One thing that has been very helpful for me is to really break down what, exactly, I want to help DS spend his time doing, and why. For instance, when we started doing math at home (I held back till grade 5), I thought it was important to, as you say, prep him for school, and thus get him functioning independently. Didn't work worth beans. He's the antithesis of an autodidact, with bonus writing disabilities.
I eventually realized that my vision of how it *ought* to be done - how *I* would have done it - was getting in the way of accomplishing what we wanted. In our case, what I wanted first and foremost was for my math monster to regain his love of math, destroyed at school. Improving his independence, his writing, and other things were all important goals too - but just not the point of *this* exercise. So I had to let go of all that, and focus on 'what is the best way to allow this child to dive deep and happily into math and re-find his passion?" And it turns out to be a very hands-on process, me reading ahead, us learning together, and me doing pretty near all the writing on a whiteboard.
His deficits in writing, executive function, language, well - we work on those every day, painfully, doing his homework and finishing all the schoolwork he never manages to get done at school. But we park them at math time. Does a part of me still fight this crazily, thinking he ought to be reading his own AoPS books, motivating himself, taking the lead, writing his own stuff? Absolutely. That's me, totally. But that's just not the kid I have. Slowly, I am learning to accept that, and work with what is, not what I think ought to be. Come summer, math time will be just about feeding the passion - and I'll be back scribing at the whiteboard.
Don't know if this little confession resonates any - but it was cathartic for me
