Interesting. My stepson, like this boy, was probably able to read at a college level when he was 3rd or 4th grade age and this is one of the things my son has in common with his half-brother.
Public school didn't work for my stepson because even though he could pass all of the tests, he would not turn in his work. My husband said they tried all kinds of things to get him to turn in his work and he just wouldn't do it. The school refused to let him skip a grade because of this problem. My stepson even went to an expensive private school for a year and that didn't work either. He ended up dropping out and getting his GED.
We had a friend years ago whose daughter was the same age as my stepson. They made similar scores on the SAT. She went to MIT. My stepson dropped out of a community college.
My stepson is so smart. He is highly gifted but he never learned to work hard. When he tried college, it was the same story. This lack of a work ethic even carried into his adult life. He managed to get a really good job for a computer company that paid well without a college degree because he scored higher on their test than most of the college graduates. But he didn't keep that job, or the next one. He said he couldn't stand "office politics." He is now in his 30's, works in a convenience store, has no health or dental insurance and the last time we stopped in that store to visit him, we saw the computer manual he was reading for fun. I think he would be happy to not work at all. A few years ago, he lived with us for about 8 months without working and it didn't look like he was trying too hard to find a job. The situation affected my health and I had to be put on medication until he moved out.
I think we already knew the "dangers of not homeschooling" as we enrolled our son in public school kindergarten when he was five, because we hoped that it would be different for him. It wasn't. In fact it was probably worse, because my son has a mild disability that his half brother does not have and the school wanted to hold him back for not coloring in the lines, while not offering OT because he was reading and doing math above grade level. The first grade teacher I asked for advice was the mother of gifted sons and she told me if she had a son as highly gifted as mine she would homeschool. She also knew the dangers of not homeschooling.
Sometimes things work out for the best. My son can see for himself by watching adult siblings that intelligence alone will not make a person successful in life. We talk about those things that are likely to lead to success. We enjoy reading successful homeschool stories, but since we haven't found any good 2E homeschool stories lately, I guess we will just have to make our own.
We often talk about the qualities that colleges and employers look for. We had a family discussion about some of this recently when my husband got a promotion at work. We talked about the reasons he got the job instead of the competition who also had degrees--people skills, knowing how to play the office politics game and not quitting because you don't like dealing with it, volunteering to do more than you are asked to do instead of getting by with as little work as possible, etc.
