My son is verbally gifted but has sensory issues, dyspraxia, dysgraphia and low muscle tone which causes him to lack endurance. He will have to start wearing a very uncomfortable brace soon which will be a challenge with his sensory issues. He also gets migraine headaches any time the weather changes. We seem to always be working around pain or fatigue. We have to take a lot of breaks throughout the day. He is also going through puberty and a big growth spurt and occasionally has mood swings. We homeschool and we manage to work around a lot of this, but it can be challenging.
He tells me that he thinks math is tedious, especially when there is a lot of writing involved. He always got math concepts easily and the month he turned 7 he was tested at a 4th grade level and I think it was because he could do a lot of the math mentally after playing online math games and reading a math dictionary that I bought for me because I was afraid I had forgotten how to do some of the math he needed to learn. As he has gotten older, he has had to write more and the dysgraphia and dyspraxia slows him down. I made a list of all the difficulties he has because of his disability and it is no wonder he would rather do anything to get out of doing math. We have to do it first thing in the morning and his Life of Fred books make it a little more fun. He likes for me to sit next to him sometimes so he can tell me what he is doing and watch him as he does it. His dog usually sits on the other side so he can pet her when he is thinking or needs a break from thinking. Sometimes he will go on to the next chapter without me telling him to do it. That never happened before. So my advice would be to try Life of Fred.
Another thing we do is look for video or computer games to go along with whatever he is studying. We watch shows like Cash Cab and other general knowledge trivia type game shows together. If he doesn't know something, he looks it up. We also watch the history and science channels together, read classic books together, learn together and try to have as much fun as we can without letting the disability get in our way.
