Bored child when it comes to school

Parents Forum
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Hello All,

I have an issue and I need as much help as I can get. I have a 3 grade son and over the last few months I have noticed his performance in school deteriorating. Let me explain a little more as well. I am a computer programmer by trade so I have a lot of books on the subject as well as a lot of math books that are laying around the home. So my son asked me to teach him (Of course as a parent I was amazed that he wanted to learn it). So I started teaching him everything that I knew with the books and of course the internet as best as I could. Now I won’t say that he is gifted but he is eager to learn. I guess what I am asking is what have other parents done in this case? I don’t want to take away my son’s childhood were all he doing is reading books, because know there is more to life then just books. I am trying to find new ways to challenge him on my own (with research material and other books that I can find). Should I accelerate my child? Any and all advice will be much appreciated. I will say this there are some programs in my area (San Diego, CA) but my son is way to young for them and I don’t think that they will accept him. Also I am concerned about the social aspect as well. Again thanks.

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Why is he bored in school? Is it too easy? Would he do better in a private school setting?

Does he hate having to “sit still”? Are there any other issues at home? I would explore all of this first? Has he been tested for anything?

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Talk to your son’s principal about gifted programming and having him tested for that. Each state and district varies in what type of programming may be available. You can also have your son independently tested by a psychologist. Look for a child psychologist or educational psychologist.

If there are no programs available for your son’s age group, look into what is available privately. There are independent schools which are specialized for gifted students. Other close by districts may have available public programming. Parents will often move to a different district in order to access gifted programming. However, gifted programming funding and availability within a district can change.

As someone who was accelerated in school, I would advise against it - it doesn’t solve the problem and it just takes them away from their age peers. Many gifted kids will be bored in a regular program until high school or university.

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My daughter became bored with school. A few years later it turned out to be dyslexia and other learning disabilities. So your answer could be just about anything!

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Have you thought about homeschooling? Worked for us, plenty of homeschool play groups and co-ops in our area. I taught the kids at whatever level they were at and could focus on their interests.Two of the three started public school in 9th grade and are doing very well, I expect the third to do the same.

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Between 2nd and 3rd grade is the time my youngest became bored and easily distracted in school too, @naviance. She’s also a dyslexic.

OP, I would read up on signs of learning disabilities. Our kids are very smart, so it’s sometimes difficult to tell something is going on until you put all the pieces together. I’d let your child take the lead in programming. When he wants to work with you, let him, just make sure it’s not being used as an avoidance mechanism. My DD would do anything to avoid schoolwork because it was difficult. She preferred acting up and getting yelled at to sitting still and trying because it was so hard. I’d make sure his schoolwork is done before he gets to work with you. If you discover he does have a learning issue, you can use the work with you as a mental break between chunks of homework.

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Unfortunately, k-12 in the USA is not designed for average kids, it is designed for lazy ones who tend to perform below average not because of inability but because they are simply not up to doing any work at all.

The worst of k - 12 is actually in k - 8. This part is a complete waste of time. While program in 9 - 12 is trying to catch up, it is too little, too late. I did some informal sessions of math with my kids and grandkids, they were spontenious, unstructured and more or less were fun games with kids asking for more and more challenging problems. It does help!! But as a side effect, it will make math classes at school even more boring. Another suggestion is that there are schools orginized by immigrants in most major cities to provide missing background in math and sciences. However, you got to check if school like this is taught in native language as one of their goals is to maintain the native language while focusing on math and science. I know that there are Russian and Japanese schools, unless they disappear over time.

The k - 12 here is in shameful condition, it is not designed to provide the best education. Actually, the saddest result is that most are not prepared for college. Even best of the best have to recognize in college that they need to adjust up their efforts considerably to be successful and some of them fail to do so, continue to glide by as they are used to in HS and fall out of their original track, primarily in engineering, pre-med and few others.
Interesting enough, I am also a Computer Programmer (the title is actually different, but it dones not matter). I love my job and the IT departments everywhere are getting significantly older (employees age). I took one class while working in one language at CC (did not need it, but employer paid, so why not). What I witnessed was very sad. At tne end, the class had 3 students. Prof asked me to take one under my wing and make sure that he has a passing grade and prof. took care of another student. Prof. indicated that analytical skills of the students coming to colleges went down considerably over past 10 years (I took class about 10 years ago) and continue falling. It definitley due to the incorrect teaching of math in k - 12.
In addition, 13 years in k-12 is absolutely not needed to teach much more and and at much higher level. Abroad, there are many 10 years schools , starting at 7, not 5. The level of every subject is taught at much higher level, not much of the busy, stupid filling the paper waste of time. Much more of problem solving in ALL science subject, and real science and math material starts in 5 - 6 grade, not in 9th grade.
Do not let little guy to slide, it is NOT his fault!!!

