Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion I am a hot housing helicopter parent?

I saw the Public versus Private thread turning into a hot housing thread so thought that I would try to spin up this thread because a) it is something I worry about, b) because it may help to keep the original thread on track and c) because I find it hard to imagine that others would not be interested in this topic alone.

I saw the second guessing comment in the public vs private thread and it struck a chord with me. I tend to over think and second guess things constantly/periodically, doesn't everyone that isn't a zealot?

I agree with a lot of what Ultramarina and HowlerKarma have said wrt this. I also vividly remember a post by Dude in which he mentioned mentally bringing himself back from a precipice over this.

I my own case, I have a pretty bright daughter that I try to create life enriching opportunities for to the best of my limited ability. She is afterschooled in Maths - is this hot housing? I wonder because sometimes wrestle with this - shouldn't she be able to just through her school bag down when she gets home or should I keep her in her ZPD and avoid her learning that everything is easy so executive skills and study skills wither on the vine of her young life?

She also has 'an ear' and can pretty well tinker with a musical instrument like a recorder, xylophone or keyboard until she can make a passable tune. She also has taught herself to read music and usually just bangs out some stuff, just airs and improvisations for a few minutes on the piano to de-stress a bit when returning home from school. I do not have her in any piano lessons because ii am afraid to overcommit her time and take the fun away but by doing that am I a bad parent for not trying to help her develope an obvious aptitude?

Similarly, should I just allow her to 'work thing out on her own' and just deal with life not really relating to her age peers and barely a hand full of grade peers as something of an ugly duckling or should I try to find opportunities for her to mingle with other such ducklings and try to help her to believe that she will soar as a swan one day?

I had her take the Explore and the SCAT tests to try and qualify for some residential classes this summer - am I engineering her life too much or just being loving and supportive parent?

Surely I am not the only one here well into my umpteenth guesses never mind mere second guesses.

madeinuk, I am (I think) pretty much the polar opposite of a hot-house parent, so I usually don't weigh in on threads like this because I feel like it just sounds like I'm disagreeable lol! Really I'm not

Anyway, a few thoughts from here -


And really, isn't that what most parents do, just in different ways and from different points of view?


I'd call it hothousing if: 1) it's your idea, not your dd's idea and 2) you're doing it to keep ahead of some arbitrary grade level or achievement goal etc as opposed to doing it because your dd loves math and is simply interested in pursuing a personal passion. The exception to my arbitrary hot-housing definition is after-schooling in a subject such as math because a child is *behind* grade level and struggling.


Honestly, that's my goal for my kids - to be able to relax and have some fun. I think that we sometimes risk losing the best part of our children's intellect when we have them saddled down with constant tasks - even if the tasks are for good reasons. Most kids I know today (including my own) are so very scheduled - they are in school for most of the day, then have lessons and sports and clubs etc after school. When you add in homework, where's the time for just being a kid? To think outside the box, create, let your imagination run wild? To play with the neighbor kids? To just relax.


She sounds a lot like my ds - he takes piano lessons, but not traditional classical music etc type lessons - his teacher is a professional musician who composes, and she focuses his lessons on a teeny bit technique and the rest improv and composition. DS loves it!


I think a lot of gifted parents of gifted kids get really hung up on whether or not they should help their children develop strong skill sets. I also don't think those abilities and skill sets simply disappear as our children grow if they aren't in the forefront of being constantly nurtured. At some point, some day, our kids are going to find their own passions and as adults will no doubt fit those passions into their lives as best they can. I personally don't feel that it's going to make a difference 20 years down the road if my child won an award or a huge honor for studying music *if* he was put in the lessons by me simply because I felt he was talented. I feel that the lessons etc we choose for our children should be things that they can cultivate as an enjoyable pastime. And bonus if they are talented at it and earn high honors - that's great - as long as it's *their* success and they wanted it.


If she's unhappy, do everything you can to find her peers she can enjoy and relate to. I wouldn't necessarily expect them to *have* to be high IQ peers either. Maybe find a sport or an activity through her music etc. Something she'd enjoy. By the same token, having her try out a DYS meet-up etc isn't helicoptering if you let her give it a try and then don't push her into it if it turns out it's not her thing.


