She also stopped letting me read aloud at age 5, because she could read faster in her head. (I hate to have people read aloud, too!)
Yep!
Children who are gifted routinely maintain consistent efforts and high grades in classes when they like the teacher and are intellectually challenged, although they may resist some aspects of the work, particularly repetition of tasks perceived as dull.
Indeed-- THOUGH... with a kid like this, be very wary of efforts to "improve" performance since your child has "time" to "do a better job" on the work.
This happened to me as a child, and it also happened to my DD somewhat. "Slow down! Do a GOOD JOB. You're making mistakes that we KNOW that you can avoid if you just pay attention and slow down."
Well, okay, insisting on 100% accuracy is unrealistic for anyone. That's not even an acceptable thing in most adult occupations (obviously air traffic controllers, hostage negotiators, and neurosurgeons are excused now
).
While it may be true that "error-free" is within the grasp of someone who has a fast processing speed (because they can afford do the assigned task two or even four times over?) that kind of encourages an unhealthy set of OCD-like behaviors, first of all. How many times SHOULD one check over that written paragraph for grammatical errors? How many times is enough reworking of that physics problem?
Secondly, that is a doorway that you don't want to step through because it leads to the depths of task-avoidant perfectionism, or can. If the ONLY authentic challenge becomes finishing "error-free" then that can easily turn into a situation in which-- particularly with more subjective tasks like open-ended written work-- the child sees it as a no-win situation. Either they make no mistakes (whew! I didn't fail!) or they make mistakes (Oh no! I failed to meet my goal!). If they see earning 100% as improbable or impossible, they may simply refuse to do the task at all. There is certainly no REWARD for doing good work at a natural pace.
Having a good plan for what such a child should be permitted to do with her free time is a must, IMO. Also be prepared to push back from "perfect" with a teacher that argues that your child should "slow down" until the 100% marks start rolling in regularly, too. You want your child to LEARN from mistakes-- not "perfectly demonstrate what s/he already has mastery over." It's important not to confuse the two.
