Burned out gifted teen

[peanutbutterjellytime]

My son is 13 and has always been in PS. We pulled him and his little sister out a few weeks ago and are now homeschooling. He has stated that he wants to do this and that he feels that public school is not a good fit for him. As his mother, I agree.

He used to LOVE school (K-4) and was a bright and engaged student. He was accepted into the gifted program and has an IQ score above 130. In 5th grade and 6th grade, he unfortunately had some really poor teacher experiences and was also having increased issues with peer bullying. He is a voracious reader with a huge vocabulary and does not think/talk like most kids his age. Kids can be so mean ☹

He is now facing some issues. One, he is behind in math. I think this has a lot to do with the COVID shutdown, so missing the last part of 6th grade and then poor quality of virtual PS instruction in the first part of 7th grade (we tried that first before decision to homeschool).

Two, his attitude toward learning is poor. He does the assignments and reading but I can tell his heart isn't in it. He rushes through the work. His handwriting is horrendous (he knows perfectly well how to write, he is just rushing). He has some issues with accountability and is just doing the minimum. 

He knows he is gifted and I suspect sometimes he thinks he already knows everything, so assignments are just 'busy work.' How can I help him realize the breakdown in logic here without making him feel attacked like his peers made him feel?

My heart is breaking for my child. He has so much potential. I don't know how to help him get that spark back. My first and biggest goal with the decision to homeschool was to help my kids rediscover their love of learning and spirit of curiosity. My daughter (11) is responding beautifully and has not only engaged actively with her assigned studies but is going deeper into interest topics on her own.

Any suggestions on how I can help my son? I can't and won't accept the idea that PS ruined him permanently. 

**We are doing a mix of TWTM and Charlotte Mason style literature based for content subjects (world history,  social studies, science). Math - I backed up a year for both kids and I am using Math Mammoth for that curriculum. Starting out with notebooking/outlining and Greek/Latin roots for language arts but looking for a good curriculum or suggestions. 

Thanks for reading and I welcome any feedback or advice.

[freesia]

Welcome!

The first thing to know is that all you wrote is pretty normal for a 13 year old boy, homeschooled, gifted or not.  This age needs a lot of patience.  You are not going to be able to make him like school, only provide as good an environment as you can. Try not to take his attitude personally. Besides the pandemic and bad school experiences, he is dealing with hormones. Both my boys have gone through this (one totally out and loving learning again, the other half way out.)They were always homeschooled.

Make sure your son gets enough sleep, exercise and food. If you can, have him run a mile or two before school—required PE.

With the rushing, you can make him redo it so you can read it or give him the option of typing. If it’s readable, you can let it go. Both my boys suddenly got neater and slowed down in tenth grade. I don’t know why. 

The other attitude can be common with gifted kids. Honestly, I think you need to ride a fine line here. Make sure he does have deep work that makes him think. Do evaluate if the work is needful for learning. But he does need to learn he is not too good or too smart to have to do things. It’s a character issue and life is full if irritating busywork. ( How many times do I need to fill out vaccination forms for my kids???) Also, a 13 year old isn’t the best at knowing what is busywork and what is useful but a bit tedious ( There is value in writing a science lab report, for example, but it is tedious!)

There have been loads of threads in 13 year old boys  You May be able to find them in a search  

 

[Lori D.]

Welcome!

You might also "cross-post" this on the Accelerated Learner Board of the WTM forum, as gifted and advanced students often need a very different approach to learning.

And, *totally* agreeing with Freesia's great post above!! 😄 

While I have no personal experience with a gifted child, it sounds like he might do well with a project that he can run with as mostly self-directed. It might take some time for him to find that. You might try scheduling time regularly in your day for exploration. Maybe sit down with him and together make a list of half a dozen things of interest to try out, and spend a month on each thing, to give it a fair trial.

Does he like science? Maybe there's a particular area he would like to dig into -- flight; astronomy; reptiles; horses; rocks / minerals / gemstones, or.... ?? Does he like engineering topics? Maybe robotics, electronics, designing/building things, etc.  Or if he likes history a specific time/place in history, or a specific aspect of history -- weapons and warfare for example. Or maybe a completely unusual sort of topic: learning Elvish or inventing his own language, creating board games, writing his own novel, learning to code, etc.

Then once he settles on his first topic, you do some research for materials to support his chosen topic -- kits, videos, books, online self-paced class or online exploration, supplies, etc. That does require time from you, but if you post a request for materials on whatever the topic is, there's a good chance somebody here has had a child explore that topic and will be able to suggest some good resources for you.

