Reply to School for child who is selectively highly motivated

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "School for child who is selectively highly motivated "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]OP, I have two kids with these tendencies. They are both high IQ and ADHD. The first is also very intense, highly sensitive, and naturally very intellectually curious. He was actually pretty happy in Montessori--where his hyper focus had many positive outlets--but it led to a very uneven educational development. His strengths became even stronger and and his weaknesses even weaker. We switched him to public and he did pretty well--well, he did well academically, got in advanced groups, etc, but was extremely unhappy, became highly stressed, and even depressed. I have ended up homeschooling him. He is now in 6th, very happy and social, totally fine in weaker academic areas (with a little bit of dedicated attention), and very advanced in his preferred areas just because he has so much time to read and explore interests. Homeschooling is amazing for a self-starter!

My second is a total people-pleaser (just like I was in retrospect). He likes school, is in gifted classes in his areas of interest and produces mediocre work in others. He comes out as "average," which is not the case--in fact he is incredibly bright and quite impaired attention-wise--but that's what this kind of kid looks like in school. (Actually, like another PP, I did very well because I was more of a people pleaser until I had to write my dissertation...) I think staying in school has been positive for my younger son: he has learned very important skills. Discipline, self-control, organization. He has to accept that tedium is a part of the day and that he has to control the urge to walk around and talk all the time. He has had to adapt to his environment. He is learning--maybe not as much as he could, maybe not to his potential, but he is learning. And he is happy.

We have made two very different choices with our two boys and so far, I think they have both been the right ones. In my view, these situations are very child dependent and become much more obvious as the children get older. I saw soooo many wiggly k-ers, grow up and out of it. That was clearly not the case with mine. Even when they can control their hyperactivity and their impulses, regulating their attention gets harder and harder.
 [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics