Bored in School

For years I have stuggled with my son's schooling.  He's gifted, he has tested into the program, however when I found myself faced with the choice of putting him into that program I found it to be underwhelming at best.  It seemed like a punishment - you're so smart, here's twice the amount of homework!  So I chose to have him in the mainstream classes.  This was always okay.  He had beautiful, wonderful, gifted teachers throughout his elementary school days.  He had teachers that would hand him high school or even college level text books to practice in while the other kids finished their work.  They would assign him the most challenging questions.   The point is most of the time they would work to help him out.  He got great grades in the classes where the teachers challenged him more, the others were always good grades but nothing too amazing.  The point is I could always tell when he was being challenged personally or when the teachers simply handed him the work and let him go.  He's disorganized, another sure fire sign of gifted children.  He has a delay in one of his motor skills, another big sign of a gifted intellect.  These sorts of behaviors don't lend themselves well to the mainstream education system.  Today, I found a wonderful article on Parenthood.com that spoke of this issue I'm currently struggling with.  If you have found your child saying they are bored in school or having under whelming performance this is the article worth reading!  Please visit here.  I can honestly say that while all his elementary school teachers were fabulous, it's better to get a firm grip on the situation before middle school.  In middle school they become one of a thousand students and to get any sort of specialized education you have to fight tooth and nail for it!