Finally reading on his own

At nine o'clock at night, completely on his own, he read the first page of Ramona Quimby, Age 8. Cheerfully. He was panting to have time when he reads aloud to his big brother instead of the other way around. His big brother is crashed in bed and snoring by nine-thirty most nights!

Major Meltdown

I've been thinking about this for so long this weekend. Yes, both boys get a LOT of time off, completely unstructured, no chores, run through sprinklers and have squirt gun attacks with the neighbor's kids. I set down what I thought was a reasonable task and got a major meltdown.

Gently introduce a new topic

Instead of telling him, "We're going to learn about the Arctic today and I have lots of fun things planned!" (My ds would resist if I did this), maybe you could you just introduce the topic in a sneaky way--read the Polar Bear book as a bedtime story, then casually talk about the book over breakfast ("I wonder how many seals a polar bear eats in a week.") or ask him to draw a picture about the story the next morning (my ds LOVES the dry erase board!). Maybe go to the library and find a National Geographic video on the Arctic. I have discovered that if I put a poster on the wall, my ds memorizes it. It's weird, but it works. Maybe just explore and experiment with different ways of approaching education--to try to find what works best for him.

Maybe you could "pretend" and teach him--you could be a seal and he could be a polar bear and tell him that polar bears wait on the ice to see a seal and then the bear grabs it from the water!

When I'm not in the room

I have noticed that my son behaves well in a classroom setting or at his piano lesson if I’m not in the room. It's like he's preoccupied with pushing my buttons when I’m there. However, that doesn't mean that it would be like that all day every day if I were to enroll him in school. I’m certain that he would eventually get comfortable and develop a similar relationship with his teacher and be resistant, disruptive, etc.