Thanks Lorel and Kriston for your thoughts.
I know what you mean, Kriston, about the annoying homework assignments that need to be done and I do suspect that some of my hovering come from those--we argue a bit about them. I had plenty of those assignmentss as a gifted kid, myself, and I dealt with them by getting them over as quickly as possible. It makes me nuts to watch him dilly dally when he could have finished it and be playing by now! and what starts out as encouragement turns into hovering because I have trouble relaxing until it is done. I see what you are saying--if the assingments were better suited to DS (which they would be if I assigned them), he might "require" less hovering.
And, Lorel, I agree that kids that are a bad fit for the school system (like your 2e's) get plenty of opportunities to struggle. They really don't need a school that is setting them up to fail by not meeting any of their needs. There is a cavernous difference between struggling then eventually succeeding and just plain failing.
I'll give you guys an example of something that just happened this weekend, though, as something that the school did for me. I really appreciated getting to watch DS handle this one on his own. DS12 had a hefty assignment for his high school math class that was due this morning. DS proudly announced on Saturday that he had gotten it done. I cheered. Then last night about 10 (bedtime) he remembered that he had to forgotten to do another part of the assignment. "Oops, I said, that's too bad. I'm tuckered out so I'm just going to go to bed and let you deal with that. I'll see you in the morning." I think it took him about half an hour more to finish the assignment and he got himself to bed. He had a little trouble getting up this morning, but he did it. The great thing for me was that since the assigner was a third party, DS didn't see any point in negotiating with me (he is a great negotiator, often with great points and I find it hard to shut that down when I need to)so he didn't waste any breath on me and just got to work. Also, since I didn't assign it, I couldn't monitor how much was done. I didn't check on Saturday to see if he was *really* done, since I didn't know what "done" was. If I had had the power to change this situation, I might have caved and told him that he could just have done it in the morning, but since it was all out of my control, DS just got to work and I went to bed. Had I had any power, we might still be discussing (arguing) this. I'm glad to share this aspect of parenting with someone else.