For handwriting:
Can you start him on learning to type and once he's fluent with the keyboard ("touch typing"), switch most of his writing over to typing? Because starting at the middle school level, that is really how most of the writing assignments for English and History is done -- by typing. 

For improving handwriting, we used Callirobics -- it's 3-5 minutes a day, and it practices the strokes used in cursive; it's done to music to help slow down and think about each stroke. Also, we ALL did it together here -- not just the one child who needed it. 😉 Then we could positively encourage one another and point out to each other where we were hitting the lines properly, or fully enclosed circles. Also, if you all do it together, it's hard for someone to "rush" through it and it's not noticed: (I made sure to have a number of fails in mine in the first weeks so DSs would be encouraged to see that I needed to improve, too.) 

For books/reading:
Involvement in an online book discussion club, which might spark interest in reading? Or is there a literature genre he is especially interested in that you could build a study around, and dig deep into literary elements and literature topics that are a part of that genre?

For math:
Maybe he would like a math that would require more thinking and problem-solving? Maybe Art of Problem Solving Pre-Algebra, or Life of Fred pre-algebra programs. Also, what about an online math club or competition program to interact with other students, and re-fire an interest in math and in being challenged? Check out the programs offered by MathCounts.

Finally, are there any hormonal changes or physical issues that might be coming into play and "hitting him in the academics"? Obviously the covid hit to the social life is huge. 😞 But might there be any other factors -- is he getting enough regular aerobic (heart rate elevated) exercise and big muscles being worked hard? Is he entering puberty and a hormonal or brain chemical shift? Is he having trouble sleeping -- like, too much screen time too close to bed? Is there a possible food intolerance manifesting as mood changes? other??? Just something to possibly consider.

BEST of luck in finding what best helps bring back some joy for you all! (And, bear in mind, that "joy in learning" very well may look different for DS now as a young and growing teen 😉 .) Warmest regards, Lori D.

Edited October 11, 2020 by Lori D.

[Kiara.I]

Have you run across the concept of deschooling? I would be inclined to put away all schoolwork for now. Give him time and space to recover from the last two awful years.

Take at least until Christmas, possibly longer.

[Lori D.]

P.S.
Is there possibly a project that your DS and your DH could work on together, like some sort of "weekend man project"? (Not necessarily anything to do with "school", although it could be, if both DS and DH would like that.) This is the age where having some bonding time with adult men and doing adult things is very helpful, too. I'm thinking of things like building a greenhouse or a shed in the backyard, or designing and building a boat or a piece of furniture, or learning how to do Orienteering together (map reading and getting to all the points on a laid out course following your map, as fast as you can). Camping and building a fire and pitching a tent and fishing kinds of things. Or Backyard Ballistics, or archery... endless "manly" projects and activities they might be able to do together. 😄 

(I'm not at all meaning to sound sexist or anti-feminist here, as if women aren't able/interested in doing those things, too, lol. It could absolutely be cooking, baking, gardening if that is the activity DS and DH would enjoy bonding over. What I meant by this is an adult male mentoring younger male thing -- not necessarily "he-man" activity-specific LOL. But doing things that requires big muscle use is very helpful as part of the activity. I did find that with our own 2 DSs -- and I see it over and over with other young teen boys -- there was a point along about age 11-14 where they really needed special "guy" time with Dad and/or with other adult male role models.)

Edited October 11, 2020 by Lori D.

[Momto6inIN]

First - he is definitely not ruined permanently!!!

When we switched from PS to hs'ing my oldest was in 8th grade and he was/is gifted. He has always been internally motivated, so that wasn't a problem for him, but he very definitely had/has no patience for busywork. I usually had to spend some time explaining my rationale for why I chose a certain topic or curriculum or approach, and it went lots better when I got his input on what he wanted to study and how he wanted to learn it. Giving him some agency and ownership in his own learning is huge at this age. 

I don't think I would have been able to convince him about the value  of handwriting, as at the time he typed everything except math problems and now that he's at college he types his math too. That's not a battle I would have won with him, so I'm not sure I'd advise you to fight it.

So for instance, I came up with 3 algebra programs that I was willing to invest time and money in, and I let him pick out of those 3 after telling him my pros and cons of each.

