The teacher said he's often careless, forgetful, and unfocused. But she said she felt it was a question of him not WANTING to, rather than being UNABLE to. So we were attacking it from a discipline/punishment angle, versus a "let's find the problem and fix it" angle. Until now.
This is such a tough one. My son is 15, and he was in those shoes in 2nd grade and it still makes me shiver to think about those days.
Here's the deal, as I see it:
That behavior can be a sign of ADHD-I (used to be called ADD) and it's not at all unusual for teachers to think that a kid with ADD just is lazy, or 'not trying enough.'
That behavior can be a sign of 'poor fit' classroom - if the student has already learned 90% of today's lesson, they would have to be exceptionally mature (or prone to turn their stress inward) not to have trouble focus on what the teacher thinks is important.
Then there is anxiety and/or depression. 'Normal' behavior for your son might be anxiety over not getting 'everything perfectly.' It's hard to know what one should be able to do when there is no real peer-group.
A child can have both problems and be really hard to figure out. My son thinks that 'all PG kids have ADHD or AS' - he's a bit black and white in his thinking - can you guess? But I think that there is a small germ of truth in his overgeneralization - Many, many kids who have GAI over 3 standard deviations above the mean are own their own developmental path, and things that are easy for most kids can be hard,or near impossible, for them while things that are easy for PGlets can be very challenging for most kids. The difference is that most school systems are geared for kids near the bulk of the bell curve, so the PGlet is alway the square peg in the round hole. Look up 'asynchronous development' for more on this idea.
The best I can figure out with my son, he did have ADHD-I and PG, but it was really hard to tell what was causing the in-classroom behavior problems until he got old enough that the edge of the asynchronous development was softened by time, and we made some educational interventions to get the classroom fit better.
Let us know how the report goes!
Grinity
