I would suggest letting him dig deep into whatever activity he's in and not disturb the train of thought. If he has that kind of attention span, encourage it. Except for meals and bedtime. Need to eat and sleep.

I am all for the education necessary to do the job he wants, but unnecessary degrees mean more time and money sunk in school, less time working=less income. BTDT. If he needs a dual degree to do a particular job, fine, but I am personally advocate with my kids getting out and getting a job. But I will smile a bit at your posting. As i got three degrees and then went on to have kids. I joke that I use my degrees to change diapers. I'd have been way better off financially getting out after just one and working. But maybe in the long run you'll be right, and I will see some payoff from them.....

I'm not sure how much I'd worry about generalizing now, but he needs to focus when he gets to college because the behavior you're describing leads to changing majors every year and never graduating. One major, one minor, get a job, then if he wants to go back to school in 5 years, that's his choice. That would be where I'd put my foot down. If you really want to, you could ask him right now to choose one area each year to focus on "in depth." Maybe it's the instrument, maybe a sport, maybe a language (ie, get to the point where you're fluent in the language, or really good at the instrument, or proficient in a pick-up game of the sport or maybe you achieve a goal of running a 7 minute mile, or making 3/4 of your basketball shots or some concrete goal). Now, your observation that he doesn't finish projects (wow, that sounds like me as a kid)--for his own emotional well-being, I'd see if I could help him wrap some of them up. Help him get from point A to point Z and call a project "done" even if it isn't a great result. In the long run, he's got to be able to complete things, and often the process of getting from point A to Z is totally lacking. I don't mind books or movies that don't get finished (if they're not good enough to read cover to cover in one sitting, why waste your life? :), but finish designing the board game, summarize the project in an essay (what worked, what didn't, what should I do better next time), and call it done. Why did he set these projects aside? I personally look back on all my "plans" for some really awesome projects that never got done, and I feel really bad, but I ruminate over *why* I never got them done. I'm reading Getting Things Done by David Allen, and he suggests labeling each project with a next "Action" because without an action attached there's no concrete thing to do to Get It Done, and people avoid thinking about it. So, for the Board game, why did your son set it aside, and what would be the next action (or actions) to get it going again? Like "Need to sit down and draw pictures for the characters" or "Need to solve the problem that rolling double sixes gives too much of an advantage to a player." And then when he finishes that action, he needs to specify another "Next action" to keep it moving. That's one way to get from A->Z. Another way, would be to make a list of actions and time needed to finish and say "I'm going to do this one on Monday" so that there's a concrete time frame to move it forward. Then he can see how project management can move forward with a goal of finishing in multiple months.

If he's apologizing after a nap, that's a very good sign. That sounds like stress and needing more sleep/quiet time.

We have no nightlights and light blocking shades in all the bedrooms (and my room *still* has too much light)..... I think it does help with two of our kids sleeping more, but the third--when he wakes up, he just pops out of bed. I think his bladder is his alarm clock.

I would monitor sleep, sugar, chocolate, and caffeine consumption as well. For one of my kids, though, sleep was a big one. When he gave up the afternoon nap, his behavior got really bad in the evening, and honestly, I'm not sure it's recovered years later. :( I try hard to get him to go to bed on time, but he has trouble falling asleep, and then he's up early in the morning :(

HA! This place is really stressing me out :(

I think it's easy to get stressed out about academics in Silicon Valley, Arcadia. I mean, you can't even buy a nice house now on the peninsula without having two working parents who both have Ivy league degrees. If that's what it takes to make ends meet here, is it a surprise that everyone's trying to do better.....than two Ivy League degrees? Next competition? Teenage tech startup grants? I hope the rest of the US is a bit saner..... in theory an Ivy League education is supposed to be a ticket to success, not a million dollar fixer....

I'm really sorry to hear you have health issues. But if the object is to remove stress, not to remove, say, being in a car directly causing you pain because of the sitting or vibration or something, then you'll be happier and less stressed with him at the school that fits him best.

I always tell moms (especially those with high-energy kids) "The Church says we have to go to Mass, it doesn't say our kids have to behave. Don't worry about it, and I'm glad you're here." I applaud you for going. Your son is God's son, and we all have an obligation to be extra welcoming of your family and stand with you in your difficulties. And I know my kids might be the ones turning around to look--I can't help that either--but I'm glad you're there. Big hug.

Here's an ebay entry showing pictures of the inside of the puzzle books: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ocean-Creatures-Jigsaw-Book-by-Lee-Krutop-/161400130989 (Looks like a set of 5, not 6 puzzles). The animals one is the same. There are other versions--dinosaurs, princesses, space station, etc. Check number of pieces per page before buying. i think you should go for more pieces, not less.

That's so sad! They're ready when they're ready, each kid different. I wish B&M schools would stop pegging everyone into the same hole. My son is 12 (6th grade), and finished Algebra, Algebra II, and is doing Precalc now. He is finally a happy happy camper. Finally feeling like he's actually learning something. We knew he needed to be accelerated in math because he was a) picking up concepts about three years early (ie, multiplication in Kindergarten and fractions, decimals, and probability in first grade) b) could be taught harder concepts without too much whining or anxiety (although he still wanted to play LEGOs instead) c) Expressed that he was bored.