Honestly, for 8th grade with a gifted kid who is probably not going to struggle with high school level work, I would probably make a few things non-negotiable and then let him choose what he wants to learn beyond that (with your final approval and veto power, of course). For my DS the non-negotiables were algebra and learning to write a decent essay and figuring out how to do science independently, everything else was just gravy.

Edited October 11, 2020 by Momto6inIN
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[kbutton]

I agree with the other posters, particularly about getting him invested in some part of this by giving him some agency. My kids are 2e, so they are both needy and capable at the same time. It sounds like he has some temporary struggles to work through, but after that, he'll be doing fine.

Regarding the math--is that a busy work task to him? Does he like Math Mammoth? My son loved that it gave him independence. I have heard some people complain there are too many problems. If math is a subject he's rushing through, can you trust him with the answer key and have him correct his mistakes? Then, if he can improve the number of times he has to go back and fix his mistakes, could you maybe let him do fewer problems per page or in certain sections? I found that being rewarded with less busy work helped me, as a student, be more thorough. 

If the issue is with writing, can you give him rubrics where he has to assess himself BEFORE turning in an assignment? (Might also work with some kind of math problems too.) 

In both cases, he's having to confront the sloppy work himself rather than having you point it out. It might drive the point home about being careful with work while also letting him see that doing a better job would lead to less busy work.

[Ellie]

It takes much longer than you might imagine for a burned-out child to recover. I would have advised you not to do anything that looks like school, for many  months. 

[Clemsondana]

My teen boy seems to need to spend an inordinate amount of time wandering about outside.  He also plays sports and does a lot of conditioning workouts...and, honestly,  he seems to like the conditioning as much as the sports sometimes.  I know it's not academic, but he seems to need physical activity and also time to clear his head...a lot.  

If you're interested in a different sort of language arts,  you might like Michael Clay Thompson's program.  Both of my kids loved the vocabulary (which is root based) and the grammar is solid.  I'd suggest starting at the Voyage level - I time it so that my kids do that level in middle school because it teaches essay writing.  We adjust it so that, instead of writing about the assigned topics, we write about our history or books that have been recently read.  

I've got nothing to suggest with math.  We have gone through stretches where my kids struggled to pay enough attention to detail to get problems right even when they knew how to do them.  I have at times had success with telling them that, if they routinely complete work correctly, we can reduce the amount of practice (ie do fewer problems).  That may not be appropriate for your program, though.  We go back and correct everything every day until it's right, so at some point my kids usually figure out that it's easier to be attentive the first time...but we re-learn that lesson every month or so.  You might also take a break and try a non-traditional program like Life of Fred for a while.  We use it alongside our usual program as a supplement, but it might make a good change of pace for a while  

[peanutbutterjellytime]

Oh my goodness thank you all so much! So many great suggestions and I really, really appreciate the encouragement. I don't have much in the way of a homeschool support network except for my husband and we are both brand new at this. 

DS is just a really sweet and wonderful kid and we want to help lift him up and support him in every way possible. So thank you for all your kind advice. I really appreciate the time put into these thoughtful responses 💜

PBJ

[Lucy the Valiant]

Don't you love threads like this one? 

In addition to the wonderful ideas listed, you can "preview" high school for him as a natural reward, if home schooling is truly an option going forward. Teenagers love to have agency in the decision-making about school (ex: he has to learn math, but maybe he gets to decide if that's an online class / Khan style self-paced / game type class / paper book & actual pencil / talk to a tutor or math mentor once a week / try out something really different math-wise this year). And he can participate in "discovering" his ideal learning style, and then - use that priceless knowledge to drastically reduce or eliminate "busy work" and let him spend his new-found time on something he truly loves? For . . . all 4 years of high school? 

You've got this! The journey is a wonderful one, and you are all on the right track!

[Emily ZL]

When we first started hsing my son, he was super unmotivated and moody. He was younger than yours but didn't want to hs and made everything into a drawn out battle. It was miserable. And he too is super bright and reads voraciously. What helped us was:

1. Clear expectations that the work given to him needs to be completed, and won't be put off if he doesn't do it. I made sure his work was meaningful and not overwhelming. He was allowed to procrastinate and build things, but no electronics or treats until he finished. 

2. We needed buy in from my husband, and leaning on him (having to take orders from mom can be hard at first, and having dad come home and be the heavy and communicate what he expects to hear about behavior was very effective). This was advice I got from another mom of boys.

