I am reading my son's story over and over on these boards. He's 10, we knew he was smart all along. Verbally, the kid can out talk a lawyer and bring them to their knees if he wants. I've resorted to some pretty tough refusals to argue with my child about anything at all.

He scored in the 99% on the WASI - between 133 and 145 were his ranging IQ scores. I see now that may not really be his IQ from what I read.

He will NOT do his classwork. He draws in class all day, aces the tests and comes home with hours of homework (all the classwork from the day). He now lives on a short leash - he does the work or has no fun. He has been through a lot lately with the separation and divorce of his father and I, and then consequently the immediate finding of a girlfriend, marrying her and now my kids have 2 step siblings and a step mom - all in the span of a year.

HOWEVER. He used that information to concoct some serious schemes. He spent hours divising a way to run off step mom. He takes any opportunity in public with her to scream "she's abusing me" and/or runs off and hides on her. He told dad a boatload of lies about me, and me a boatload of lies about dad. His behavior was so out of control he ended up inpatient at a psych ward for two weeks. His dad and I ended up gaining some very awesome parenting tools for kids like my son. It has made a lot of improvements in both homes - but of course he had to stake somewhere and so he's refusing to do his work at school.

Last year's teacher told us not to put him in GATE because it's just more work. This year's teacher says "oh my bad choice - he needs far more challenge than we can give him". I don't want him to go to the GATE school here, it's in a bad area and I'd have to pay for the bus (I work full time).

I read a book that I can't recommend enough. while it says it's for kids with conduct disorder (which is what everyone is saying my son may have) - I think it fits squarely with kids who are so smart they just decide they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. While the conduct disorder symptoms fit my son mostly - what didn't fit was the fact that he does care about others, he's actually very caring when he's not angry with someone. He can be super sensitive, sweet and gentle - even protective of his little brother.

Dad is also gifted, as is uncle, grandfather and great uncles (two of them). Brother is mildly gifted and twice gifted. Younger brother (5) appears to be in the super high range like my middle son (the one I'm discussing).

I have put him in dance and that's the only off-limits behavior tie I have. This past weekend he spent 1.5 days in the house with nothing to do because I told him "no playing until you catch up your work". So finally Sat. nite he does 4 days of math work in 1 hour, then Sun am he does 2 days of comprehension in 10 minutes and finally earned the right to go play. Talk about banging your head on a wall!!!

What do I do with this kid? Middle school is 6th grade here (next year) and if he acts like this he'll fail. Last year it was so bad they were talking about holding him back and the teacher said "no way - you can't hold this kid back". He was put in school early, he's already a year younger than everyone else in the class (he just turned 10 - most of the 5th graders here turn 11 during the year).

Any advice? And I love the post about the verbal leading down a path. I swear this kid could take any situation and verbally describe it in such a way as to make you go "wait, what really happened here?" My new saying? "I don't want to hear your explanation, stop talking". If I don't do that, he will talk for hours in circles.