Indigo....I love the cheetah article, thanks! We are definitely still looking for his antelope, though I fear sometimes we are looking in all the wrong places. His passion and strengths definitely lie in the realm of history, just need to get the other areas caught up so he can explore further--there is only so far he can go with someone else reading to him.
So glad you like the cheetah metaphor, I enjoy sharing that link.
Agreed, any issues need to be addressed. Meanwhile there are many books by experts encouraging ways in which parents can focus on strengths. Being aware of one's own strengths, enjoying them, forming a part of one's identity based on them, feeling a sense of affirmation for one's strengths, being motivated to pursue areas of strength and interest... are things which a child will leverage to pull himself or herself through.
To indulge a non-reader's love of history, you may wish to look into DK books (Dorling-Kindersley). They are richly illustrated, often with tools and artifacts of a time period. One can learn a lot from the fascinating pictures and this may keep him well occupied when adults are not available to read to him. He may wish to mark pages with tiny sticky notes to indicate things he has questions about or would like to discuss. This may help him hold his thoughts until an adult is free to help read the captions or text.