3. Never mention giftedness ever again!! It's a label that comes with so much baggage. It implies a literal identity crisis every time something is difficult (am I really gifted?) and encourages bright kids to avoid challenges and struggle areas for fear of failure. You should assume he is normal -- that is, accelerated in some areas, behind in others, and portray that as normal, which it is outside the rigid PS system. The one thing that can truly determine how he DOES rather than who he IS is working hard. Put all your emphasis on effort and rewarding effort, talking about famous people and scientists and the effort they put in and struggles they had, all that growth mindset stuff.

This is what we did. Progress was slow at first, but over the course of 6 months it was much better, and by a year or two he was like a new kid, delightful, sweet, carefree, helpful, curious. It takes time. Having a motivation helps too, like if he does his work well for a week there will be a Friday night movie party with boxed candy and staying up late, etc. Or trip to somewhere fun after a month, or something.

[fairfarmhand]

18 hours ago, Emily ZL said:

When we first started hsing my son, he was super unmotivated and moody. He was younger than yours but didn't want to hs and made everything into a drawn out battle. It was miserable. And he too is super bright and reads voraciously. What helped us was:

1. Clear expectations that the work given to him needs to be completed, and won't be put off if he doesn't do it. I made sure his work was meaningful and not overwhelming. He was allowed to procrastinate and build things, but no electronics or treats until he finished. 

2. We needed buy in from my husband, and leaning on him (having to take orders from mom can be hard at first, and having dad come home and be the heavy and communicate what he expects to hear about behavior was very effective). This was advice I got from another mom of boys.

3. Never mention giftedness ever again!! It's a label that comes with so much baggage. It implies a literal identity crisis every time something is difficult (am I really gifted?) and encourages bright kids to avoid challenges and struggle areas for fear of failure. You should assume he is normal -- that is, accelerated in some areas, behind in others, and portray that as normal, which it is outside the rigid PS system. The one thing that can truly determine how he DOES rather than who he IS is working hard. Put all your emphasis on effort and rewarding effort, talking about famous people and scientists and the effort they put in and struggles they had, all that growth mindset stuff.

This is what we did. Progress was slow at first, but over the course of 6 months it was much better, and by a year or two he was like a new kid, delightful, sweet, carefree, helpful, curious. It takes time. Having a motivation helps too, like if he does his work well for a week there will be a Friday night movie party with boxed candy and staying up late, etc. Or trip to somewhere fun after a month, or something.

The lack of motivation/hating learning/school is typical for the age I hear. None of my kids loved school or were happy about sitting down to do it every day, no matter how much I tried to make it fun and entertaining. It was odd for me because I LOVED school all the way through. Some kids just don't want to do it and that's ok. My mantra became "It doesn't have to be fun, it just has to be done." 

For math, you might want to consider the Art of Problem Solving. That will  challenge his brain in amazing ways. You will want to do a placement test to properly place him regardless of what he was studying in PS. This program is challenging, and a bad fit will be a nightmare for all of you. 

My oldest dd was probably what would be considered gifted and it really wasn't a great thing for everything to come so easily. She got overwhelmed when anything was hard at all and she took it personally if she made mistakes. She had a hard time pushing through hard stuff and working hard to overcome a challenge. Despite the fact that my dd did well academically, it was music lessons that made a big difference in her attitude about hard work. She HAD to practice to make progress in music.

MY dh is very very bright, he really struggled with making himself do basic things like study, peck away at a boring task, do things that seem pointless...

So this is a facet of his character that you can work on with him. Not that he's a bad kid or anything, but he will need to work at stuff and accept that he doesn't know everything. And that some things take prolonged effort over time to yield results.

Find materials that challenge him, regardless of how it fits in your overall educational philosophy. My oldest would have rolled her eyes until they fell out of her head with something like a Charlotte Mason approach. She needed mentally challenging stuff, even if she didn't want to be challenged.

To help him learn to enjoy intellectual stuff, have a documentary night twice a week. One day your dd gets to choose the documentary, another week your son gets to choose. There are gobs available on Netflix, Youtube, and Amazon. Even if your son chooses biographies of great athletes or something about muscle cars or whatever, it's ok for him to choose that stuff. MY kids love David Attenborough documentaries and right now, I think, PBS is running a weekly series on cats that we like.

I have a 12 yo boy and his handwriting is atrocious. I don't make too big of a deal over it as long as its readable and reasonably neat. I do make him do two cursive handwriting worksheets per day. He also enjoys drawing comics and that actually improved his handwriting the most, since most people couldn;r read his speech bubbles until he wrote them neatly.  I do allow my son to type his essays or longer writing assignments. 

