I just got back to the post and was truly impressed how many people are trying to help me ! Thank you so much for your ideas and thoughts! It also really helps to know that I am not alone. I agree - it is hard to know what the right thing is. Some other math tutor tried to do the "only if you get 95%+ correct can you move on" and it killed his desire right then.
I very much like the idea of trying to apply the concepts. Someone else also mentioned that giving him an answer to a problem and telling him to show me how to get there might work - I tried this today and it surprisingly worked quite well. I am wondering if knowing the answer makes him less answer focused/ stressed and thus allows him to think more clearly about the steps to get there.
For right now, we have decided to let him explore things that he loves and as someone mentioned - given that he is ahead - if he has to get back to things in a while, it should be still ok (or so I tell myself
).