You're engineering opportunities - that's what most involved parents do and it's not hot-housing unless you're engineering in detail. By having her take the tests, you've opened up the door for her to attend residential courses. If she wants to go, now she can. If she doesn't want to go, you don't have to send her. If she doesn't want to go and you force her to go... that might verge on over-helicoptering.

FWIW, my ds has attended the CTY Intensive Studies residential camps and he loved it. So it is possible for a self-confessed no-time-for-hot-housing-mom to send their kids to camp

polarbear

I go through this too and forget that during the school holidays DD is a mare to deal with because she has no activities.

She is starting full time school next term and mow the big issue is whether she can carry on with her things or if she'll be too tired. Part of me thinks she should stop gymnastics as she is not improving but she freaked out when I told her and has started practising heaps more to get to where she wants to be. Soooo do I let her continue or force a break...

Anyway I'm sure all my friends think I'm hothousing but I know I'm not - she is always begging for more.

To some extent, soft skills like persistence and risk taking have to be modeled and inculcated more assertively in the gifted set because, frankly, so few challenging opportunities present themselves organically. If academics are the instrument of choice through which they are taught, then so be it. Most children are intrinsically motivated to learn these lessons in sports or extra-curriculars, or find challenge in routine curricula whereas, for many gifties, their passion is more academic.

I think of it this way: if my child had a motor disability that prevented walking, I would coach him until the point of zero marginal benefit to get his skills up to speed. Likewise, I would see myself as depriving my son of necessary soft skills if I didn't ensure he had at least one academic outlet that was challenging. Let me be clear: the academics (or whatever) themselves would be secondary to the goal of learning resilience.

I am, quite frankly, scared of what an "appropriate" challenge will look like as DS gets older. He is a black hole of hunger for information. I fear my brain is turning into a sponge that fills and subsequently empties itself into DS' head. Anything less than a breakneck pace is met with a behavioral regression, so I guess that's an answer-- follow the child until diminishing returns set in (or you collapse, the latter probably first.)

ETA: other potential constraints = you run out of time or money for more activities.

Look at the situation that the neurotypical kid faces:

* School is likely to be just hard enough. If the child shows some aptitude in a subject, they can usually access enough challenge or differentiation within their class to keep them happy. The parent never has to worry "is this too easy?" or "is this too hard?" The parent cares about the child's education, prompts them to complete projects and homework, and helps them as necessary.

* Enrichment is provided because of a perceived general benefit (he's in soccer and takes piano because it's good for him). While the child can have input, the parent can also dictate in order to create a more well-rounded individual. There's no expectation that the child will be great, but that's OK.

* An area of talent (music, sports, etc.) is usually nurtured. The child could be good, so the parent may encourage and push the child to work hard (coach says he's great for his age, we're talking about going out for the competitive team).

In the cases above, the parent wouldn't be judged harshly. They would be considered to be normal caring parents (yeah, I didn't like piano lessons either, but it's good for 'em to have some music background). No one minds that the parent cares about their child's academic progress. And hey if he's good at soccer, he should try hard -- maybe get a scholarship!

Now, let's look at the child who is struggling with a LD:

* School is going to require ongoing monitoring and management. Advocacy must be performed, accommodations must be made, the parent must continuously ask "is this too hard", "is this too easy?" They have to marshal resources to help their child be happy and successful in school. The parent cares about the child's education, prompts them to complete projects and homework, and helps them as necessary.

* Enrichment may be necessary for the child to reach their potential. Various therapies and tutoring may be needed. This puts additional pressure on the child and parent but it's important for the child's success and happiness.

* Areas of talent are absolutely pursued. The child receives encouragement and opportunities to reach their potential (she's always struggled in school but she dances like an angel, we hope to send her to an arts high school).

The parent in this scenario, far from being considered a hothouse or helicopter parent, is praised for doing everything that they can do help their child. No one minds that the parent cares about their child's academic progress and is willing to put additional time and effort into that goal.

