Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How to Hothouse Your Kid

Re "parents know their child best," I sometimes feel that I disagree with this, especially re hothousing vs. not. I have sometimes felt that a neutral but observant outsider is better able to assess my child's abilities and motivations better than I can, because they lack all the baggage we carry (of course, some outside observers will be lazy and/or clueless-it has to be a GOOD outside observer). For one thing, the child is not responding to the emotional relationship. Our children do really want to please us.

When my DD was about 18-20 months old, she started picking up a few sight words. I thought this was super-gee-whiz cool, and couldn't resist making some cards with more words on them to see if she could learn them (insert wince here). She was happy to play this game with me and seemed to find it kind of fun. At one point, she had about 40-50 sight words. But I was already posting on a different gifted board and managed to pick up a bit of self-reflection. So I put the cards away to see if DD would ask for them on her own. She never did.

She actually did not learn to read for real till she was almost 5, despite showing all the signs of readiness from a very early age. I don't know what the deal was, exactly, but in any case, she went (on her own--just started to do it) from Hop on Pop to early chapter books in a couple of months--self-taught, no instruction. I'm sure I could have taught her to read earlier, but I made the decision not to sit around and instruct. I felt like doing so would have been for me, to see what she could do. Probably, she would have done it. But she wasn't CHOOSING to do it.

This stuff can be hard for parents to perceive. It is also probably more relevant at younger ages, but still comes up later on in other ways. I watch myself for "irrelevant flashcarding." It's not so much that I am tempted to do this because I want my kids to be SUPER #1 SUCCESS. I rarely talk about my kids except for here! It's more that I find them super cool and am sometimes tempted to make them into little experiments--like, gee, can you do this if I ask you to?

MoN, we did that, too-- with reading. No more pointing to words as you read... all kinds of things to try to make DD "more normal."

I feel rather ashamed about that now.

You know, MON, you can only know something once you know it. You know more now than you did then. Everything you post here points to your being a terrific parent.

It sure is a process. We'll do our level best. It will have to do!

DeeDee

Some may say a bit of experimenting helps determine the child's interest, readiness, and whether there is a glass ceiling holding them back which may need to be removed for the child to continue learning and exploring at their own pace. Think of keeping the growth mindset (for parents, educators, children) and be glad to experiment, change direction, respond to various clues and circumstances.

Here is my fear with the "parents know best" theory. I think parents who think that and apply it to hothouse must feel that they have acquired a wealth of knowledge and it would be best to pass all that on to the child so that the child can stand on the shoulders of giants and see higher, achieve more. However, I can never do that because then I would feel like I am the limiting factor in how much dd can achieve. It is like I am setting the bars and every time dd jumps the bars that keep going higher and higher, dd feels like she has accomplished. But if I never set the bars, who knows how high she can jump and how quickly she can go from just jumping to soaring. So why am I setting those bars? The fear that by hot housing my child, I will limit her potential is really what's keeps me from doing it. I want to sit back and enjoy watching my dd become all she can and all she wants to.

My issue with "parents know best" is that what we really know best is what works/does not work for ourselves, based on our individual strengths, weaknesses, and personalities. Our kids are different. Some of those factors will be similar to our own, so we can recognize those, and use our unique insights to benefit the child. And some will not. The tiger mom version of "parent knows best" as an overriding parental strategy basically ignores the unique nature of the child, and tramples all over their individuality.

A better strategy is to be responsive to the unique nature of your child. And the problem with that is that the parent-child relationship is so dynamic... the parent responds to the child, the child responds to the parent, and signals get mixed.

It's very difficult to fully understand a human being who is hard-wired with a desire to please you.

May I ask, what is the "parents know best" theory alluded to on recent posts on this thread?

The idea that parents know whether or not something is crossing some bright line into "hothousing" from regular "good parenting."

I will confess that I personally didn't wait for my daughter to spontaneously begin reading. She was over 5 and based on her behaviour DW and I thought that she could read. She could point to a page and tell anyone exactly what it said. I then discovered that she had just memorised the pages from them having been read to her or she was guessing based on the pictures. I kept trying to persuade her to try really reading because it would open up entire worlds to explore - she remained unconvinced.

I knew that she could handle it because she did know the letter sounds. I sat down with her one Saturday morning and it took us a couple of hours of 'very intense' one on one work to get through a very small book. I just extended the letter sounds, helped her with some of the 'combination vowel' and 'silent' letters. Everytime I saw her guessing we went back to the start of the page. We worked through tears (I felt like Dr Mengele myself inside) but I 'knew' she was ready for it. With just that one session, something must have 'clicked' inside. After that her was reading like a champion. One year later she had torn through the entire HP series multiple times, Redwall, Percy Jackson and even the Hobbit.

Was that hothousing or did I just help her to overcome her fear of failure/fear of something 'not easy at first glance' and push through until the 'code' was broken?

All I know is that she has never looked back and in retrospect I am glad that we went through that barrier together. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

I think I "hothoused" teaching DD to ride a bike. I said "today you are going to learn to ride a bike" and I worked with her for about an hour non-stop and then she knew how to ride a bike. Who knows how long it would have taken otherwise.

I don't dare trying that with DS because he is clumsy and motor-delayed.