Thanks, Kriston.
He does have deschooling written all over him.

I guess I'm afraid if I let him out of the stable he'll... never come back. I think he could play for a long long time before it ever occurred to him that he'd like to do some "work." Like, forever.

Or... maybe after a few months he would come to it on his own, with inner motivation. It just feels like a huge gamble.

By the way I don't do afterschooling with him at all. I read about some of your kids coming home from school needing MORE, and I am amazed. But some days I keep him home from school, just because he hates it so much and the weather is nice and I want to experiment with keeping him home, and it's usually a disaster-- at some point in the day we both wind up crying. I'm afraid our relation has just become completely dysfunctional.

I think I should really just let him coast through the rest of the school year.