Boredom Rears its Ugly Head

Yesterday morning, as he tied his shoes, J discovered that he had procrastinated his "book report" too long. It was due that morning. I urged him to quickly complete the three simple worksheets that comprised this project. We keep a lap-desk in the car for precisely this reason.

A glance at the worksheets reduced J to sobbing. I was shocked by his reaction, although I admit I was happy to see him shedding tears. It seemed that the stress I had seen building in him over the past two weeks was finally being released. He told me that he couldn't remember anything about the book he'd read for this assignment, and he'd returned it to his teacher weeks ago. He just couldn't do the assignment, and, most distressingly, participation in that day's Friday Fun depended on turning in the papers.

On the drive to school, I again tried to probe into J's psyche in an attempt to address the problems that were causing so much unhappiness. He confessed that the math at school was just too hard!  My first thought was that he was in over his head, that skipping a grade last year may have been a mistake, and only now was he feeling out of his depth. Following quickly on the heels of that thought, however, was the remembrance of his testing, which showed that at the beginning of his first grade year, he was capable of doing 5th and 6th grade math.

Later in the day, I connected J's present problems with those he experienced in kindergarten. He absolutely refused to do his homework for about 4 months. We finally got to the bottom of his reticence...boredom. Although he spent much of his free time drawing and writing, and had done so for most of his preschool years, he just could not be constrained to draw and label 5 things that started with the letter "R." It was uninteresting to him and limited his creativity unbearably.

The surfacing of that memory suddenly threw his book report problem into bright light. He had procrastinated the paperwork because it was idiotically simple! I'm not kidding. It asked him to choose 5 words from his book and list them in alphabetical order, and circle whether he wanted to read the book to his parent, have his parent read to him, or to read on his own. And I, unsure of what kind of book the teacher wanted J to read for this project, but sensing that Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix would not likely fit the bill, I let J choose a book from the classroom shelves. He naively chose a Goosebumps book. He read that book in half an hour, getting it out of the way the very night he brought it home, then dove right back into Harry Potter. That was nearly a month ago. It's no wonder that he remembers nothing of that simple book!  And to make matters worse, the grade level of the particular book he read is only 1.5.  The Order of the Phoenix is 6.7.

I had a call from J's gifted teacher, and in the course of our conversation, I mentioned that J was complaining that 3rd grade math is too hard for him. She wasn't fooled, like I was, by his statement. She explained that he was likely so bored in class (despite his being a grade higher than he should) that he could not pay attention when his teacher was explaining the math, so when it came time to do the problems, he didn't know how.

After the upheaval of last year, with testing and changing classes and starting the Challenge pull-out program, I really thought that we had addressed J's educational challenges, and had him where he would be happy and could grow. But it appears that we will have to make further changes this year.