I have a very bright 6 year old but he doesn't want to work and I need suggestions.


I know it isn't an issue of the work being too easy, most of the formal learning time is spent in reading and he's with one other boy and a wonderful aide. This other boy is another bright child and tests were done to ensure that the boys had matching skills and they are working with materials at that level. The aide has the freedom to move them as fast as needed and to skip them up after retesting them so it is at the right level. This is the work he is most likely to not want to do.

The big problem is that my son doesn't like to try, I honestly have no idea how he managed to teach himself to read before school with his lack of motivation.

I'm getting tired of the refusal to try no matter what is thrown at him. He tends to sit at his desk and daydream, today I got yet another note about him not working.

His brother was not like this, he was always willing to work and try things, so I have no idea what to do.

Does anyone have any suggestions to end this issue?

Could it be that he is bored and not being challenged? My Son was like that in his early years of school, if something didn't "spark his interest", he would just sit and daydream.

He is being challenged, especially in the class where he gives the most trouble. I know the class is not too hard either because they have tested them a couple time through the year to make sure that they are doing the right stuff.

If he wasn't challenged I would just tell the teacher that his behavior when he's bored is the school's problem because I'm not nice.

He was lucky enough this year to have a classroom teacher who used to be a gifted teacher so she tries very hard to challenge him. She has goals in place for him that are well above kindergarten level.

Are there specific things/types of material that he isn't paying attention to? Are there specific types of tasks (e.g. reading out loud, answering questions about what was read) that he is particularly bad about?

My son is now 16, but when he was in kindergarten, I had many conferences with the teacher because he wasn't working, was daydreaming, was wandering around the class, etc..

Like your son, mine entered K already knowing how to read. We didn't discover until he was in the second half of first grade that, while he had a huge "sight reading" vocabulary and could sound words out like a pro, he often wasn't actually processing what he read. He could read a passage out loud and then have no idea or recall of what he read. He didn't use pictures to help him to understand what was going on. Once we figured that out, we were able to back up a few steps, using books with no words, just really good illustrations, to give him those "pre-reading" skills that he had bypassed.

With kids, especially with bright ones, it is often a puzzle to figure out what is going on. Often, the bright kids have asynchronous development, in that they are way ahead of their peers in some skills and actually behind them in others.

He isn't refusing to do specific things, he tries to do as little as possible in everything.

The teacher and aide are both really attentive to the whole picture with reading so we have a very good idea about all aspects of his reading. They're both really good, the aide is also the classroom aide so he knows my son really well.

An good example of his refusing to do stuff is spelling. A few weeks ago the aide decided to start having the boys spell the hard reading words because they had extra time. So my son wouldn't do it, he claimed it was too hard, and after 15 minutes the aide said that my kid could do it during recess time. He didn't have any trouble getting them done as quickly as possible during recess so he could go play.

Like I said earlier this reading is not too easy or too hard but set up specifically to meet his needs. The other boy is at the same level as my son. These are two that were paired out of a total of 8 kindergarten rooms, they don't even let the rest of the GT kids in this group, so it isn't just the two best readers in a classroom where one child can be far ahead of the other.

We all suspect that he's just stubborn and a little lazy and I would like to find a solution to that.