Maybe it’s a confidence issue or that he’s afraid that he’ll say the wrong answer. Encourage him, and when he does answer a question correctly, praise him. No matter how slow it takes him to answer, if he gets it right, just say good job! It’ll boost his confidence. Best of luck!

find out what he likes most, eg. arts, scince, sports find learning game that use the things he likes

i dont think he has to be made smarter i think its just that he needs to boost his confidence and get rid of the habit of being so shy. i think he doesnt answer the teachers because he is afraid of being wrong even though he knows the answer , what you can do it praise him when he does something good , and maybe study with him , make him say the answers and you ask the questions , it will boost his confidence when his teachers ask the same questions or something alike to it. and if he is being shy you can try taking him to talk to his teacher after class or during a parent teacher conference and let him listen to the teacher praise him and maybe get him to talk to the teacher as a friend so that he isnt afraid of answering their questions etc. , if he doesnt learn how to do this while he is young it could hurt him in the future academically and professionally so please work with him about it now to spare him of that.

If he’s intelligent, leave him alone. If you want him to be more outgoing, encourage him, love him and make sure your home is a safe place. Safe place meaning he won’t be judged and doesn’t have to jump through hoops for you.

Dangerous thing putting pressure on a kid. Read the question posted in TeenPreteen I don’t want to go back to school” by thenerve747.

First off, I’d suggest trying not to stereotype him. What in the heck does too quiet for a boy mean? He isn’t just a boy…..he is HIMSELF and however he is would be what is normal for HIM. Some boys are quiet. Some boys are loud. The same goes for girls.

You say he is intelligent but slow at his classwork. Could it be that the classwork is too easy and very boring to him so he doesn’t see the point of doing it? If so, talk to his teacher about differeniating curriculum in order to give him more of a challenge. Set a meeting with the teacher to see what options there are to make school more challenging for him. Is there a gifted program that he might be able to test into?

Or maybe he is just shy and needs to have more confidence instilled in him? Maybe he isn’t sure that he has the right answers? If that’s the case, I’d work on praising him. Again, I think a meeting with the teacher might be in order so that you can make a plan to work together to build him up and make him more confident in his abilities.

do you take the time to read and help him with his home work ..
There is nothing wrong with a 7 year old that is quiet even if it is a boy. He don’t need toys. he needs you to spend more time with him.
He may be slow at giving the right answer because of a lack of confidence.. that is also where you come in when you are helping him with his home work.. praise him when he is right and don’t criticise when he isn’t will give him the confidence to answer more quickly..
he will get smarter in his own time. if he has you there to help him along..
To give a child praise in what he does is the best help that you can do for them..
hope this helps a little bit.

okay…that dosent have to be a problem at all considering the fact he is intelligent.

What i would suggest (from the experience of my friend) is
1) try spending more time in things he finds difficult and encourage things he knows and in things he does best making him do more of it and slowly gradually increasing the intensity of hardness.

2) if he doesnt feel like doing anything in particular, try not pressurising him but keep his mind occupied.

3)Encourage more interaction between his friends and teach him to be open and frank and not to be afraid of anything.

as far as the slow work is cincerned…children usually take things at slow pce so its pretty normal for a kid.
I hope this works but it sure did for my buddy.

Get him out in Nature more. Take walks with him in the woods and talk about the plants and animals that you see. Take him for walks along rivers and lakes and oceans and ponds and waterfalls and talk about gravity and fluid dynamics and evaporation and snowflakes and rain and clouds. Fly a kite with him in the wind and talk about the sky and weather and the spinning Earth and day and night and the seasons. Make fire with him and talk about the Sun and energy and heat and waterwheels and steam engines. The more a child sees’ Nature, the smarter they are.

the articles below maybe of a help to you… it is about everything you need to know or you can do to take care and improve the capabilities of your kid…

good luck

The issues children can have with school can be so varied and have so many causes (including causes that have nothing to do with the child and may instead have to do with the teacher, the environment, the subject) it isn’t as simple as getting him any toys.

On the one hand, you say he is intelligent. On the other, you ask about toys to make a kid smarter. If he’s too slow doing his classwork its either because he is struggling with knowing the material or else because he’s not applying himself. Another possibility is that he’s trying so hard to do things very carefully it is slowing him down. You and his teacher probably have a good idea which of these three possibilities it is.

If he’s just not applying himself all the toys in the world won’t solve the problem. There is something bigger going on with him with regard to his motivation in school.

If he’s working really hard to do his work perfectly the result would be very neat, close-to-perfect work that may not quite be finished.

If he’s struggling with the material to the point where it has slowed him down then he needs assistance being caught up with the rest of the class on whatever the class has worked on recently.

Being slow to respond to questions is a separate thing. When I was a kid I knew all the answer because I had no trouble in school. It looked to me like it was important to the other kids to get the answer right. I didn’t care. I’d just sit and let everyone else answer. He could be doing that.

If he is slow to answer when he is asked a question directly by the teacher he could be nervous.

There is the chance that if he’s a quiet boy who isn’t aggressive, and if the school is the kind of school that has a lot of aggressive kids in it and teachers who adopt a voice and behavior that is aimed at more aggressive kids, then you son may just have a general, over-all nervousness in school that is making him tense and not able to concentrate or apply himself. (Just another possibillity).

With all due respect, I don’t know your little boy, but he’s not too quiet for a boy. He’s a boy who happens to be quiet and who may not fit your idea of how boys should be; but the world is full of quiet boys. Since he is quiet, though, there’s the chance the school may be a little too intimidating for him if they allow kids to run around, encourage kids to speak up freely, and generally reward slightly aggressive behavior.

