One writer about gifted said that some gifted children were more 'accelerative' in their gifts and some were more 'enrichmentive' in their gifts. My DH was subject accelerated and always seems to be happy to learn whatever is put in front of him, very able to harness his 'seat powers' to whatever task he deems nescessary to be accomplished. I'd call this the 'accelerative' example.
By contrast, I really need to be emotionally involved in a subject to reach my highest level of learning, and harness what little 'seat power' I have. And once I get interested in a subject, my interest seems to multiply as my mastery increases. I'd call that an 'enrichmentive' example. Not to say that I couldn't have used some acceleration in the early grades - I wish I had had that opportunity - or that I think people fit neatly into catagories - but I thought that the metaphore was a good explaination of how two people, DH and I could both be so smart and yet look so stupid to each other. What one does as easily as breathing, the other finds quite difficult...
So EandCmom, if DS really needs the emotional investment, look for bridges between what he must learn for other people's needs, and what makes his heart sing. Also, I think being able to compose one's thoughts, spell and handwrite AND do capitalization and punctuation is a lot for anyone to do 'on the fly.' I was really pleased that my son's school put such an enphasis on writing as a process in the early years. Brainstorm, Outline, Rough Draft, Edit, Final Draft, KWIM?
Grinity
