He sounds a lot like both of my 2e kids in the middle elementary school years. I don't think there's really anything to worry about re finding his internal motivation to learn - I think what you're seeing is the effect of the environment he's in, which is not really something that you'll be able to change for a few years.
There is no "working to learn" anything with him right now. He either knows it or doesn't.
Exactly - he's most likely in a classroom or environment where he can grasp some information easily and yet has other information (2e-related) that's difficult and that he struggles with.
This may be what it *looks* like, but what was really going on with my kids when we saw this was a defense mechanism - they didn't want anyone (especially peers) to know that they had trouble with something; they were self-conscious being in a classroom among kids who, in most subjects they were miles ahead in comprehending yet in their area of struggle they were very aware and sensitive to being technically "behind" or having difficulty with something that they saw came much more easily to the other students.
[quote]He is 2e and is the type that will go on all about the life cycle of some obscure animal but then mess up the order of the months of the year. And then have a straight faced argument about why it really isn't important to know the months in order!!
Again, this is very much typical of how my 2e kids would act when faced with something that called on their area of challenge.
The middle elementary years were truly the most difficult times for my kids (post-diagnosis... pre-diagnosis wasn't exactly a cake-walk either lol). The tough thing about those middle elementary years was - we knew what was up, our children knew what was up, we'd fought the battles (and continued to), at school for remediation and services, and the school's response fell short, particularly for my ds. He desperately needed help with expressive language, he knew he needed help, he knew he had an IEP, and he knew that his teachers weren't helping him like he needed help even though they were supposed to be providing help per his IEP. He was also growing in awareness each year of the differences between himself and his peers, both with respect to the challenges and with respect to how slow classroom discussions were going vs how quickly he could grasp the content vs other students in areas he wasn't challenged. For my dyslexic dd, mid-elementary was particularly difficult because even though she was making progress with her reading she was still not as far ahead as the kids who were at her intellectual level, plus she'd developed a "non-liking" of reading that stuck with her even after she'd had sufficient remediation and was reading beyond grade level. The impact of not reading the same volume for years as the other kids was starting to show up in her vocabulary word bank that was more obvious than it was in the early elementary years.
Anyway, if all that sounds discouraging - don't be discouraged by it! Middle school was like night and day different re having access to appropriate level of challenge in the classroom, partly because they'd both grown into their accommodations much more by then and their 2nd e didn't hold them back from higher-level classwork anymore. School still wasn't easy thanks to their 2nd e, but access to higher level of intellectual classwork helped put them in a place where their *intrinsic* motivation began to show.
Just because you don't see it now doesn't mean that your ds is in need of motivation or a growth mindset. It's most likely there already but just not obvious due to the environment his 2e situation places him in.
Hang in there!
polarbear