You need to figure out if the problem isn’t with your son alone but is instead a problem with the combination of him and the school. If the school is kind of overwhelming for this quiet child he’ll be stressed out. People who are too nervous and stressed out can’t concentrate. The result will be that while the teacher is teaching a subject he won’t be able to listen or concentrate on it. He won’t learn the subject sufficiently, and when the papers come around he’ll struggle with them. There can be intelligent kids who miss what is being taught, but if that goes on long enough the child falls behind. This makes everyone involved believe the child isn’t as intelligent as he is, including the child.

He’ll feel insecure because he thinks people expect him to not be very intelligent, and it may make him nervous about answering a question for fear he’ll give a stupid answer. He may even be self-conscious about giving what he knows is the right answer because he may feel that the teacher and other kids don’t think he’s smart. He may worry that if he gives even the right answer everyone will be shocked and somehow make a big deal out of it.

The best things you could do for him are 1) spend time with him trying to make sure he knows the subject matter, 2) give him a lot of whatever kind of books may catch his interest - books that have a combination of pictures to look at and words, maybe books that are about some kind of adventure or even books about some tv show he likes or whatever subject he seems interested in.

You need to rule out learning disabilities as well. You could bring him to a psychologist for an educational evaluation. Some insurances pay for this. An educational evaluation will show exactly what level he is at in each of the different types of thinking skills. Usually, children with school issues are also recommended for a vision and hearing check just to rule those out as possible problems. Learning disabilities tend to be linked to intelligent children.

Something I learned was probably a mistake, and that was when my oldest son was young he didn’t have much fat in his diet. There is some work that has been done for people with epilepsy, and it turns out some fat in their diet can help stop seizures. I’ve noticed that fat helps me to be able to concentrate. I’m not suggesting a high-fat diet, but if you’re doing what I did (which was thinking fat wasn’t good and keeping it to a real minimum) there’s the chance your son may be able to work better and calmer if he had at least a good glass of milk or some eggs or cheese or tuna.

At this point, your son is in second grade. If this has gone on for a while with him he’s probably already getting to think that he isn’t quite as up to school work as the other students are. He’s probably already starting to lose his self-esteem.

What you don’t want if he doesn’t have any learning disability but may have something going on as I described above, is for the school to point out how he’s behind and start talking about learning disabilities. You need to keep in mind that there is a difference between having trouble learning because of a learning disability and being slower in school work because either you’re just a slower writer or else because you couldn’t concentrate on the material and now can’t do the paper very easily.

Talk calmly to him and see if you can get a feel for whether he’s nervous in school or whether he thinks the teachers yell or whether he feels like the other boys are kind of rough. Try to figure out if he got previous subject-matter completely. If he was in first grade last year and only was able to concentrate enough to get, say, 75% of what was taught; then this year he starts off with a deficit. If he’s in first grade this year, he still needs to pick up what is being taught each day if he’s to do the work quickly and easily.

One other thing: Is there any chance the teacher is making a bigger deal out of this than she/he should? Sometimes there’s a teacher who picks apart children when children do vary in how fast they work.

Being intelligent and being a good student can be two different things. If your child, by any chance, has a learning problem or even a vision problem, then that needs to be addressed by people who know how to deal with it. If, on the other hand, he shows no signs of a learning problem and is just slower than everybody else (but gets the work right when he does finish) somebody just needs to accept that he’s slower.

If he shows no signs of a learning disability but has lost material in school for some reason, and that’s what’s making him do the work slowly; then you need to try to figure out if the problem isn’t with him but is with the school. I know most parents aren’t brave enough to blame the school because it doesn’t seem like the reasonable thing, but I learned the hard way that it can be the school.

If he has fallen behind with reading or spelling there are programs like Hooked on Phonics and other programs that make a game out of reading and spelling. If he’s lost ground with math facts get a little pack of flash cards and make a game of that. He needs to be at grade level in spelling, reading and math facts if he is to go on and be able to do next year’s work.

I learned that little boys who are only children for their pre-school years can enter school as little gentlemen because of the attention they may get from their parents. They get to school and find themselves with the youngest son of a family of six kids and a father who taught him how to fight when he was three. There are real cultural differences, and the only answer I can think of to that problem is a school where there are more little gentlemen. (A gentleman doesn’t have to mean a sissy. Intelligent little boys tend to be more gentlmanly than average little roughhouse boys.)

Well, I’ve offered some thoughts and guesses about your little boy because - believe me - I know what you’re going through.

One last thought: There is the chance that he may be quite intelligent when it comes to things like social thinking or other forms of thinking, but it is possible he could actually be a little less advanced (or even behind) when it comes to processing verbal and/or math information. If this is the case, what he probably needs is either tutuoring or else help from some patient person at home.

Don’t be afraid to consider the possibility that the school may be a little less gentlemanly than makes for his best learning environment or that the teacher may just be on a different wavelength than he is. When the problem is the school environment or the teacher the school and/or the teacher aren’t likely to have that occur to them. Their first thing is to assume there’s some problem with your child. Of course, you need to consider the possibility that your child needs to be made smarter, but don’t rule out the possiblity that it isn’t your child at all and that its the school (no matter how well intentioned or nice or whatever else the schools appears to be).

maybe he is just shy, give him a break!!!

why cant you just love him and accept him for who he is. maybe hes to smart for the work they are giving him and hes bored. thats what happened to my hubby, school work was always boring and he didnt want to it cause hes very intelligent. his iq at age 35 is like 142