Now consider a child with a high LOG:

* School is going to require ongoing monitoring and management. Advocacy must be performed, accommodations must be made, the parent must continuously ask "is this too hard", "is this too easy?" They have to marshal resources to help their child be happy and successful in school. The parent cares about the child's education, prompts them to complete projects and homework, and helps them as necessary.

* Enrichment may be necessary for the child to reach their potential. Afterschooling, tutoring, academic camps and classes may be needed. This puts additional pressure on the child and parent but it's important for the child's success and happiness.

* Areas of talent are weighed and prioritized and some of them are absolutely pursued. The child receives encouragement and opportunities to reach their potential. However they may not be able to pursue all their talent areas, so choices must be made (she's a talented pianist, but really loves painting more and is studying with a local artist, plus her swimming schedule means she does't have time for everything she wants to do).

This parent is a terrible hothousing helicopter parent. Shame on them for pressuring their poor child, robbing them of their precious childhood! Boo hiss!

OK, I know this is terribly stereotypical (and doesn't even touch on the challenges parents of 2e kids face).

Our benchmark is longterm happiness. If what we're doing will make her happier in the long run (since, like any child, there are times when she'd rather goof off than do homework in the short run) then we feel OK with it. Coasting cause you're smart... not so good for the happiness.

Well...since you asked, I'll maunder on a bit.

The US has problems that create a gifted education gap. One problem is the conflation of high achievement with giftedness. Another one is that competition for college slots and good jobs is increasing. The result is that "top" colleges tend to look for high achievers, and parents and high schools naturally try to produce them. So we get a situation where everyone is supposed to look highly gifted. We also get an arms race: once upon a time, we had a limited number of older high school kids achieving like college kids via AP classes. Then AP got too popular and the stakes got raised, and now we have differential equations classes in high school and science fairs or internships or what-have-you in which teenagers look like graduate students or postdocs. We have spelling bees in which 12-year-olds memorize words they will never, ever use, like synecdoche and ingluvies. Focusing on spelling rules and Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit roots isn't good enough anymore (even though it may be way, way more beneficial to the kid). No, today's winners have to study the dictionary for 4-6 hours a day, every day because that's what winners do . Welcome to the new childhood. And no, a person with an IQ of 150 will not be competitive while studying for 60 minutes a day.

Plus, we get test prep for kindergarten and damaging pseudo-philosophies like Amy Chua's being taken seriously by too many people, many of whom are probably terrified that their kids will "fail" (i.e. get Bs or Cs, which means the same thing these days as far as college admissions are concerned). We also get things like algebra-for-many in 7th grade, which is presumably a response to algebra-for-all-or-most in 8th grade.

It's not about learning. It's about winning.

So the parents of extremely intelligent children can get stuck in a trap. We're trying to do the best for our kids, but are making decisions in a whirlpool made of conflicting messages, half-truths (or lies), and the loudspeakers of fear, dialed up to full volume.

It's hard enough to make good decisions that will affect a child's future, regardless. For the HG+ crowd, the difficulty is compounded by schools that frequently refuse to recognize high levels giftedness and see high achievement wrung out of studying all summer and every weekend as being its equivalent. In other words, the schools don't generally provide appropriate alternatives for HG+ kids and we're stuck. Here's another division worksheet, Lisa. There, I differentiated.

This leaves us making least-worst decisions on behalf of our kids (e.g. grade skips, subject acceleration, after-/homeschooling, etc). If schools organized themselves so that kids could go at their own pace, the problem wouldn't be as bad. But they don't. If they hired math specialists who truly understood both the subject and how to teach it, the problem wouldn't be as bad. But they don't. If we got away from industrial metrics like scores on high-stakes tests, the problem wouldn't be so bad. But we don't. If the colleges would reform their admissions practices and stop trying to push down their percentages of admitted students...etc.

So, of course you're second-guessing. It means that you're paying attention and that you care. We're all stuck in a situation that's designed not around learning about important ideas and how they fit together, but around 1) multiple choice tests that evaluate the teachers rather than the kids taking them, and 2) winning the college admissions race.

