2nd Grade

Up until this year, Alex has breezed his way through school. His teachers have adored him, he's excelled way beyond his grade level and was placed in GT in Kindergarten. Now, here we are in second grade, which happens to be the first year that report card grades are numbers as opposed to letters and we are struggling. He's certainly not struggling to learn the second grade material, he's struggling with the most BASIC tasks. His handwriting is atrocious. He naturally rushes through the classwork because it is simple which in turn makes his handwriting even worse than ordinary. He is bringing home class work with failing grades regularly. He rushes through the most SIMPLE assignments and ends up getting half the questions wrong because of it, either that or he completely skips questions, or entire pages...during class. Something I have no control over. Up until this year his teachers have been so accepting of handwriting weakness, even told me how in the big picture it's not that important, but it is. He's missing questions because his "a"'s look like "u"'s, and his "g"'s look like "Y"'s. Silly stuff that I know is important, but really?? Important enough for my son to fail? I'm so upset. I don't know what to do other than keep these failing papers and make him redo them on the weekends...which we WILL be doing this weekend. So far second grade has not been about learning academics, it's been 100% about learning to conform. I know he needs to learn this. It just makes me so sad to see him struggle with work that he was able to do in KINDERGARTEN, meanwhile, he's spending so much time on these BASIC tasks that it really feels like he's missing out on learning new things...learning about the things that he sooo desperately wants to learn about. I feel like he's a sponge that's drying up while dotting his i's, and perfecting his handwriting. I know his interest in learning is going to slowly diminish, it's only natural. I want to pull him out of class and feed that thirst, but I can't