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Do expose him to other things, topics that you may know about, if he is interested. In general, pay attention to what he is excited by and be willing to follow his lead.

He might be gifted and bored. He might have a LD and be bored. He might also be having social issues at school and not connecting with peers. I would explore all those options

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"I have a 3 grade son and over the last few months I have noticed his performance in school deteriorating. "

And when you had a parent-teacher conference, what did his teacher(s) have to say about this? Start there. If need be, have a meeting with the guidance counselor and resource teacher(s) as well. Lots of things could be going on in the classroom that are affecting his performance.

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My answer is similar to Lizardly’s. You want to talk to him, to slowly see if you can figure out if something in particular is bugging him. Maybe you check with the teacher for his/her observations, before running off to test…

Lots of kids are bored in the early years of lower school because, well, for some kids, it IS boring. While they’re ready for more, the classes are still trying to get everyone to the same starting point with reading, numbers, writing. Ime, spring of 3rd grade is usually when they really start to learn about things. Don’t distract him to the point where he loses the lesson about minding schoolwork, projects, discussions/interactions, etc. Make sure he’s reading for pleasure, not just to learn about programming. But sure, supplement if he’s interested.

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"Lots of kids are bored in the early years of lower school because, well, for some kids, it IS boring. "
-Exctly the point! School does not have to be boring, school could be challenging, kids thrive being challenged, and yes, some will be way too lazy to get involved in challenging environment. But school standards should not be lowered to their level, and they are. Parent can make a difference. Anyway, this type of kids usually are into many ECs that provide challenges that are missed at school. The great number of unrelated ECs is a good salvation for these type of kids. I am talking from experience, not just theoretically. The challenges outside of school may actually show a kid that achievements are very rewarding, recognized and it may push a bored child to still do a work for school. then use an incentive: they cannot get engage in their favorite activity if the school work in not completed and completed in the best way. I used it with great results. It works!!! Then kid simply gets into habit of doing eerything that is assigned, while looking forward to be at his/her favorite sport practice (as in my D’s case, but girls are more willing to do what they do not like) or something else.

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@Lizardly, you know me and my wife have spoke to them but they make it seem like he was at fault like we were not doing enough at home to keep him engaged. They pretty much point the finger at us without pointing the finger. We are not lazy parents who send their kid to school and expect the school to teach. We are extremely engaged.

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How did the school say you weren’t engaged? Are you supposed to be sitting with your child and doing homework with him? Reading with him?

What does your third grader say? Talk to him, too. Does he think the work is too hard? Too dull and/or repetitive? Does he have friends to sit with at lunch? Play with at recess?

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“Bored” is generally a bad word to use with teachers, because it doesn’t get to the cause. And, the teacher can take it as an attack on their teaching style. You can say, and teach your son to say, “needs more challenge”. I would recommend testing for GATE. You may not think he is gifted compared to people you know, but you probably hang with a pretty bright crowd.

Are you in San Diego Unified or one of the outlying districts? These are not bad schools, so you should be able to get some help if he is needing more. Check the district’s website to see about GATE testing and what they do for GATE kids. There may be clustering or differentiation.

Certainly, it’s important for kids to get outside, but they also need challenge at the level that is appropriate for them.

Teaching kids computer programming younger is actually a good area for them to advance in, because it doesn’t duplicate learning they will be doing in the classroom in a few years. In contrast, some parents whose kids want to learn more encourage them to push forward in math, which is really fun for some kids, but the schools often aren’t set up to deal with that well until high school.

My 16-year-old son started learning programming pretty early. I’m not sure that learning programming from books is the way it’s done these days, with all the online stuff. He now learns stuff from the reference API websites, asks and answers debugging questions on StackOverflow, and participates in forums mostly about landscape generation in video games. He did get one college textbook on an area he was researching, but mostly he disdains physical books.

His early programming tools (which may or may not be around anymore) were Squeak, GameMaker (good: teaches OO principles in a graphical way), some robot programming kits like Mindstorms, and Scratch. Nowadays there is a lot of good stuff at code.org, Codecademy, Khan Academy, and more. When he was about 8, he took “Dark Basic” and Flash programming classes at a local place, but still mostly used graphical programming tools. If your son is advanced beyond his years at programming, you might be surprised as how young a kid local programs will be happy to accept.

I think he started with Java and Python around 5th grade, and eventually took 3 programming classes through AoPS in 6th grade and jr high. He used Java a lot for making Minecraft mods, and Minecraft is a big social connection for kids these days. He took the AP Computer Science test in 8th grade and got a 5, so that did replace a course he could have taken at the high school, but he’s past that and now enjoys programming competitions like USACO. There are lots of kids even younger than him who do quite well on the USACO. He did some summer work at the local UC developing a Scratch-based curriculum for teaching computational thinking to 5th graders. He will likely take several community college Comp Sci classes during high school. California community colleges are generally set up well for high school kids to take classes. Robotics programming at the high school level is often in C/C++, so learning Java early is a good start.

