Granted, I can kind of be a laissez-faire parent, but I don't really understand the concern here. Kriston, or anyone, if your son is gifted, to the point of being accepted into DYS, is ahead of age/grade mates already in math, doesn't want or like to do math right now, and you are homeschooling so there is no need to be concerned about standardized testing or acceptance into academic programs, then.. why do math at all? Isn't the major benefit of homeschooling the ability to follow your child's lead?
Well, because I don't think that it's *math* he dislikes; I think it's *my approach to math* that he has disliked. He's fascinated by engineering principles and has always had a mind for patterns and mazes that astounds me. Dropping math altogether doesn't seem like it solves anything, and may in fact mean we'd be missing some opportunities.
An entirely new approach, however, may be just the thing to light his fire again, a fire that he's always had until he hit school age and workbooks--either the public school's workbooks or mine.
I can always back off if it looks like that's what's needed. I can appreciate some deschooling time as much as any homeschooler. But before I just give up and hope that he comes to math on his own, I'd rather try to SOLVE the problem, a problem that I feel is mine, not his.
Does that make sense?
He's also a lot less far ahead in math than he is in his other subjects. He's reading at the 7th+ grade level, but he's only doing 3rd grade math. I have no trouble with asynchronous development, but I think this has less to do with his abilities and more to do with my teaching. I feel like I'm letting him down, and this offers a different way to give him what he needs. It seems worth a try.
And BTW, geometry, which I've approached in a far more conceptual and far less arithmeticky manner than our previous math work led us to, has been pretty successful. He's having fun with it. Geometry is one of my data points suggesting going for higher-level, conceptual math rather than arithmetic is going to work better with him.
