I've spent the last year agonizing about "forcing" my DS10 to do AoPS. While I utterly agree with everyone's concerns expressed above, I also have my own experience of why I would make a kid do math against his will - a decision which is by no means final, as I still second guess it many times a day.
In our case, DS10, math monster extraordinaire since birth, is in a regular class with no acceleration and, until this year, no enrichment. He is visual spatial to an extreme, and has writing issues. He has zero intrinsic motivation or self-driven ambition when it comes to academics. By grade 2, he'd learned to hate math. By grade 4 - when it became a writing program - he'd also learned he was no good at it. His anxiety skyrocketed in grade 4. So did his panic attacks when facing anything he didn't already know how to do - new math problem, new song on the piano, whatever. His grades were mediocre.
At the end of grade 4, I was pretty desperate to stop this spiral. I wanted him to re-find a love for math, and that requires higher-level, conceptual problem solving. I wanted him to learn how to calmly face a new kind of problem, recognize he didn't know what to do with it, and persevere regardless. I wanted him to learn that he had the capacity to excel - IF he worked hard. And that hard work was an essential component of success. And to experience the pride that comes with achieving something hard that you really had to work at. (With his writing difficulties, absolutely none of this was happening/ true at school).
So I tried the AoPS pre-Algebra (text and Alcumus only) at home, over the end of summer vacation and after school the first month in the Fall. In about 6 weeks, with only grade 4 math, we got through Pre-Algebra I and II (though we could - and probably should - have spent more time getting into the depth, but I thought he'd be better spending time in Algebra if he could handle it). It was almost all novel, but none of it was particularly difficult for him.
So in October we started AoPS Algebra I on-line. He hates it. He argues about the time we spend on it. He resents having homework that his friends don't. He's never, ever been the kind of gifty that asks for academic-style work (I was the kid begging for my big brother's homework). He just plain doesn't like Algebra (he's the archetypal visual-spatial, and can't wait to get to geometry). It's really hard to make him do it, and I have to hold Minecraft time hostage to math time.
So - no brainer. Like you all say above, stop now, and don't destroy his love of math.
But, but - - -
He loves *having* the math knowledge despite the pain of acquiring it. He's always asking me to print certain problems to take to school to torment his teacher and his mathy pal. He invents problems for me to solve, extrapolating from what we've learned. He adores figuring out complex word problems - and especially the fact that he can get there 100 times faster than I can. When we get to any visual bits - like the chapter on Cartesian planes - he is quivering and giggling with glee every step of the way. Lately, he's "inventing" math theories - mostly noticing interesting patterns and happenings in number theory. He's spent the last week desperately trying to figure out how he could prove (or disprove) that for every number divisible by 3, if you add up the individual digits, the sum is also divisible by 3. He has a new theory every couple of days, every one new to me, and hugely exciting to him.
Yes, he hates learning Algebra in his spare time - but man does he love having that knowledge once acquired. He uses it every day, and it's launching him into tons of his own investigation of numbers, math books, physics videos.... He's got enough background to devour materials that 6 months ago were beyond his reach - whether Martin Gardner, Stephen Hawking or vSauce. If he could just do AoPS during class time, there would be no issue at all - but that's just not an option here. He desperately wants to do geometry, but we need that solid algebra base first. So there's a short-term pain, long-term gain issue here too.
What I did change was to drop the formal class half-way through, as the schedule was too time-consuming and inflexible. We've mostly taken an AoPS break for the last month, doing logic problem-style math and particle physics for a change of pace. We're continuing with it, but more slowly, recognizing we want to savour the depth: our after-schooling schedule, combined with his limited pre-reqs, wasn't compatible with the pace and demand of the on-line course.
So I can well understand how someone can find themselves in greenlotus' position. Am I an evil, hothousing maniac forcing my kid to do AoPS against his clearly-stated will? I think so a dozen times a day and decide to stop. And then I watch him come to life, exploding with excitement at his newest discovery, and can't imagine taking away the fuel that's driving it.