I guess I feel like acceleration is needed when a kid is bored. Which is not to say that a kid can't be bored because they simply don't like the subject, but if they like the subject or you *think* they'd like the subject if it went faster, then they need some acceleration. If a kid's plugging along quite happy with the work, then don't worry about it. Pretests (you can use the chapter practice test in math) can be helpful to identifying whether someone needs to do the work in a chapter (if they score 80% on the pretest, then why would you have them work through 100% of the problems?). Other things to try are doing only odd problems and if DS isn't getting tests correct in the 90-100% range, go back to doing all problems. Or if he does odd problems and gets a lot of them wrong in a particular section, then he can get more practice with the evens.

We have SuperMind too. Those are good and include circles and shapes different from tanagrams/tangoes, but it's a similar thing. Puzzles in books: yes, set of 6 or so. You need to be a little careful as you flip, or they can fall out. I close the book, grab all the pages before the one I want and then reopen the book.

It sounds like she has a combination money-guilt and eco-guilt. Money guilt, maybe have her read a financial planning book that talks about the 50-30-20 rule (ie, 50% necessities, 30% niceties and 20% savings for the future). For me, it was helpful to just have someone set a rule that had balance in life and to realize it didn't have to be save-save-save all the time. Then, if the 30% nicities isn't an amount you can afford, can you help her understand numerically, what you can afford? So if sushi is $30, and she knows that your discretionary is $100/m, then it's ok to get sushi once, ice cream once, and a gift as long as it adds up to less than $100. Something like that. Help her see the numbers, overcome the fear. As for Christmas..... If her fears are: 1. Guilt that others are poor: Is there a way she can give to others, and then receive something herself? Everything can be small, but a reminder that we give, but we also have to receive so someone else can give too. It's ok to receive. 2. Guilt that presents cost money: Can she accept just one present that is really meaningful to her, then? Maybe something she needs? My mom gave me underwear for Christmas along with other gifts. Honestly it never bothered me. 3. Guilt over the wrapping paper, etc: I save the ribbons and wrapping paper and either reuse them or donate them to preschools or schools looking for decorative paper for crafts. Recycle the blister back plastic.

I appreciate you saying this, because I've taken great pains to keep the kids from hearing about all the horrible stuff that happens in the world because it depresses *me* and I can't imagine it'll be better for them. No newspapers, no news, shopping at Trader Joe's (no tabloids THANK GOD!!!!). I guess our bus ads haven't been that explicit. :( The younger kids only find out about something happening when it's mentioned in the "prayers of the faithful" at Mass. ("Why are we praying for xyz?") The older one listens to podcasts, but hopefully my husband is screening them a bit.

More puzzles with more pieces. Legos. When he gets older, puzzle books (sudoku, word search, etc.) I like to bring these out to eat, but they do require some space to flip open, and only have 48 pieces: http://www.amazon.com/Animals-World-Jigsaw-Book-Books/dp/1865036013/ http://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Creatures-Jigsaw-Book-Krutop/dp/1865039233

Unless there's something else going on with your/his schedule that you haven't mentioned, 20 minutes each way just isn't a big deal commute-wise. 40 minutes, a consideration, 1 hour, yeah, it better be a great school. Not that it's any comparison, but I take one of my kids 20 minutes in the morning to an average school because of traffic, and another takes public transportation 1.75-2 hours each way (door to door), but his school is perfect for him, and he can read/listen to podcasts/play games on the commute (and I'm not driving it, thankfully). If you're having a hard time keeping up with him intellectually, and the price isn't a hardship for you, then the first school seems like a clear win regardless of the sports situation. It also will give you some good bonding time if he's the only one in the car.

