Grinity, I read your response to eema:
My son also used to have the 'easily frustrated' issue - I call it the Goldilocks Dilemma - everything was 'too hard' or 'too easy' - it's tricky but progress can be made.
We're making progress, but I'd love to know you what you and others have done so that we can continue to learn from your experiences.
On our end, we gave DS a very thorough educational evaluation which pointed out where he needed help. Those areas of weakness have improved tremendously (he's now reading and writing, somewhat voluntarily). Still, the damage has been done. I'm wondering how to improve his motivation for the more routine schoolwork. For example, he hates workbooks. Turns out that last year in private school, he had 12 workbooks and that's all they did. This year, in public school, they give worksheets, and barely require any volume at all (a writing assignment in second grade might be one or two sentences, last year he had to write a page and a half). I thought I might interest him in a science workbook, but so far he's refused (despite his strong interest in the subject).
To get him to try anything that looks hard takes a lot of effort on my part. Yesterday, when he was home sick, we read the first couple of pages of Penrose the Mathematical Cat about the binary system. He has been asking me to read it to him. When I asked him to try to write some numbers, he clearly did not want to, and barely made an effort. Then, when I showed him how to line up the numbers and figure out the "code," he was writing our ages and street address in 1's and 0's and laughing.
I now see his biggest issue as the motivational factor. So please tell me, how do we get over the hump?
