carrying through. He gets a lot done.

* He’s creative and innovative, and marches to his own beat. He finds opportunities and comes up with good solutions, and they aren’t the way other people would do things.

* His school environment is a bad academic match, and doesn't come near to meeting his needs.

* He has (remarkably) tolerated that lack of learning and make-work well, and still got high marks every year up to now. Currently, however, he is giving school the level of effort it calls for.

* He is what, about 11, 12? This is an impressive young man!

* He is not his siblings.

The best advice I can give you is, if you want him to work hard, give him hard work.

If you haven’t read “Is it a cheetah?” lately, the words “zoo chow” are echoing loudly in my mind. Your son sounds like a kid who desperately needs some antelopes and a wide-open plain. http://www.stephanietolan.com/is_it_a_cheetah.htm

Some kids can brush off the make-work, just jump through it and quickly move on. Others find it soul crushing, and just. can't. do. it. (And some kids with ADHD are genuinely incapable of keeping their attention on meaningless work, no matter how hard they try.) Note I said *can't* do it, not *won't*. This doesn't sound like a discipline problem, it sounds like a bad school-fit problem.

His siblings thrived despite a poor-fitting academic environment. They were able to comply while finding their learning and challenge elsewhere, outside of school. Some kids can do that. Others just can't. It's not a matter of trying harder, it's about not being able to function well when your basic needs are not being met. So what kind of environment could better meet your son's needs? Is there a schooling option where he could get much more complex, engaging, challenging, motivating, harder work, sooner? What school and/ or activities would value and feed his entrepreneurialism and creativity, and love the energy and passion he brings to them? (I am guessing from the way you describe his school that these strengths likely get seriously in the way of his current school work).

I would be cautious about approaches that will almost certainly, as aeh wisely notes, exacerbate the problem by increasing the bad fit of his academics. Running his zoo chow through the blender to make pablum is not going to make him run faster. Easier work and grade repeats aren't going to provide challenge and engagement, and may just feel punitive, too.

Instead of thinking of ways to make this child look like he is on the same pathway as his siblings, what are the different kinds of pathways that could work for him?

My son was homeschooled from K-4, skipped 5th and entered 6th at a tiny private school (there were 5 kids in 6th grade and only one other boy), skipped 7th, and did 8th at the same private school. He kept his friends from K-4 during his time at that school, and kept the one real friend that he made at the school when he left.

We have found the social stuff to be the most tricky. My son has no problems socially, but he needs access to other people to make friends (obviously). In our semi-rural community, the public high school is the one place to reliably get that access.

For us, finding good social opportunities has been the most difficult. I can deal with the academics at home, but I can't conjure a like minded group of teens.

Platypus101, thank you for the Is it a Cheetah? article and link! It is an excellent analogy to our situation and really made me put my son’s situation in perspective. Clearly reducing the level of courses would be a disaster and most of the benefit of the private school I referred to comes from the fact that grades are artifically inflated there to assure college admissions success. He won’t learn more there. In fact he might even learn less and resent the loss of friends. Most of the kids who go there leave our public school because they can’t handle the honors classes and the non-honors ones are too easy. I myself went to a university that had no core curriculum (it is well known for that flexibility and a place my son would absolutely thrive). If I knew he was guaranteed acceptance there, I’d let him do his own thing in high school. The problem is that my old university only accepts about one in twenty students these days. Most of those accepted (with the exception of jocks and hooked students) have thrived in the zoos that they came from and a large cohort probably aren’t even all that notable, they are just there to meet “PC” institutional priorities. My son needs to someday go to a college where he can be with other exceptional classmates, but I fear that (using the zoo analogy), he’ll just end up a a smaller zoo. I still don’t see a clear path forward but the Cheetah article gave me an excellent lens to look through when evaluating alternative paths. Thank you again for that!

I may have missed something, in which case I apologize... but instead of re-reading I'll use the limited time I have available at the moment to mention that if your son truly wants to achieve agreed-upon goals but seems unable to, is it possible that he may have a difficulty with Executive Function or other 2e issues? Might he be leveraging his high intelligence and social nature to compensate?

Just in case this may be a factor, here is a brief roundup of links on Executive function:
- partial list of EF skills issues
- resources to help a child understand ADHD
- Understood.org - executive function skills
- Wrightslaw - executive function skills
- books to help with EF skills: Smart but Scattered... Late, Lost, and Unprepared (hat tip to aeh)