What makes this tricky is it is very similar to the behavior of a close family member and it is not a path I'm keen for him to follow.
This makes it so tough. The trick is to use it as a warning but not a self-fufilling prophecy. Lots of journaling or other venting or prayer or meditation or whatever you do on this one to see the two situations as related by separate. The last thing you want is to leak anxiousness in your son's direction.
The options seem to be either I am aiming too low and he is taking that a vote of no confidence or too high and he really can't do what I want him to do. Or both in some weird way
I don't think that it's at all unusual for a 4 year old to go underground. Those do seem to be the options, and the good news is that you can at least shift your aim. Prepare yourself for some temper tantrums - the sound of stuck behavior becoming unstuck.
If you see him do higher level stuff, then he can, at least at times, do it. I think it's normal for the abilities to sort of 'come and go' for some 4s. Take whatever energy you can out of disbelieving yourself - not easy to do when we've gotten little besides that from the world. Keep a homeschooling Log, just to put your unconscious on notice that you are paying more attention to reality now and less to preconceived ideas.
See if you can find a conference to attend - if you are in the NorthEast, there is one coming up April 30-May 1 It takes a village, and that may be what he is waiting for.
Similarly, can you hire a high school kid from the honors classes to feed him ideas from their school. Someone who doesn't know better? What about playing chess with DS? Remember that Middle School Science and History Texts are great jumping off points.
And - if you haven't tried 'Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook' by Block/Glasser, that's another way to handle the interactions between you and DS4 to be sure you are doing what you can to encourage his greatness.
Is DS more of a precocious skills learner or precocious abstract thinker kind of kid? What were you planning for Kindy?
Love and More Love,
Grinity
