I asked if he wanted more challenging work. He said, "not more challenging, just more interesting". I think he equates challenging with his weak areas (writing, writing and writing!)Have you seen the motivation issue improve in middle school?
That sounds so very much like something my ds would say! Yes, his motivation did improve tremendously in middle school, as did my understanding of what he was really thinking and feeling about school (both the tough parts and the areas he is interested in). The best things for my ds about middle school are that he does finally have *some* classes that are semi-challenging intellectually and that he has a higher percentage of his day spent in classes that are subjects he's interested in. He's also benefited tremendously by a change in schools.
On the other hand, he is still grappling with not liking having a disability - clearly it wasn't his choice, never would be for anyone. When most typical kids are going through puberty just dealing with hormones and opposite sex awareness and all that he's also got that extra "thing" that defines him that looms large in his head - so while other parents of gifted kids are worrying about challenging coursework, we're also as parents of a 2e kid having to be extra careful to work at keeping life balanced, and give ds the support he needs to become comfortable in his own skin.
I'm currently trying to decide what to do about middle school...he'll be in 5th grade in the Fall. My choices are to stay in our public school system, go to the "fancy" college prep school (which isn't a gifted school, but has a more rigorous academic program with higher expectations for performance), or homeschool. I'd love to hear more about how things have change for you with the transition from elementary to middle.
We had the same set of choices, but as always, ultimately everything depends upon the individual school district and schools, as well as school staff, so what played out for us may be entirely different in your area. In our case, we chose to "drop out" of the public school system for now. DS was in an optional public school which in theory let kids work at their individual ability pace, but that never worked out for ds, and the school was abysmal when it came to getting help for special needs kids. At the end of 5th grade, we had an adequate IEP and a good list of accommodations, but ds wasn't getting the instruction outline in his IEP and his teachers continued to either ignore or fight the very simple accommodations. We don't live in a huge city, so we didn't have many choices for private school, but ...
oops, got interrupted, will come back later to finish!
pb