For my son, we need to work on time management and task management. Each week I print out an assignment sheet that has his list of assignments for the week. Each box is for a different subject. He has 2 science assignments, 5 math assignments, 4 english assignments, etc. per week. He is supposed to check them off as he does them. He knows that he has to do a math each day, but sometimes he doubles up on Science and History to finish them up early in the week. This allows him some flexibility in his work. I do look over his shoulder to make sure that he's making reasonable progress and our Friday won't be miserable due to procrastination. He is not permitted to use electronics or fun things until all a reasonable amount of daily school work is done. Seeing that the amount of work is finite helps my son not get overwhelmed and keeps me from adding too much to his workload. It rewards efficiency and hard work.

One thing that has been successful with ALL of my kids is that on the subjects they struggle with paying attention to, they call out answers as they do them. I check along with them as they work. This #1, keeps me from having to grade piles of paper, #2 Keeps them from cementing bad work habits and repeating mistakes over the course of a whole lesson #3 it keeps morale up because they don't have to go back and redo problems from a lesson since corrections are made immediately when the mistake is made. 

Also, for some subjects like math (remember I use AOPS for my middle school math) we work on a time basis rather than a "lesson" basis. As long as my kid is working diligently, we stop after one hour (and we use a timer) whether or not we completed the full lesson. Interestingly enough, we do finish the book over one year's time. But I'd rather my kid KNOW a lesson than rush/drag through it and not have learned it well. And after one hour, my kids' brains are generally done with a hard topic like math. 

Hang in there. 11-15 year old boys are HARD!

 

[peanutbutterjellytime]

It is so encouraging to hear from other parents who have gone/are going through this! I really do hope my kiddo gets back to a place where he enjoys learning. Reading and learning new things and are some of the greatest joys of my life and I want so badly for my kids to experience that!

I am going to sit down with him and brainstorm ideas on how together we can engineer his education to be interesting and challenging for him. I noticed one of the main themes in most of your posts was to give him some ownership and sense of control. Which makes absolutely perfect sense for a young man in his stage of life! 

 

[fairfarmhand]

5 hours ago, peanutbutterjellytime said:

It is so encouraging to hear from other parents who have gone/are going through this! I really do hope my kiddo gets back to a place where he enjoys learning. Reading and learning new things and are some of the greatest joys of my life and I want so badly for my kids to experience that!

I am going to sit down with him and brainstorm ideas on how together we can engineer his education to be interesting and challenging for him. I noticed one of the main themes in most of your posts was to give him some ownership and sense of control. Which makes absolutely perfect sense for a young man in his stage of life! 

 

One way of learning that my kids DO love is not tackled so much during school time or doesn't look like school at all. Its about our chattering.

We talk all the time and ask each other questions all the time.

Like my second dd loves astronomy and really got into learning all kinds of weird facts about stuff...like she can name the moons of Jupiter. We get into those discussions all the time. They go from "Let's name these kittens after celestial bodies." to "Hey, I didn't know that! Jupiter has how many moons?"

Like "Which place on each continent would you most like to visit?" and then you can watch documentaries or read books about stuff.

We watch old shows like Hogan's Heroes. My son was probably 6 when he learned about what the Eastern front was in WW2 because of that show. That show has prompted interestsin that time period, like he LOVES reading about Deitrich Bonhoeffer. The book "The Faithful Spy" was on his Christmas list. We also talk about CS Lewis (we love Narnia) and his talks during WW2, which were published in Mere Christianity. (There's a Youtube Channel called C.S. Lewis Doodles that has animated chapters of Lewis' work)

He loves knives and has researched about all kinds of knives and where they originated and blah blah blah.

The old old movie Sergeant York was on broadcast TV and he watched it and learned all about Alvin C. York. He read York's autobiography, and we're going to visit the park that they made of York's farm in a few weeks.

We learned about the word "beatnik" and what it meant and what it implied. Then that led to a discussion of the social changes of the 60s and 70s and Vietnam and all.  (that came from another old TV show, Petticoat Junction)

I show my kids certain poems or pieces of art and we talk about them. None of these seem like school but they're definitely learning.

So just talk to the kids and relax that he can learn a lot even if it looks way different than you might expect. In some respects Google can be your friend.

 

 

Edited October 14, 2020 by fairfarmhand