What does a parent do when their gifted child is bored or disinterested in an assignment, or objects to a question either philosophically or by definition, and puts in low effort or leaves the answer blank.
DS given Olympics assignment in Enrichment class. Easy essay questions an adult would ace by embellishing or creating a good answer. One question was to talk about your Olympic hero. Why is he/she your hero, tell us about him or her. Well, my son (told me although he likes the Games very much he doesn't consider them heroes, so he left the question blank. Well he did this for 2 out of the 10 questions, and scored an 80.
Another assignment was about a quick paperback novel Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. He read it superfast and considered the story ok but not that interesting. The Enrichment class went on with it, analyzing a chapter at a time, for weeks. Finally culminated in a novel test and he scored in the high 80s, clearly due to his disinterest.
He had made Principal's List first 2 quarters, but this quarter did not because final grade in this class was in low 90s.
How do parents teach gifted children the importance of effort and care in all school projects, even if they're easy or uninteresting. Do you start to talk about importance of grades for college, or talk about the intrinsic value of the results of hard work? Or both? What works and what backfires?
He is 10 years old, 6th grade. Thank you!
