Hello, My son is gifted and often complains of 'not learning anything' at school. So far, we've not been able to get his school to consider our private testing and place him in the gifted program. Frankly, that may not help anyway, as I understand they're offering him the gifted work and he's still 'bored'. He's in 2nd and there is no gifted pull-out.

We have him in an online CTY class, and while he's enjoying it, it's not particularly stimulating to him overall. He likes to interact with people face-to-face.

I've reached out to a few folks in his particular area of interest (aerospace engineering and rocket science) and have not had much response/feedback regarding opportunities for him to audit a class, sit in on lectures, just bounce ideas off a professor, etc.

I'm wondering if sending in a formal letter, with perhaps a few videos of some of our sons work/discussions, would help. But, I'm not sure how to go about asking for mentors or enrichment opportunities without coming across like a pushover stage-mom who thinks their son is brilliant. Part of the reason we want mentors, is so that he can be told where and when he is wrong, or needs to do more research. Frankly, he talks over my head most of the time and I don't even understand half of what he says. I have no gage of whether he's correct or not 90% of the time.

Has anyone been able to get anything like this for their child, and if so, I'd love to know how you went about that process. We don't want him to attend college early or grade skip, but I do believe some mentors and outside enrichment could be beneficial.

Where,in general, do you live?

For aerospace engineering or rocket science, please check out where the closest NASA visitor center is and take your son to their weekend open houses. We go to our local one often and they have very interesting programs including access to their engineers who will answer questions and do demonstrations. They also have many resources for interested kids.

We are in GA. He just barely missed the DYS cutoff so we will re-apply and include a better portfolio toward the end of this school year.

Closest for us is Huntsville and we usually go twice a year. He's too young for space camp but we intend to send him once he's old enough.