ADHD Anxious Gifted Kid

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I just got back my 10 year old's Iowa test scores. He has ADHD and anxiety and is homeschooled.

It turns out that the subjects he dislikes the most are the ones for which he has a special talent. He thinks he is bad at math and reading and it seems to be unpleasant for him to practice these things, but he is doing so well with them that he is off the chart with his achievement scores.

I figure that since he has ADHD, perhaps it feels boring to him? But if a person is so much better at something than other people, shouldn't it feel enjoyable to do those things? Why would it feel hard to do something you are good at? Does anyone have any insight about this? Has anyone experienced something similar?

My hope is that your child might be able to give you the necessary feedback. With my son, he was always the best source on himself, even if understanding what he was telling me took some extrapolation -and patience - on my part. We did a LOT of situation autopsies. If your child has trouble talking about his thought processes, consider making up fill in the blank stories with characters encountering things you’ve observed, and ask him for insight into the characters. Getting into his brain on this would give you some very useful information.

I think people enjoy being challenged, so long as the challenge is manageable.

With that in mind, it's easy to see how if he's absolutely crushing it in a few subjects he might need more difficult material in order to maintain interest.

It may be that the standard way math is taught is not very useful for your child. If you explore alternatives, youtube videos or web sites, you might find something that he would find more useful.

Being gifted puts a target on your back for bullying.

Maybe he is worried about that.

I can read exceptionally fast. That resulted in a bad situation in a classroom setting and I learned how to avoid appearing exceptional.

My oldest is GT and ADHD and ASD. One of his areas of strength was spelling. As far as I know he has never spelled a word wrong. This is NOT my gift. My wife always claims that I am wrong. He did misspell a word once on a spelling test (exactly and only once). Spelling homework, however was a nightmare. All the clever, time consuming tedious rote learning exercises he learned nothing from (he naturally picks up spelling just by reading) but they all required executive function. One of his weaknesses.

Math is another story. My youngest thinks he is bad at math. He is GT and ADHD. He has two older siblings, a sister who is 8 years older and a brother who is 10. Hard to keep up with them. All three are gifted. He is actually above average in Math but has poor emotional self control so he gets frustrated easily. He is poor at pure rote learning but picks up concepts quickly. He and I are both terrible at spelling and writing feels like a chore. He likes audio books and reading. But a reading grade in school is actually a writing grade most of the time. You get measured on reading by how you write about reading. His brain is hyperactive so sometimes he skips around when he reads, he might miss part of a question and only answer the other part. Or skip a question entirely even though he knows the answer. But he knows many things not even on the test. So the map is not the territory.

Thank you all for your responses. Your thoughts are very much appreciated.

I had a lightbulb moment reading Fenn's response. Especially these parts:

I have a lot of ADHD people in my family, but the sad truth is that I did not grow up with those people. I spent little time thinking about how their brains worked. I myself am a regular old neurotypical and I click most with autists. I try to respect the different thinking of my son, but his brain is still such a mystery to me. It is hard for me to know what questions to ask, and hard for him to explain things to me.

Thank you all again.