EXCEPT: She has not improved in her tolerance for easy work. She can work for 6 hours straight on work that is advanced 3-5 years ahead of her age level, but give her something easier, and she is very likely to be stopped in her tracks, avoid it, tune out, and then melt down when her lack of attention results in wrong answers. ADHD?
So, now onto goals for next year:
We are hoping she can go to 6th grade and be happy. She is highly social and that’s her reason for going to school, but she is torn about whether academics or social are more important to her. (Nice improvement because it was ME wondering that last year- now she is the one owning the problem)
Any of you with older kids or experience as a GT yourself have any insight into this? Are we crazy to even try this? Does the fact that easy stuff overwhelms her point to ADHD? Any strategies for dealing with that problem? Any comments, thoughts, personal stories appreciated.
Do you have a homeschool group near you? That way she can have the social experience and still own her own education.
It is so inspiring to hear how well homeschooling has worked out for her.
As to this: " Does the fact that easy stuff overwhelms her point to ADHD?"
No! Focusing on boring stuff is boring. Human beings aren't meant to sit around doing tedious repetitive work for long stretches...If they have to do it, they only do it because there is a really good reason (like, you'll starve if you don't plant the crops or make dinner.)
I'm actually avoiding doing some extremely boring repetitive stuff for my business right now. All those years of schooling didn't make it easier for me to suck it up and just do it. But I am going to do it, because I have some exciting goals I want to accomplish and they require this early bit of mind-numbingly boring work. The key here is that I am self-motivated to accomplish a long-term goal. I am passionate about what I'm doing and willing to suffer through the easy / boring bits.
(But don't ask me to learn Calculus for fun right now. My DH is upstairs dying of boredom, too, doing problems on MyMathLab. It isn't that it is hard, it is that the problems take forever and if you make one tiny mistake or format the answer incorrectly, the program makes you redo the entire problem all over again using new numbers. It is horrific. But he is sticking to it, because he really wants to be a software engineer.)
I don't think you can impose boring work on a child and think that will teach patience and how to deal with boring work. You let them follow what they are passionate about, and I guarantee you they'll engage in the boring / tedious / easy bits to get to where they want to be.
Ok. Back to work for me.
