I think he is challenged enough in school this year. He's switched to a private school so the curriculum is a bit different and he finds a lot of the new stuff (particularly religious history) interesting.
Also, it's not that he's not following class rules or that he's disrupting anyone, just that he takes forever to complete anything in school or for homework. He's not chatty (actually is quite shy and introverted, although he is making new friends) and does remain seated when he's supposed to and otherwise behaves.
I don't know if this matters or not, but in 2nd through 4th grade when he took the state's annual assessments he took the average amount of time, or slightly less, to finish the test and performed average. Last spring he took way longer than the rest of his class to take the assessments and jumped three grade levels in reading (to 8th grade level, when he was in 5th) and up something like 15%age points in math.
I told his teacher today that he does tend to do better on tests when he has more time, but this really isn't the issue. It's that he takes so darn long to so schoolwork and homework and makes so many dumb mistakes because he is constantly getting distracted. I swear, when I check his homework, I can tell exactly where in each problem he got distracted.
Thanks for all your great thoughts so far. I'm really curious how common it is for kids to gets so distracted, but without hyperactivity. I'm also curious about any diagnoses and anything that can be done to get him to focus.
