Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Slacking?

I'd say that there's a role for both here... it's his nature to be interested in doing the things that interest him and eager to blow off the rest, but you can nurture him by helping him find ways to deal with doing the boring stuff. Because ultimately, we all find ourselves doing things we'd rather not be doing, so these coping mechanisms will be very important for him later in life.

I still have an mp3 player here at my desk for when things get really tedious. Also, I find myself coping for my procrastination professionally by setting myself deadlines. So if someone asks me to do something and there's no timetable for getting it done, I'll voluntarily promise that person they'll have it by a certain time. Having that deadline serves me as a motivation.

Home is a whole other world, though. Don't get my wife started on how long it took me to finish repainting my daughter's room.

Oh, I totally agree. Homework should not be done just for homework's sake. All of our homework is to extend the school day -- not to reinforce. For example, they move through their AoPS more quickly by assigning some work to do on that at home... and the quicker pace is better for him, so that's fine.

I think from your details it sounds like he simply didn't need all of the time given to do what was required and would rather pursue other stuff. I think that is fine, too. That happens sometimes and that is part of learning to make decisions about where to focus time. Also, sounds like the work is way too easy for him. So...if you want him to work more to his full potential, looks like you might have to have the teacher increase expectations in addition to finding a topic of interest.

I was talking more about research projects (research followed by MLA style reports) and the open-ended nature of those allows for whatever complexity a child is ready for. Also, we are very, very fortunate to have a teacher who gives the students a ton of choice -- they probably had 50 different possible projects to choose from for this block -- with the capper being - If you don't like any of these you can suggest your own. My son would not want to do a diorama either.

As for the "why" question. I got that all the time when he wasn't challenged enough. But we're grade accelerated one year and subject accelerated 3 or 4 more years on top and those questions have mostly stopped. It did come up a lot at the beginning of the year with Spanish, because he couldn't figure out a good reason for knowing Spanish.. but that was something we were able to give him with real reasons for why it would be good and he's now doing well enough at least to meet requirements for an A. Not necessarily doing his best, but good enough. He's not working hard at it, but that's okay, because he's working his butt off in other areas.

Good luck!

Well, he is grade accelerated and has a 3 yr subject acceleration for math. Nothing has ever been hard. For him "hard" means taking more than 5 minutes to do HW, then it's "OMG I have SOOOO much work to do!" that's why I worry. I don't know if an additional grade skip would help, then there would just be more work, no?

Does he do any programming (forgive my ignorance, I am not sure what Minecraft entails)? Maybe that would be a good thing to work into the projects in addition to the Minecraft?

Well I would like to add to this and maybe get some advice for a middle schooler. My DS is in 6th grade and no matter how much we have fought we have gotten nothing extra for him except the normal G&T program and a bit of accelerated work here and there since K. He is now in the Accelerated Math program in the Middle School but it still isn't enough - he thinks it is as he might have to "think" about a problem. But in his other classes he is so slack. He does just enough to get by and complains that I just want him to be perfect if I give him a hard time about not doing better. Plus his social life has taken over all of his thoughts (I'm sure everyone remembers middle school and not wanting to be smart anymore). I've already been through the experiences you all are talking about but this is a whole new level. ANY thoughts would help. We actually went to the Johns Hopkins CTY award ceremonies this weekend and they had two wonderful and inspiring speakers and I thought this might give him a little perspective. His teacher also attended and spoke to him for awhile to help with our concerns. However, it was all short lived . I can't take the fighting anymore as it is affecting our relationship.

Jules- that sounds so much like what I went through in MS & HS. I am so sorry. I know how painful it is for all involved.

I can give you a little insight into exactly what I was thinking when I was around that age -- though it may have absolutely nothing to do with what your son is going through.

I remember making a conscious decision to concentrate on the social stuff because I had felt lonely and isolated for too long and in my mind, being smart and doing well in school were mutually exclusive to being liked and having friends. I really believed it was one or the other and I decided to choose friends because I thought that there was no way I would have a happy life without friends. I was doing the best I knew how to do and trying to learn what I thought I needed to learn. I was also very focused on becoming independent from my parents. So their input had little sway.

