Gratified,
We don't put up with the tantrums either. Unfortunately our son has a dad who was an ex-drill instructor (DI) and I have restrained going Army on him becuase he is very sensitive and he is only 5 but a lack of respect and a lack of integrity are 2 things I really don't put up with and he knows it.
He was in a chess club for a bit but did not like the trash talk he got from the older kids when he played them so he is on a self-imposed sabbatical from that.
He was in Tai-Kwon-Do and racked up a few belts in a short amount of time but the school would not let him advance to the adult classes becuase of his age (4 @ that time) and size. He does soccer on the weekend and is good at it and he has fun which is most important.
I know what you mean about the asynchronicity and we will just help him the best we can. I work with the teachers to coordinate our efforts to show a united front both at school and at home. He has learned to be very manipulative.
The grade advancement was based on his ability to pass the qualifying exams for the grade set by the school not by advice or waivers.
Our son has to earn the grade and it has to be all subjects just like the other kids have to. Our son seems to excel at everything thrown at him (science, math, reading, spelling, history, geography) except for writing (stories, paragraphs, essays, etc ..).
His lack of real life experience seems to bite him in this subject, but we work with him on his weekly writing assignments and the teachers do take into account his age in this subject. They are impressed with his handwriting and his mastery of sentence structure, grammar and punctuation.
As for your last piece of advice. He will be getting his own iTouch with audio books on various subjects so he can listen to what moves him at the time. We are building his own library based on his interests and I am a bit of a PG myself (I tested 144 @ age 11) so I can hold my own when he has his questions although I am more of history, geo-politics, economics and constitutional theorist myself then the hard sciences and math guy but I have taken 2 years of physics and 4 years of college math.
