Hi Raddy:

I think sometimes teachers do tend to roll their eyes when parents use the gifted label. I think if you go in talking about WHAT your son is doing, rather than what category he fits in, you may have some success. I think also that teachers are more responsive to hearing about how a situation is affecting a child's emotions.

I'm pasting below something I wrote as advice to someone else a while back. It's what I told my son's teacher last year when asking for him to be challenged in class. For the first time ever, in four years of asking, the teacher responded by trying to tailor lessons and material for him so that he was challenged.

Here's what I said:

My child is a really fast learner. He gets frustrated when classes spend too long going over the same information. He comes home really excited any day he learns something new. He comes home depressed on days when he hasn't learned anything new. My child has an amazing memory and thirst for knowledge, so he wants to learn a lot of detail about any subject you are covering. For example, he thought ____book about chemistry was really boring because it had so few facts. He really liked ____ book about chemistry because it provided more facts and interesting things to think about. He has gotten so frustrated about not getting called on that he doesn't bother to try to raise his hand and answer questions any more.

So, you've talked about his needs without using the dreaded "g" word that seems so off-putting to a number of teachers.

I am wondering, with the poor fine motor skills, if your son also has problems doing what I call "tracking" --- following a long line of text across the page, without slipping accidentally to another line, or keeping columns straight when adding. This could affect his interest in reading and doing math. I think it would be worth mentioning to the teacher when you ask for an evaluation. There are tests that look for these kinds of issues, I believe.

As far as reading, my son really took off reading with the Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey. They are totally silly, and there are just a few lines of text per picture, so it was easy for him to follow the line across the page. Perhaps your son needs that sort of spare text to get into reading? Now that DS is 8, he's really enjoyed books of the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. Your son might enjoy thinking about some of the philosophical ideas that come up in them, yet there are usually just one or two lines of text per box. At our house, they've been the source of endless conversations!

Also, my son has an interest in math concepts, but NOT math drilling. He does really love a television cartoon program called Cyberchase that shows mathematical ideas and problem solving. The shows come from our public broadcasting network. You should be able to find out whether you can buy them by going to www.pbskids.org. They are entertaining enough that your son will just think they are another set of videos.

Good luck,

bk