The school suggested having a behavior specialist observe him (one issue is that he has trouble staying in his seat when he gets bored after he finishes his work; another issue is that he has difficulty asking for help).
Two questions I'd ask the school about this - first, is the difficulty staying in his seat when he's finished with his work any different than any other student in the classroom who has finished their work? Not many kids his age are going to want to sit at their desk and do nothing. Ask what the teacher is giving him to work on when he's finished, or if he has a signal he can give to let the teacher know he's finished and needs something to do.
Re the difficulty asking for help - not many students his are all that adept at asking for help, unless they are in pain and/or bleeding. Truly! I'd ask if this is really all that out of the ordinary for his age/grade. The other thing that you might want to just file away and keep on your radar - does he have difficulty communicating in other situations? It's really tough at his age/grade to see if writing struggles are all tied to fine motor (or visual) issues, or if there's an underlying issue with expressive language. Our ds had a really tough time communicating with his teachers when he was in early elementary, and I thought it was all just developmental - he was a young kid, he didn't know what to say if it wasn't mom or dad he was talking to etc. Ultimately for my ds, it was a sign of an expressive language disorder, but we didn't suspect it because we saw what looked like fluent communication when he did communicate.
His teacher last year informally altered expectations by allowing him to work on 2nd grade assignments on the computer without having to complete all of the kindergarten assignments; that was very helpful.
This is an example of where we can get so confused when trying to understand students who are intellectually high ability yet might be struggling with very fundamental skill sets - it's pretty easy for any of us reading this board to look at that one sentence and leap to the conclusion that more challenging work eliminated the behavior. But in your ds' situation, I suspect there's an added layer that's really the key - the 2nd grade assignments were on the computer, and the kindergarten assignments were most likely using handwriting or fine motor tasks. If this is the case, I think you have an excellent data point here for advocating - your ds is *capable* and *able* to be working at 2nd grade level, but he's challenged with fine motor tasks, hence he is struggling with kindergarten level work.
polarbear
