Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Does your child's academic enthusiasm fluctuate?

There's always a reason to hope, but the school system did snuff your son's enthusiasm a lot.

If speaking with the new teacher and telling him/her of your son's experience with second grade, perhaps you can invite her to help you troubleshoot this year before too much time passes. If she's willing to listen to your concerns, you might get somewhere.

If not, is it possible for you to afterschool your son-do special projects with him after dinner or on weekends? I hope this doesn't prove to become more difficult as time goes on, but my daughter is going into second grade now and I always watch for signs that her enthusiasm will atrophy.

My daughter's first grade teacher was wonderful and did differentiate some of the instruction. But not enough. The higher reading group was working on 2nd grade level work, but she was reading at a 5th grade level and she was asking me for multiplication at home even though they were only working on simple addition at school. I asked dd if she wanted me to talk with the teacher about finding more challenging work for her to do, but she said no, she'd rather do more exciting work at home. So we did. We worked on multiplication, we did science experiments and she did online quizzes about her favorite book series Harry Potter.

I'm highly curious as to how this year will go for dd, and I will be looking for any drops in enthusiasm and try to remedy them as early as possible.