He hates to do work
My 10 year old hates to do "work" and always has for the most part.
Do you enjoy doing things you see no value in, that you believe are a waste of time?
Why should your son feel any differently?
Just because someone else sees something as worthwhile, does that mean it is worthwhile? Do you want your son to believe that he should just accept someone else's idea of what's important and shove aside what he believes to be important? Is the purpose of life discovering and doing what "experts" think is important?
If he can't explore what he feels is important to discover what he likes and dislikes, then the alternative is to memorize what others think is important and do that.
(And then spend oodles on self-help books and therapy as an adult trying to figure why he's not happy since he's doing all the "right" things that experts told him were important.)
He hates to write, doesn't really enjoy reading although he reads wonderfully. He is highly gifted and learns differently from children his age.
Your words are saying he isn't reaching his potential. You have a bar you think he should be reaching and he's not. So he's not perfect in your eyes.
What if your husband felt like that about things you didn't feel were important? What if you loved to write and didn't much care for cooking. What if your husband shrugged off your writing as playing and felt you had the potential to be a great cook. What if he was disappointed that you weren't reaching the potential to be the good cook he felt you had in you?
How would you feel about him and the atmosphere he was creating around what made your heart happy (writing) and what you did for convenience's sake (cooking)?
All of my children are bright children.
Obviously we all think our kids are bright in their own ways :-) But it might be useful for you to think about why you'd need to announce to strangers that your children in particular are bright. Why would you want us to know that? Because .... You have certain expectations that you don't think they are or will live up to through unschooling? That yours are special in ways ours aren't so we need to take that into consideration with our answers?
Just something to think about why you needed to say that.
If we say nothing and limit nothing, video games are it. We limit him to 1 hour a day during the week and 3 hours a day on the weekends.
So if your husband felt that reading books wasn't as good a use of your time as other choices, then it would be okay for him to limit you to reading for some arbitrary time that he felt was wastable like 15 minutes a day? How would you feel? How would you feel about him? How would you feel if your favorite author published a new book and you knew you could only read it for 15 minutes a day? Would you want to sneak and read more? Would you feel like you wanted to escape that oppressive atmosphere? Is that what you want your son to feel?
My first question is if I limit his time on things am I still allowing him to be a free spirit and unschooling?
If your husband limits your freedom on just some things in ways you feel are wrong, is he still allowing you your freedom?
