- I need some practical advice and ideas on how to push my son to do better. He has ideas and plans, but he is as lazy as any normal teen. + added complication: because he is so bright he had never had to work for anything in terms of learning. Now he actually admits this and wants to build up a work ethic.** We need to build that. I don't want to break him by pushing too far, so asking advice from experience teachers on what works or not.
- would need pro/con mostly from teachers on why you would or wouldn't push a gifted kid to do gcse/a-levels a year or 2 earlier if they were clearly capable of doing so.
Background (knowing myself it'll be long, sorry in advance)
I have a profoundly gifted 15 year old boy who is charming, lovely and an ass at the same time. So typical teenager in almost every way. No emotional barriers or developmental issues ever. We are a normal (i think) highly educated middle class family. Both me and my husband have multiple uni degrees in various subjects, but we are no brain surgeons (civil engineer and humanities subjects), so nothing extra here either.
Our kid is profoundly gifted in terms of academic stuff. He gets concepts sometimes before you finish the explanation and then can apply them as needed. He lost 1 mark on his mensa* test.
Because we believe that being very bright is a potential and not something that gives you a free pass, we have never put him on a pedestal or anything like that, he doesn't even consider himself to be way too bright. He sees that he is quicker than most, but doesn't really care. Doesn't see his talents.
He is in a private school where they say they are ahead about a 1 year of state schools. I have no way to verify as I have no other kid to use as a control group, but it doesn't seem like it
He is not attending school atm due to covid, but he is keeping up with the class and has his place.
My dilemma is that more and more it comes up in conversations with him that he is questioning the pace that they are at and is asking me if he could go faster and to help him. Until now they never saw the textbooks, got handouts for each part they were being taught. But now we had to buy all and he sees how slowly they are progressing. And as he has no irl interactions/distractions feels that it's very snail pace.
For obvious reasons he will not be sitting gcses in 2021, but he wants to work towards them as if he was. The issue might be though, that if he does that, what will he do next year in school?
Pls. don't suggest to talk to the school as we have had so many conversations about this with them. Their main argument is that they are not pushing him up one year group is because their syllabus is about enrichment. Imo it's bs. I think they should be pushing him to breaking point and not giving 80% on an essay where he even steers away from the actual task. I said that he will be lucky if he gets 50%, but what do i know...
I'm from another country, totally diff educational system where this would be treated very differently.
*yes, i know it's just one facet, don't want to over emphasize. He did it because he wanted to then totally dissed the invitation to join them :)
And it doesn't help that whenever/wherever I want to ask about this I get hit with the stealth boast comments. Being very bright or having a kid who genuinely is can actually be a pain in the arse when it comes to talking anything kid related almost.
**we want to support him as we fully agree. But we were the same and until uni neither of us had to actually study, ever. Meaning that we learnt the very hard way by flunking a semester each. So can only help him with grown up tips and not teenage things.