Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Realizing that my son is gifted

Hi there, I'm new to this forum. I have a 4 1/2 year old who has autism and ADHD. I realized early on that he is intelligent, but I wasn't really grasping the kind of child that I'm dealing with here. He started reading shortly after his second birthday, but I just sort of regarded this as some kind of phenomenon that is related to his autism. After that he began becoming obsessed with the human body, and he would memorize fairly complex details of how various systems within it work. Again, I was still sort of chalking this up to autism, and focusing more on therapy and issues that we were trying to work through. I did note that he was able to comprehend some first grade level math around age 3, but I thought that maybe it just wasn't very difficult in general. I didn't really have any concept of what other children his age understood. This all continued and intensified over the last year, and I still wasn't quite getting it. Then the "light bulb" moment happened for me at his annual therapy meeting when his teacher explained to us that he not only scored in the "very advanced" range on his school readiness test, but he also got the highest score that she has ever seen. The next day, his Kindergarten curriculum arrived in the mail. (I've been planning to homeschool him for quite some time, for various reasons.) Looking at this curriculum is making me very nervous. I'm pretty sure he learned some of this material before he could even talk. I would just skip it entirely, but his writing/cutting/related skills are at the Kindergarten level, and he still has a short attention span when he's not hyper focusing on something of interest. Does anyone have any advice on how I should plan to go about our first year homeschooling?

Also, my son has always had fairly intense behavioral problems in the area of non-compliance. Basically, he's always been very self directed and intense. He is constantly in something that he's not allowed to play with, opening a window when it's cold out, getting water all over the bathroom, playing with the lamps, taking everything apart that he can get his hands on (he took his chair apart while sitting in time out!). He has never really been interested in toys, and when he does play with them, he uses them for something other than their intended purpose. It's been really exhausting to try to keep up with, because most of the things that he does are not harmless. Many of them destroy our property, or are just plain annoying due to noise or messes. I'm realizing now, more than ever, that he's probably just BORED out of his mind. I have tried to find things to stimulate him, but most are some combination of being too expensive and too mature for him. When I do find something, he obsesses over it and grows tired of it within hours/days and then we're back where we started. I just don't even know what to do with him, to be honest. I feel so incompetent when it comes to raising him. Has anyone been through this? Does anyone know what I can do?

Also, is there anything else that you feel I should know? I think I'm feeling more nervous than anything at this time. There are really not a lot of resources out there to help me, and I haven't come across any professionals that I feel really have any true understanding of my son (we've worked with MANY) - not to suggest that I fully understand him either.

Thank you

Welcome to the forum! I would not get too attached to your new kindergarten curriculum. Yes, you will need to help your son learn certain kinder skills (like cutting and writing), but he will most likely be bored with the more academic stuff.

I would instead continue to follow his lead in what he wants to learn. When he expresses an interest in X, look for videos, books, museums about the subject. You can try strewing; basically, leaving books or items around the house to be discovered.

My 10yo son is also very intense and self-directed; he's been homeschooling since 3rd grade. I have generally had little success with most formal curricula with him, and I know a curriculum-in-a-box would be a huge fail (he is advanced in math, science, and reading, behind in writing). He loves to learn (what he's interested in) and hates to be taught. He watches a lot of videos, uses an enormous amount of duct tape and cardboard, and enjoys making messes. He has learned a lot this year, although mostly stuff that isn't on a typical 5th grade curriculum.

The beauty of homeschooling is that you can give him access to skills and content at every one of his levels. It is, of course, less intimidating to use a packaged curriculum during your first year of homeschooling, but you may want to be prepared to have a child working across a multi-grade span, which is pretty incompatible with most complete curricula. Up until we reach courses for which I might want to document high school credit, I've used a fairly stripped-down approach to homeschooling:

At the child's instructional levels, we do

1. math (may be scribed or done orally, as needed, to accommodate asynchrony between math and fine-motor skills),
2. handwriting (until manuscript fluency is achieved),
3. spelling (if needed), and
4. reading (until fluency is achieved).

History and science are treated as extensions of story time or free reading, and can be interest-led. For my upper elementary and middle-schoolers, we've integrated language arts (reading comprehension and written expression) into history and science.

Art, music, and movement are through fun experiences and child-led interests.

In your case, you have the added advantage that this is only kindergarten, which is likely not mandatory in your state or province, so you really don't have to complete any particular benchmarks for any particular subjects. Use or don't use any components of the curriculum that appeal to you and him. If you feel his fine motor skills need work, then let him enjoy fine motor activities. For the remaining academic skills, I agree that you can just keep following him. You may have to investigate some higher-level math curricula, though. (We used Singapore Math. Check around the Recommended Resources forum for other math suggestions.)

In most districts, he would be a very young kindergartner for this coming school year. Feel free to keep the "school day" very short (e.g., under an hour total), and broken up into tiny chunks. In fact, if his reading is developing on its own, spending five to ten minutes each on handwriting and math per day is probably perfectly adequate for structured learning. Unless, of course, he asks for more!

As to his behavior: if much of it really is driven by boredom, then it may be that he will find better channels for his energy once he has some intellectual challenge. You may find that, for example, once you start doing math with him, he blows through quite a lot of curriculum in a few months (especially at the beginning, when it is not clear what his actual level is, and you are only slowing for brief moments to fill in little gaps where he had no exposure to the skills). Once you reach his true instructional level, it may be that his desire for new learning will finally be met with something of substance.

Also, since he is reading, as his skills develop, he may find that some of his intellectual sensation-seeking and curiosity can be addressed through reading a wider range of content.