When you have nothing constructive to focus on, you obsess about the details.
DS12 says that when stuff is too easy, he gets all nervous - looking for tricky details. He just plain couldn't accept that this stuff he was given was easy and leave it at that.
I am so grateful that nowadays he studies a bit, gets lots of scores in the high 90%s and does almost all his homework during study hall. With his gradeskip and early birthday, he is facing the same challenges as a MG kid - Yippee! He will be getting a report card soon where I expect him to have a 94 average across all his subjects! Wow! I expect that with challenging summer programs and weekend enrichment, he'll be fine until next year when the 'honors classes' start.
If there is a continum from shamingly easy to easy to interesting and occasionally challenging to a definitle challenge to just plain too much, then DS is in the happy part of the road. And I see that he is excited by the feedback of his grades, but still has a 'clunker' now and again that he has to 'make up for' later. I'm going into all this detail as a contrast to the 'shamingly easy' work that sends the unintended message that 'you are drifting in outerspace - without any guidance.'
I don't know if kids are competitive by nature, but I was amazed at the level of detail and interest that DS and his friends put into classifing the various relative strengths of all the kids at school. Almost like the early biologist discovering and classifing the natural world. I think that what Gifties of all ages most lack is 'Reference.' The best I could do growing up was to compare myself to characters in books - and guess what? I never seemed as good/strong/ smart as those girls. Trying was glorious, but also confusing. The work we are given at school is like a probe into our unknown selves. If the work is way below readiness level, it doesn't give very good information.
Love and More Love,
Grinity