Sorry, that is not a solution. But for me anyway, it was calculated and is was a lot of hard work to become socially "successful" and although I was aware I was not doing my best academically (and I had plenty of guilt about it) -- it was a choice, as a pre-teen and teen, that I felt I had to make.

I think mentors might have helped, and also, popular and high-achieving peers (in our school, the popular kids were the rebels who did not achieve -- but that of course went away in college). Exposure to a lot of social stuff outside of school (college talent groups, camps, etc) might have helped as well. My world was pretty small.

BTW, even though I gave my mother much grey hair, I eventually turned out okay.

Thank you Remalew for sharing your personal story - it is definitely my son . For so long I have been obsesessed with getting him the academics that he needs and deserves that I never really looked at how he was feeling about it. I'm just so sad to see him "waste" this wonderful gift that he has been given. I guess it's hard to explain this to an 11 year old who just wants to be friends with the right kids and to not be known as the "smart kid" - as he always has been (but never in a negative way). When we went to the CTY awards I think he looked around and thought I don't want to be one of these people as they seemed nerdy to him - and please I am not trying to offend anyone, I am just trying to relate what my son is feeling.

I think a mentor is an excellent idea and Remalew if you have an idea of what kind of mentor to find I will take any kind of advice. Also, how can I let him become independent while creating responsibility? The CTY awards were held at a College University and he thought it was one of the greatest places he had ever been to (it had an amazing baseball field). I told him he would need good grades to get in and he said no he wouldn't, he could just get in on baseball. For some reason his sense of reality is warped a lot of the time. But this might be a way to find some drive and passion - which is desperately missing.

I'm sure you turned out wonderfully and that your mother is more than proud of you. The few gray hairs that my DS and my 4 other children have given me are lovingly covered up by hair color . Thanks so much again.

If he likes baseball that much, perhaps a carefully chosen adult who also happened to be very successful academically to work on his baseball with him (and chat about how high school and college actually work -- I think you need to maintain a certain GPA to even play)? If he's worried about "cool" then yes, you will get pushback on anyone who's not considered cool. I think that some colleges even have baseball camps for kids his age -- maybe you could find something like that where academic success is a prerequisite?

Also, with my son, we have had far more success with very very smart male teachers. He doesn't bond the same with female teachers and if his teachers aren't perceived as smart by him (and there is a little jockeying on his part to "test" them)... things just don't go as well. I think if I had had a very smart and demanding female teacher...a go getter, who really pushed me, I would have responded better. They were too easy on me. Always. Too nurturing. They expected so little...

I think that age is very tough though because it's normal to stop looking to parents and start looking to peers. We will be there soon enough and I'm already dreading it.

Apparently, MS isn't only hard on the Middle Schooler -- it's hard on us parents too. I wish we could just skip over it altogether. Hopefully there are some people out there with some good advice!

I agree that in the MS years, the kids look less to parents and more to peers as their guides.

So... what are your options for placing him around high-achieving peers? If he's surrounded by the right people with the right attitude towards academics, there's an effect where they all push each other.

My son's favorite pastime at home is to build new maps for Halo, so when the literature teacher sent me an email that he was not putting forth his best effort, I let my son know that his time on X-Box would be directly tied to whether he brought his literature homework home for me to check. If he did an adequate job, he'd get more time on X-Box. If he "forgot" his homework at school or finished it at school and didn't bring it home, he'd have no time that day.

It's worked well. His work has improved dramatically and seemingly overnight.

So it might work for you to set aside 30 minutes that he needs to work on long-term projects that he hates to do. Once he's finished those 30 minutes and can show you what he's done, then he earns more time in Minecraft. Tie the things he hates to do to a reward that is valuable enough to suffer through it.

As adults, isn't that what we still do to get through things we don't want or like to do?