Gifted teen, lazy as hell, would like teacher advise on how to push him

[TheSunIsStillShining]

1. 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.

1. 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.

Not UN, university!

Can I recommend a book called "He's Not Lazy" by Adam Price? We had a similar problem with our son and I found it really helpful. The premise is that talented boys often "opt out" and underperform as a reaction to pressure- fear of failure (especially for boys who have been told all their lives that they are clever and should be doing well, for whom failure can seem almost an existential threat) can manifest in a boy simply avoiding work. It's the equivalent of the obsessive perfectionism and liability to burn out that teenage girls sometimes develop in similar circs.

Reading the book and acting on its suggestions does require a leap of faith- even the title is a challenge- and it's natural to fear that letting the pressure off will lead to even less work being done, but in the long term your son needs to develop his own work ethic.

Hmm, I have many thoughts, but must work now.
But I understand what this is like- from both sides, so will post later.
It doesn't sound as though his school is much cop though!

I agree with the thought of getting him into a highly selective 6th form; if you start investigating this with him now, a potential school might help fire his imagination as to other things he could be doing between now and then.

It can be hard for some gifted students not to have a peer group; I didn't (extremely gifted, my life has gone all sorts of sideways so I absolutely understand where the OP is coming from), DD doesn't (gifted), DS (also extremely gifted) actually does for which I am incredibly grateful. If you can "find your tribe" it can help with motivation as ideas bounce back and forth and you stimulate each other.

Unfortunately, doing consistently well in all GCSEs requires more exam technique and practice than knowledge and mastery. Enrichment needs to be done around this and in many ways separately. My daughter wished, after she got her (excellent) results, that she had had the option to do physics GCSE early - she didn't think she'd learnt very much more after year 8, and is not continuing with sciences. Her GCSE year wore her down a lot. My son's school emphasises the top groups needing to aim for a flat profile - equally high achievement across all subjects, but are very good at enrichment.

Lots of good ideas have already been suggested. Depending on his interests I would also suggest looking at the maths challenge website and trying the intermediate olympiad past papers then the BMO1. The national ciper challenge has recently started, he'd have to catch up but my youngest has learnt loads doing it. I think there's another similar competition later in the year from somewhere else. Look at the informatics olympiad if he really likes coding. With his music, does he write his own stuff? If he loves writing, challenge him to write a novel?

Finally, something I heard somewhere years ago that has always stuck with me. Learning is like a pyramid. The broader the base, the higher the peak that can be reached. So encourage your son to branch out, investigate stuff, take charge of his own learning.

Hey ho, back to struggling with my own work ethic and procrastination ....

Your DS needs to do his research. My DD thought she wanted to go to university in the USA. She went with DH to a Fulbright fair in London to investigate. Most of the courses were nowhere near the level of UK university courses. She then did work experience at a company in Manchester, working in a lab. The staff had come from a variety of science backgrounds and told her in no uncertain terms that a US degree was a poor choice. She would be better off getting her first degree in the UK and if she still wanted the experience, to go to the US for further study. She is now in her final year at Cambridge.

BTW MIT is not in California - it's in Massachusetts, on completely the other side of the USA!

I completely agree with a pp - let him get a job* The only way to develop work ethic is to understand what work can actually achieve, whether that's the privilege of university (and it is a privilege, which is something we too often forget. Appreciate fees don't help with this) or fulfilling, stretching employment. At the moment life is easy because work is easy. Dropping him into another type of work is the best way to shake this up.

*I know this is easier said than done in Covid times.

For very able students GCSEs can suck the joy out of their learning. It certainly did with my DS. Why not have a look at the John Locke Institute (academics from Oxford and Harvard if my memory serves me right) as they have essay competitions each year and able students can apply for places on their summer courses. My DS took part in France a few years back and it was wonderfully enriching. He did philosophy, economics, history and politics with people from all over the world. At 15 he is the perfect age to start looking seriously at this kind of enrichment.

My child dropped a particular subject at gcse because the school and the teacher destroyed it.
Child is a now a very successful professional in that subject.
Schools can really take the joy out of learning.

Four years at MIT or Stamford with three round trip flights per year and no financial aid would be over $300,000 total.
Have you considered the IB after GSCEs instead of Alevels? It involves a lot of research and extension work.

