I'm of so many minds on this one.

One thing that struck me at the blog of the G&T teacher, was a mom wrote in after telling her DD that school is preparation for life where you'll have to do boring, mundane stuff all the time. The DD remarked and I"m paraphrasing here "Well if life is as boring as school, I'm going to commit suicide b/c it's just not worth it." The DD meant it. The mom knew changes had to be made.

I think you have to look at degrees. If it's one course DC is bored with, it's a good lesson to learn dealing w/ boredom, playing the game, toeing the line etc. If most of all the classes are this way, then something needs to change. The boy in the letter took outside courses to learn, from those courses he learned how to study, etc...if DC is content to do all the boring, easy work just to make A's and never learns to study, persevere when things get hard, that will not serve them in college either where most will encounter some need to study.

Also, I think it is hard to know what is going on in someone else's mind. I battle nightly w/ DS over homework. This is easy stuff he could have easily done a year or more ago. Why can't he do it? He says "when it's too easy, I just can't focus on it." So i'm yelling, he's crying, 2hrs later he is finishing a worksheet that it takes the rest of the kids 10min to do. On occasion he has not done the homework and I let him reap the consequences but there are none from the teacher. So perhaps he does have trouble focusing on it rather than being disobedient, bucking the rules, etc. I don't know.

I do model all the boring tasks that i have to do and what the consequences are for not doing them. But I think for elementary aged kids, it's hard to say that what they are doing now, bad habits they are forming, will affect them as adults. My DH told DS "Just wait until Highschool, you'll be able to take AP classes." DS said "Highschool is so far away." And he's right...for a 2nd grader, high school is far away. But I know my boring tasks are for the good of the household/family. I'm not sure what the higher good is of doing work DC has already mastered.

Can you tell I struggle with this topic constantly...ying yanging between extremes? And then settling in the middle?

Dazed and confused (aka Dazey)