I realize it's 5 years later, but I am posting my experiences for anyone else who may be reading this thread. I am a parent of a middle-school boy with attention-type ADHD. He was diagnosed in 4th grade and has been on medication since the last marking period of 4th grade. Yes, middle school teachers in general expect a student to turn in homework without being reminded. The students also have to take initiative to discover what work was missed during an absence (classwork and homework) and make up that work as well. All without teacher reminders. For my son, with ADHD and braces, who missed a lot of classes for dental appointments, this could have been a *disaster*. Medications can help. They can help enormously. And there are a whole class of stimulant medications that wear off by the end of the day, thus appetite returns and growth is not inhibited. Metadate is one; my son takes this with very positive results. Another thing that helps is ORGANIZATION. I have really got to hand it to our school system here in Maryland. Our 6th graders are assigned a binder system. The school has created a layout for how the 6th grade binder should look - where the notebook paper goes, how many tabbed dividers there should be and how they are labelled, where the pencil pouch should be and what is in it, sections for each school subject. Fantastic. They also are given an agenda book that they are required to fill in every day. It covers homework for each class and a section for brief notes or reminders. Our schools also have a program called AVID that begins in middle school. During AVID class, the binders are checked for neatness and adherence to the organizational system. Students are graded on their organization! The agendas are also checked to make sure they are being filled out properly and consistently. The kids are also taught how to take notes, how to study, and how to work through a problem that you don't understand, be it math or ancient Egypt. They work in small groups to work through these types of problems and answer each other's questions. I highly highly recommend it!

Wonderful photo! They look like they're planning some mischief. Crows are very smart. Julie

Roald Dahl (my favorite) Henry Huggins Books & other Beverly Cleary like Ralph S. Mouse (my other favorite) Encyclopedia Brown How to Eat Fried Worms The Chronicles of Narnia Zilpha Keatley Snyder (most of her characters are girls except in the Blair's Nightmare books, which I think are the best). Issac Bashevis Singer has an awesome collection of stories for children Gordon Korman (the Bruno & Boots books) Richard Peck Scott O'Dell The Great Brain series by John D. Fitzgerald (my absolute favorite) Gary Paulsen is a good author for boys but maybe for a little older boys. I haven't read the captain underpants but they are supposed to be great. Louis Sacher's "Holes" is our Seattle library's all-kids-read-the-same-book book this year. He also wrote "there's a boy in the girls bathroom" Some of my suggestions might be for when he is a little older, I can't really remember.

Both of our sons have been in the gifted/talented programs in our K-8 district. Older DS is now a freshman in HS, in all honors classes. OUr district does not "test for giftedness". Participation in the program is based on a combination of things, including teacher observations and recommendations, classroom observations by the gifted/talented teachers, test scores on the standard tests given to all the children (Gates-McGinity being one) in which they must score at 97% or above to be considered for the program. While the enrichment of the gifted program was fun for the kids, most of the programs at the elementary level are not geared to advance the subject matter, but more to advance the thinking process and depth of exploration of a subject. In other words, in the gifted classroom sections, the kids may work on the Civil War, which is what their classmates are also doing in the regular classroom. However, the gifted kids will do something with greater depth or challenge, but still on the same subject matter. Older DS participated in the MIdwest Talent Search sponsored by NOrthwestern University, and took the SAT (the same one taken by high school jrs and srs.)in 6th grade. Don't know if younger DS will be invited to take it, as he is only in fifth grade now. But again, the invitation came because of test scores on the standardized testing, not because of some special screening we did or testing we sought out. Kids can be gifted/talented in one area and not in others. There are some great websites and books on giftedness, but in truth a lot of the "characteristics" that they mention seem to be present in lots of kids I know. My older DS was a very early reader, like the poster's son. He was reading at a second grade level before he started kindergarten. But rather than seeing that as a problem, we saw it as a benefit for him as he went to school. It was. I will tell you that while there are things that the school can offer, you might also look into your local jr. college - they often have a "kids on campus" type of program, part of which is geared to gifted/talented kids, in which they can take advanced classes, etc. Gifted/talented kids can benefit by being in a regular classroom, and being leaders. Neither of our boys has EVER complained about being bored in school, whether in their regular classroom time or during gifted/talented classtime. Watch what is happening to your child, and seek out interesting experiences to enrich him, but do not let the concept of being "gifted" worry you, unless HE complains about his learning experiences.