Which year is he?

Thanks everyone for the comments/ideas.
He is now 5th form/y10.
He is in one of the most academically elite schools in the country :) at least according to all league tables, themselves, past pupils... I'm not so sure about it. It is a very good school, but i would have expected more personalization and generally more flexibility from them.

RE: olypmiad. the school regularly makes all kids do it and he got into the second round with 3 others, but his form tutor forgot to tell him. We found out a year later. Just as with the Bebras challenge where he was 2nd in school. :( Thankfully we have don't have that teacher for him any more.... But it did diminish all his motivation to take part in these...

IB is not an option through school, but I'll take a look at private.

MIT/Stanford: we have already said that he will need a scholarship :) Not thinking about finances as of yet. We'll burn that bridge when we get there.

@Malbecfan I know, but Stanford is in Calif.
For applied physics both MIT/S. are among the top though. Again, it's far away.

@HalfSiblingsMadeContact
"It can be hard for some gifted students not to have a peer group; I didn't (extremely gifted, my life has gone all sorts of sideways"
I could have written that sentence :) I'm not unhappy with all the sideways, but it could have been much better with the proper support and opportunities.

@motherstongue
Do you know their prices? Couldn't find it at first glance
Cambridge uni has something similar, but it about 5k for a week if I remember correctly.

He might do better at a good 6th form college. An academic one that encourages lots of enrichment and extra curricular stuff. They tend to be much better for bright kids, especially the mature ones.

I've realised in the last decade that my problem was not so much that I hadn't learnt to work, but that I hadn't learnt to learn. I simply didn't have the experience of (not being able to do something)-(working at it)-(being able to do it). My music got a bit better when I did some practice. My project work didn't get better. I didn't remember being unable to read (I just remembered that the first chapter or so of Heidi was a bit vaguer in my head than the rest).

I spent a lot of time during my A-levels sitting in my room in tears because I hadn't been able to answer the maths question the moment I read it. (Despite always being able to answer it eventually, I didn't improve at this. In fact I recall one occasion in my third year at university when I called the boyfriend in tears... Possibly a bit more stupid than anyone realised )

It's not the ideal time to be thinking of this sort of thing, but I think taking up karate was very good for both me and high-achieving S1. I now have concrete things I can point to that I genuinely couldn't do when I began.

Re John Locke Summer School.

I wouldn’t know how much it would be for summer school now, my DS attended about 5 years ago and the cost was £3500. He was offered a bursary/scholarship but he raised half the money by having a quiz night locally and doing other fund raising and we paid the remainder so that the bursary money could be used for the benefit of someone else not quite so fortunate. He really wanted to attend so he was quite motivated to raise the money. He loved the whole experience.

@merryhouse I have never met anyone else who has read Heidi :) I loved it as a kid.
Sword fighting and fencing are lined up when it'll be safe. Albeit fencing could easily be safe now if done correctly :)

@motherstongue Thanks! Just so I have a vague idea of the cost. Fundraising is something that we will never do. Firstly because we are all introverts and secondly we come from another country where this is not a thing and wouldn't know where to start. And without a circle of friends there is really nowhere to start but with strangers. Which takes us back to point 1. Yeah, not happening....

But I have to say the first thing that came to my mind reading it was wow, congrats!

In addition to coursera, I would have a look at EdX , the platform that host the MIT www.edx.org/school/mitx

Many of the EdX courses have the typical MOOC format, but I did several from Harvard that were a real course filmed during a semester. One of the courses I did on computer science (CS50) had several lesson taught by a uni professor who was 16 years old!

Even outside the MOOCs platforms, many major universities offer open courses, such as Yale oyc.yale.edu/courses , again a full semester of tuition filmed.

It is also worth mentioning that the Khan academy www.khanacademy.org courses go beyond high school.

I am a translator for Coursera and Khan. Maybe your son would be interested into translating some material or videos. DS1 and DD translate TED talks. The translators community is quite vibrant and full of immensely intelligent people. We always welcome new additions.

I teach IB. I love it as a program but it isn't as I intellectually rigorous as A Levels. If he does IB, I would advise Advanced Placement courses in addition.