What Val said. Also-- what Ivy and Aquinas both said, too. We're living the consequences of not having achieved getting our DD into her proximal zone of development academically. It's been ugly, let me tell you. This is a child that has never done "homework" or actually "studied" anything. Passively picking it up was enough-- even for AP coursework, and even at 12-14yo. Well, the sudden transformation in her life circumstances has been-- um-- unpleasant, to say the least. She also lacks emotional coping skills for something which has proven to be SUCH an insult to her self-concept. This is no joking matter.

I know that we were (often) termed helicopter parents, and I'm equally certain that we were seen as relentless hot-housers, to boot. We weren't doing a cyberschool because we wanted to PUSH our kid faster, by any means. We were doing it so that we could (hopefully) keep things "even" enough for the next level-- and make sure that gaps didn't go unaddressed even if she COULD kinda compensate for them, mostly unnoticed by anyone but us. So if that is hothousing ("No, honey-- those are NOT what I call "notes" from that chapter. Please try again.")-- I'm guilty.

My standards were always higher than the school's-- but I had my reasons, as noted above. I had a good idea what was coming in college. It was clear as day that the people running secondary these days DO NOT.



More generally:


There aren't even colleges that are intended for high potential and deep thinking anymore-- that's what we're seeing, anyway.

Sure, there are opportunities to get into a research track early-- if you are one of The Winner's Circle, that is. Meaning-- high achieving, even relative to the college cohort you're a member of.



I've noticed that my DD's college courses are not about understanding anymore-- nope. They're about VOLUME, baby... that way the strivers have a way of "working harder" their way to possible achievement right alongside the genuinely high LOG...



um-- well, no, actually, since that ISN'T, in point of fact how many people at high LOG manifest that high ability in the first place.

Oh, bother. I guess that means that it ISN'T really suitable for "gifted" students after all. But we have put it in reach for those who are willing to sell their souls for a little more black market adderall. So it's all good.



My daughter cannot count on being able to do what we (and she) call "well" on exams merely by very thoroughly understanding, say.... philosophy. Nope. Now she has to spend a long time MEMORIZING 100 dates and terms verbatim in the hope of culling enough brownie points with memorization.


In other words, I'm really, really glad that I listened to Jon at least enough to not tell her that "college will be Better! Different, you'll see!" because-- it isn't.


College is the new high school. Only, new and improved, with additional performance and time pressure, and more complexity than any of us recalls as students.

Welcome to hell.

I'm sorry to sound kind of bleak here, but I tend to think that it is wiser to be pragmatic.

College is not (any longer) necessarily going to be "all that" for a truly gifted student.

Many of their peers are going to be hot-housed kids (or Tigerkids, or something along those lines), and relatively few of them are there for anything but the-- um-- WINNING.

So with that in mind, make sure that your kids have a good-- GOOD-- set of coping skills, excellent impulse control, and self-efficacy in place. Make sure that they have time-management and stress-management skills like an air-traffic controller.

Make sure that they don't expect post-secondary to be "all about LEARNING!!" because it isn't necessarily so.

It's about acing exams, checking the right boxes, getting the right people to notice you at the right time, getting signatures, completing the right number of meaningless tasks (right, wrong, or otherwise), and racking up the proper credentials along the way to a (presumably) golden ticket.

DD has been horrified by how many of her classmates (even honors students) simply do. not. care. if they retain ANYTHING after a final exam in a course. It makes her sad-- and lonely.

I don't know if this is the particular institution that she's at (though it has a very good reputation as a public research institution) or what, but this has been mind-boggling to me. It's the young adult version of Val's spelling bee description.

It sounds like the only way to win this game is by not playing it.

But then, what does that look like?

Reflecting about the difficulty of achieving adequate challenge for the most outlying of the outliers: I'm not the PG member of my family, so admission to a competitive STEM grad program did finally teach me (sort of) some work/study skills. But my PG sib never did encounter an educational setting where study skills were necessary, even radically accelerated +8 years. (My mom to PG sib: "Don't you need to study for (PhD) qual(iying exam)s for tomorrow?" Sib, 20 minutes later: "All done, Mom." Aces them, of course.)

I think the issues with needless volume (aka, busywork) were probably less with STEM subjects back then...I hope they still are! Otherwise, my conceptual, non-memorizing children will be equally disappointed with college.