I'm starting to think there is a definite downside to raising him from birth to believe that it is good to challenge yourself.
Don't be too hard on yourself - I think this is the 'natural' kids are built to be. Or was that sarcasm? ((wink))
But do you think a lack of challenge at school could be responsible for him being like this ALL THE TIME?
I do think that 6 hours a day of forcing oneself to be 'well enough' behaved while there is absolutely nothing to learn at school could easily create a cranky child who is cranky all the time - even could cause the lack of interest in afterschooling.
One thing to try is to jump up a grade level with the afterschooling - very gifted kids sometimes 'leap ahead.'
I would encourage you to get IQ and achievement testing and to sign up this week. There may be more going on, but you have to at least work on getting the basics right. Talking with the teacher is a great idea. Passing along the information that your son ASKED for a gradeskip is important. (Even if you decide you won't allow one for other reasons, it gets the ball rolling.) It is entirely possible to do a gradeskip at this point, or any point of the year. I would consider requesting that he get subject accelerations - in addition to a full skip - so that he can learn math at the level he is demonstrating at home. Other people sometimes win agreements to homeschool math and let the kid go to the library during gradelevel math.
There really are kids who NEED to be in challenging academic environments to be happy. It could be your kid.
I think that perfectionist behavior such as being unable to accept criticism or try new endeavors that they aren't a garenteed immediate success in can be caused by many reasons, but a common reason is spending hours and hours at schools where the material is severely below the child's readiness to learn level. In a healthy situation, there will be a range of acceptable challenge, from 'too easy but I can deal with it' to 'easy in a fun way' to 'hard in a good way' to 'too hard, but I can deal with it' but if a child has been too underchallenged for too long, they start to act as though that acceptable challenge range collapses into a skinny line - everything is boringly easy or impossible.
At 9 my son went through a sort of 'mental puberty' with some moodiness and some 'us v them' feeling toward adults. He didn't admit to being factually wrong about anything until age 11. If you are worried - get help, but check the 'normal' gifted problems as well, unfortunately you can't automatically rely on the local helpers to be well versed in what is normal for gifted kids.
Love and more love,
Grinity