Anyway, all that is to say that programming is a great area in which to accelerate your kid, and maybe to reengage him with learning. You can communicate that computer science at the college level requires a lot of math, so he should not be ignoring that in school.

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Your son is at a good age to become involved in music and sports. Being part of a team, getting along with others, learning to read music – these are all good challenges that go well with school work and help promote social skills.

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My son works as a software engineer/programmer with a degree in CS. At your son’s age he was still playing with Legos, and activity that he credits for his programming skill (binary choices). He also built primitive robots with Legos and a tape recorder. He did get bored in 3rd through 5th grade but teachers assured me there were still challenges for him, and he had more troubles with peers due to giftedness than with the curriculum. So sports and music are good suggestions.

If you go to teachers with problems, often they are defensive because they get a lot of complaints. One symptom of defensiveness is to seem to blame the parents, though they may just be throwing the problem back in your court.

I would not steer his interests but catch the wave of those interests he comes up with himself, and just be there Kind of like surfing.

Sometimes boredom is a sign of ADHD. But a lot of boys get bored in school: it’s pretty hard to sit still all day at that age… If boredom comes from not absorbing material, that is an entirely different story and you might want him evaluated.

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I haven’t read everything in the thread, so maybe someone already mentioned it, but there is such a thing as 2E or Twice exceptional. That’s someone who is highly intelligent or “gifted” but also has a learning disability or mental health issue of some type. No one knew my daughter had the second, and she was always in “gifted” classes up until high school. She started struggling during her sophomore year and plunged deep into depression and harmful behaviors. It was horrible, and so baffling. It turned out that she had ADD (inattentive type, without the hyperactivity: basically she just got bored REALLY easily!) She could focus and excel at things she was interested in, but struggled mightily on many subjects. Once she was diagnosed, and learned compensatory skills and strategies, she was able to succeed again.

I really, really wish we’d figured this out sooner, because it was a very painful period for our whole family. I’m not saying I think that’s what’s wrong in your case, but it might be something worth investigating.

Unfortunately, many public schools are not interested in supporting this type of kid. One or the other (gifted OR learning disabled) but kids who are both often fall through the cracks because they are so smart that they aren’t abjectly failing. But they’re not preforming to their abilities, and can often become very depressed as a result.

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There are plenty of ways to provide enriching activities to a third grader with his PEERS outside of school. Start looking for some things like that. Also encourage his social growth with his peers as well. Yes, learning is I oortant, but there is a lot more to growing up than being book smart. Help him find some great activities to do with his friends, have play dates. Agree, not too young to take part in recreation sports programs, and beginning instrument lessons. What about Boy Scouts?

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I strongly disagree with MiamiDAP’s suggestion that American schools are for the lazy. Past posts indicate that this poster’s child is very bright, perhaps even gifted. My experience with several parents of gifted kids, especially immigrants, is that they are used to their circle of friends and relatives usually being similar in ability and often their home country education sorts these kids from the general population, skewing their concept of average. Our American public school system takes all children and offers an education to all abilities through HS in the same setting.

Sounds like a gifted 3rd grader. This is a typical age for many school systems to begin figuring out who is gifted and who has been doing well simply because of the home environment advantages. Of course the child has had the ability since birth but schools do not always want to recognize it. As posted by another- definitely contact your schools gifted and talented coordinator- whatever position. You should also go to websites for gifted- Hoagies and the Davis Institute come to mind (but my gifted kid is now post college). Public libraries should also have books you can read- they were coming out as my son was in school.

I know there is the Midwest Talent Search and Johns Hopkins has one on the east coast- there’s one for the west as well. The Midwest one offers a mechanism to test kids in usually 5th (sometimes 4th) grade that can help sort out levels and areas of giftedness- usual testing may put all of the gifted kids at the 99th %ile. Years ago the test results for 5th graders included many very helpful suggestions about what to do with the level your child tested at. Very useful when schools don’t have the resources to pinpoint how far above the top of the scale kids are.

Good luck maneuvering through the system. It is worth it. You will face issues of meeting academic and mage maturity- that part of being gifted. Chronological and intellectual age mismatch. So much more I could expound on, but plenty of resources now available.

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Yes- some are twice exceptional. And others are misdiagnosed with ADHD because they are bored and young. We let the school test our son when his first grade teacher was concerned- yup, bored and therefore not paying attention instead of being attention deficit. I also spent several years on a district parent GT committee and learned a lot. Fascinating field.