Try not to be too hard on yourself. With these children, our reality is skewed.
Yes-- and ONLY parents of other highly asynchronous children can truly identify with this. You're parenting a single child with (seeming) multiple identities all competing for executive control in any one moment.
Like the 5th grade math test that my DD
completely blew off-- earning herself a whopping 42%-- not because she didn't know the material inside and out, but because she (being barely 7yo)
wasn't in the mood that morning.
THEN, we had to backtrack and make sure that the teacher knew that no, she really DID TOO know all of that stuff, and it was really not the case that she was moving "too quickly" through the material... during her year of compacting 4th and 5th grade (which the school had been ambivalent about).
Adult sized issues created by pint-sized people with out-sized ability for age. {sigh}
It DOES get better as they gain metacognitive skills during their tweens and teens, by the way.