I am a perfectionist and always have been, and it really can be debilitating. Even now, I am trying to get beyond this fear. The issues I've had are 1. Fear of starting something in case I can't actually accomplish the task. 2. Waiting until the last minute on things because I know I can't do it perfectly, and perhaps subconsciously, so that I have an excuse for failure 3. Feeling that I have to get something right on the first try 4. Fear of other people seeing my work as substandard 5. Believing that I cannot ask for help because if I do, it wasn't really my work. 6. Fear of over-using material goods because of the environmental impact (and therefore being afraid to dive into the project because I'll throw the first attempt away). Things that I'm trying to do now: 1. Remind myself of the hard things that I did accomplish, and that this time I will also accomplish it, too. Remind myself that it's ok to ask for help. 2. Making myself either take multiple revisions to do a project or to do multiple options and choose the best. For example, after attempting to create the perfectly organized file system patterned after directories on a computer with beautifully printed labels, and then going 6 years without filing anything because it was too complicated, I'm doing things the "Getting things done" way--flat file with everything from A-Z. I bought sticky note file folder labels so that they can be removed and the folders can be relabeled, and handwrote everything. I consciously call it "stage 1" with the full intention that I will go back and do a second, third, and maybe fourth round of looking at all the folders and throwing things our or sorting them within a folder. Because I'm doing it in stages, it's ok to keep something I'll later throw, it's ok to get it in the wrong folder, it's ok for the folders to have 4 middle tabs in a row! because *Later* i'll move things around so that it's better. This has helped me unpack over 10 boxes of papers! I also am trying to do product development, and I'm trying to force myself to do multiple items in different ways and then asking someone else what they like. So instead of getting it "right" the first time, I have to make it 5 or 10 different versions (I choose the number ahead of time, but I can always quit early if I have run out of ideas) and then decide what I think is right after I see them all next to each other. 3. Fear of starting: State what the *first* action is and do it. Is it checking out the book from the library, or getting the paper, or copying the problem over. Just do the first action. Get a snack, come back and then state the second action and do it, etc. and then hopefully you just get into the project. 4. Let her know that she needs to ask you for help when she gets frustrated. I used to get extremely frustrated (like i'd be throwing the textbook across the room) on my Calculus homework, but I never bothered to ask my parents for help one of whom was a math major, the other a Physicist! I think I thought I had to do it all by myself. She needs to understand that she shouldn't do it all by herself. Its not a contest to see if she's smart enough to figure things out on her own, but to figure out how to do things together. You are there to help (or a tutor is or....)... 5. FAIL = First Attempt at Learning She really has to accept this. It's normal to take multiple tries at something. And if she wants to do it in one try, then have her try to do things three different ways to get her used to the idea that she has to try different things and that something will work out. Writing has to have revisions. She cannot expect it to be right the first time. Math can also have revisions. Chicken scratch it on the back of an envelope, then copy it to a piece of paper. Art can have revisions. Everything should have revisions. the 90-10 rule. 90% of the work takes 10% of the time. The last 10% takes 90% of the time. So is it *really* worth that 90% of the time to get the last 10%???? What's important to her? Reading a book, or getting that 10%? I'll ask myself (or my kids) "In 10 years, will this matter?" Most of the time they know they won't even remember it. "Will it affect college admissions? Will it stop you from marrying the right person? Will it prevent you from getting a job?" No? Then save the stress for something important. There are things though, that are important..... Making sure that shoes are put away means being on time to your next appointment. Keeping the house clean means finding the keys and being able to evacuate without tripping in an emergency. But does doing the homework 100% right really make a difference? Maybe ask her to do something imperfectly, and then ask her a month later whether it was a big deal. Help her to see that it probably wasn't important and she got what she needed from it. I'm almost there myself--I need to get myself to throw out some harder-to-recycle stuff--like styrofoam blocks, old videotapes, and old shoes. I just have way too much on the "need to fix, need to find a home for list." So as much as it makes my stomach turn, I am going to throw things out that I know I could fix if I had time or that I know I could recycle if I had time. I tell myself--after I've got the house clean *then* I can try to do things perfectly provided I don't get behind. Hopefully in a month, I'll have forgotten about it, but I'll feel good that it isn't on my plate still.

There's certainly a difference between Gifted and High Achieving. Philosophically, I can see High Achieving being 85th or 90th to 98th and gifted being that 99th percentile with its own subgroupings of 1 in 100, 1 in 1000, 1 in 10K, 1 in 100K, etc. Practically speaking, both need to be pulled out of regular classrooms for their sanity. It seems to me that your child would be happy in the gifted program, and I suspect that given the challenge, she would absolutely rise to it, but I also suspect that they are low on funding--as others have also pointed out--and simply have to put the bar where they put it without it really being a philosophical cutoff about what is gifted and what isn't. I never really thought of my "gifted" kid as gifted because he doesn't just come up with off-the-wall crazy smart observations and he's not quirky, but he does think and communicate maturely--on an adult level, and he tests really well. He understands what adults are looking for in the questions, understands testing strategy (when should you guess, when shouldn't you), and is diligent about double checking his work. Boy that can go a long way! His teacher was explaining his answer to a practice Cogat question, and I'm thinking "technically, it has two answers" whereas he'd looked at it and said "If they'd wanted the answer to be x, they'd have flipped the picture upside down, so it must be y." Is that gifted, or is that just maturity? Or is being mature a gift? :)

Housing affordability. It's not the first thing we looked for in our last move, but it *SHOULD'VE* been. We just assumed that housing had to be "affordable" everywhere, or maybe everywhere but New York City. Boy were we wrong.

ananemone, I think you made the right decision to pull him out. Teachers and principals frequently try to assure parents that everything will be ok, that the way they're doing things is right, but sometimes they are simply wrong. Different grades can have different social makeups. I've seen classes at the same school where one set of kids functioned well together while learning to "appreciate" their differences while another was so dysfunctional, that I once mentioned to a teacher that one girl was getting bullied by her best friend during lunch, and the teacher said "Yes. I've told her to make better choices in friends." That about summed it up for multiple kids in that class--kids having trouble making healthy friendships, and some kids bullying their best friends whether they meant to or not. It could be that your son is having trouble making friends, but it could also be that your daughter lucked out.