I'm not even sure what my concerns are, just sort of an uneasy feeling that i'm not doing things right.
DS7 has been homeschooling since October and by most peoples accounts he has done well. My concern comes from the fact that I don't seem to be able to challenge him. He goes through his lessons at warp speed, then asks what's next. He's completed 5 sections of Aleks since we started, 2 full years of language arts etc. Whatever I put in front of him, he just seems to get. He does his work each day without excitement or complaint, he just does it and moves on. It's kind of strange but some days I feel like I'm feeding a hard drive.
I've tried to "go wide" in adding several things that the average kid would never see. A good example is that I received in the mail on Tuesday a new curriculum on finance. I thought that it would carry us for a few months at least. When I sat down with him yesterday to introduce the subject I found that he'd already read half the book. He had the right answer for all of the questions I asked. I just sat there thinking "now what?" and let him move on to something else.
You would swear in watching him work that he's "pencil whipping" because of the ease with which he does everything. But when asked to test or simply questioned, he knows the answers. One of the strangest things is that when asked to define a word that he was given several weeks prior, he repeats verbatim what the dictionary said. He freaks me out more than a little.
On the opposite side of all of this is a 7 yo who is emotionally very immature, total perfectionist and spoiled rotten. He still throws amazing tantrums when something defies "his" sense of justice. So the emotions are there, how come they never show up while we're working?
Is there such a thing as a child who never seems to be challenged? One who just goes to it, no matter what and never lets on that something is too hard? What am I going to do a year from now when I've run out of subjects and ideas? I feel very inadequate and unprepared.....
