I'm kinda smart. I spent a lot of time with my parents being told by teachers 'look, he's the brightest kid in his class, one of the brightest I've ever seen, he's just a slacker'. The pun is, down until the end of middle school, I was top of the class, even if I wasn't working remotely as hard as my classmates. In high school I struggled with depression and ended up failing twice of the next to last year (I attended one of the thoughtest high schools in my city, where they do their weeding out on the first year). I even had good grades in some subjects, I just did not show up for school.

My brother is kinda the same. Possibly even smarter than I am. He is smart. Like very, very, very smart. We both learnt English mostly on the net and on our own. He's taking the toefl this week, not preparing it, I'm pretty sure he's scoring north of 100. He was a really good chess player as a kid/early teen. I've never seen him failing to 'get' something. He's a bit self assured, but very smart.

We both struggle with self motivation. Mom was very grade-oriented when we were kids and helped us out a lot. She would replace our will. She would check up on us doing what we should and have us repeat to her the material we had studied. She recently told me she was in awe when I was a kid and I was able to memorize a quite long piece of poetry reading it twice. I have really good memory.

If I had to give you a piece of advice, that would be to try to teach your kid self-motivation. And not to praise his intelligence. If you keep trolling somebody he's smart, he has no reason to learn how to use it. Self motivation is the key.

You need to groom that aspect of his personality. My ex used to tell me that I was blessed with a gift (my ability to learn stuff) she would have killed to have, and acting like I did not know what to do with it.

Hopefully things will turn out ok. I'm in med school now (still struggling with willpower, from time to time). Bro's thinking about engineering or applying for universities abroad.