he has ongoing psych appointments to help deal with perfectionism and learn to self-regulate his intense emotional reactions.
Hi TMJ,
Glad you hear that your son is good at bottling things up at school - that's a good thing, and that he is letting them out at home - that's a good thing too. If your son tends toward perfectionism already, and he's never been in an accademic environment, then it's really very important to find him an environment where he is reasonably challenged. Some kids have personalities where they don't take what goes on at school too seriously, and are more easy going. My son used to tell me that 'easy stuff was harder to do than hard stuff' because he would look at it 100 times and be sure that there was some trick to it. And that's from a kid who isn't perfectionistic!
There is also a range of giftedness. If your son really is MG (which is getting really hard to tell from this generation of IQ tests!) then school might be a 'good enough' fit with some enrichment on the side. About 80% of gifted kids are MG, so that leads some 'experts' to think that ALL gifted kids are MG. That can cause problems.
One really can't rely on the 'local experts' in unusually gifted kids, because few experts really see enough gifted kids to have seen a lot of highly or profoundly gifted kids. A classroom teacher might teach one child at the 1/1000 level in her lifetime, and how easy is it to blame that one child for whatever difficulties arise? Very easy indeed.
Best Wishes,
Grinity
