I'm a K-2 math/science teacher with a son who began reading simple paragraphs at age 2. He just turned 3 and is gaining fluency. On rare occasions he'll read to others, at which point I inevitably hear, "She's a teacher, so I'm sure she works with him all the time."

Now, if I could teach 2 and 3 year olds to read, I would be demanding a dramatic increase in my salary... But such comments do lead me to wonder, "Can you seriously hothouse a toddler into reading?" I suspect you could teach them a few words, as a lot of kids this age begin to recognize some environmental print, but whole sentences and paragraphs? Really?

Maybe there are parents who successfully hothouse. If so, what in the world are they doing? Not that I'm advocating for it, I'm just curious about the mechanics and the rate of success.

With DS at that age I couldn't get him to wear clothes that he didn't pick out himself. We had to pin him to the floor by sitting on him just to brush his teeth. Encouraging him to try new foods was always a battle, one of his daycare workers photocopied a whole chapter of one of her textbooks labels "Finicky Eaters" and gave it to us at pick up one day. Forcing him to read against his will - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Getting him to do ANYTHING that he wasn't 100% invested in - ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Ditto chay's points. I could more easily move my condo a few inches to the left than have DS2 learn something he didn't already intend to do. Children can only learn when their brains are ready to learn.

Case in point: he pronounces piano as "py-ano" despite numerous corrections and my never having pronounced the word that way.

I think it would be difficult to do with a preshooler who is "average" but probably more kids could be taught to read earlier than they are in school if the parents put more effort into it. I tutored reading last year (grades 1-3) and the kids I worked with were probably average IQ, (and just below target for reading fluency) but clearly didn't learn how to read the same way my own two did. They had to read the same passages over and over and over before they became fluent, and every time they made an error I corrected it and made them read the sentence over again. At times I felt like pulling out my hair. These kids who were 8-9 years old were struggling more than my own kids did at age 4. So if someone had tried to "hothouse" them in preschool, they would have given up after about 1 day--it would have been way too frustrating and impossible for the kids. I do think a kid needs to be above average IQ to learn reading in preschool but probably not "gifted". My SIL is a teacher and thinks her own child is brilliant because he started to read before kindergarten. She spent tons of time talking about letters, letter sounds, etc. I would guess he's above average but not gifted (I refuse to use the term hothouse in her case since it sounds so negative--I don't think there's anything wrong with what she was doing and save the term for clearly pushy parents who are trying way too hard with a kid who isn't ready).

The Teach Your Baby To Read people reckon you can. I see no reason to doubt it - babies and toddlers learn much harder things, like spoken language. I considered, before DS was born, whether to go that way, read up on all sides of the argument, and decided it wasn't a good idea, better to leave teaching reading to schools. Then I had DS, who taught himself to read starting from before he could talk...

I don't know how anyone could teach a 2 year old to read if they weren't ready. Most 2 year olds don't even know their letters and the letter sounds. One of my DS's taught himself to read at that age, and started reading books to us by 3.5. He was able to learn to read fluently because he would ASK me to help him with certain words or sounds, though, not because I tried to teach him.

His twin brother (also gifted) on the other hand, wouldn't let me teach him how to write letters as a toddler/preschooler. Teaching him to read was never even a consideration, although he was taught letters and sounds. When he decided he wanted to read at age 5, the summer before K, he taught himself. He wouldn't accept any help at all. (If I even DARED to help him sound out a word; that was it for reading - the book was slammed shut.) His K teacher would often talk about how we "made" him such a good reader by working with him so much, which always gave me a good laugh. I tried to tell her that I didn't "teach" him anything, but she never believed me. I know she thought he was "hothoused" until she saw how quickly he progressed through the reading levels.

People want to believe that kids who learn to read very early were drilled by their parents and "hothoused" because it is alarming to them to see a child so far ahead of their own, as it makes them doubt their own child's progress and whether or not they have done enough. I can remember that I never told any of my friends or acquaintances that my DS could read at three because I knew they would think I was "pushing" him. I didn't even tell my sister.

At age four, he went through a stage of reading everything out-loud (signs, papers from school, etc.) so it wasn't something I could hide even if I wanted to do so. By that point, I think most of the people who knew him knew that he was "different" (ie- gifted) so it was more acceptable. He was one of those preschoolers that would elicit "He is so smart" comments every where we went because he spoke very well about complicated topics and had an extensive vocabulary for a preschooler. If his twin brother, who seemed more "typical" at that age, had also been reading, I would have been accused of "pushing/hothousing."

The science appears to back this up. A friend who is a childhood literacy specialist says that some children will learn to read on their own when developmentally ready; and some children have to be taught; but the age at which they are developmentally ready varies hugely, and that this capacity "clicks on" when the brain is ready.

Assuming my friend is correct, I don't see any point in pressuring toddlers to read.

DeeDee

I get the same thing--I taught high school English, not elementary, but people always asked me what I did to get my daughter reading. Well I read books to her. She was frustrated she couldn't read before she was talking much. After she had a huge language explosion at one, she started reading words too. She asked lots of questions and I answered. I let her play some starfall. And she was reading pretty well when two; fluent when three.

I sometimes do suddenly wonder if people assume she's where she is because if my hot housing her. But I just let her drag me along, and I like to think I'm pretty adept at providing an enriching environment, between both parents being in early childhood ed and DD being interested in many areas of my strength. Mostly when folks comment I just joke about her attending English class in the womb.

My first son didn't sit still for an entire book for a long time. A page here or there and then he was off to explore. I would just keep reading and pointing things out to him and laughing at funny things, or acting surprised or whatever (which would make him come over to see what all my emoting was about). I had a lot of children's music on tapes and cd's (which is funny because he absolutely HATES any kind of music now) which I think replaced a lot of the lap time reading because he could move around. Eventually, reading to him became so important to both of us and I remember he went from non-reader to fluent reader over spring break of K....and then progressed rapidly thereafter. I call it the 0 to 60 miles an hour plan. His K teacher was instrumental in providing the foundation (he already knew all his letter sounds) but the explosion I believe was that over Spring Break he just "got it" and when he put it all together it was like late 2nd grade level immediately. I do think that was just when he was ready developmentally to put it all together and crack the code.

I am an ESL teacher and have heard people say things like: You are a teacher, so you know how to teach reading. So I feel where you are coming from.

I met a mom in the school yard who said she had purchased your baby can read for her son. The directions stated that you should play two half hour videos for your baby a day - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. She said that she didn't find it helped her son learn to read in any way.

I think it is possible to hot house things like letter sounds. However, I think getting preschoolers to apply that knowledge when encountering new words so that they are be able to sound out words and blend phonemes would be difficult.

DH made the point last night that we push DD and lecture her about cleaning up all the time and she hasn't taken to that at all. If there is a method to Hot House picking up Lego, I will be the first to sign up. On the other hand I've never had to drill or lecture about reading.

So is it houthousing if a parent buys their child some alphabet books or BOB books or leapfrog toys and talks about letter sounds with their preschooler, or puts them on Starfall (assuming the kid is interested and willing)? Or is that just good parenting? What about math? Is it hothousing to ask questions like "If you have 3 cookies and I give you 3 more, then how many do you have?" Where is the line between providing some enrichment according to the child's abilities and hothousing?

We have some friends who are here on a work visa from India and they comment on how apathetic parents here seem to be about academics. They think the whole sports culture with parents dragging their kids from sport to sport is ridiculous. In kindergarten and first grade (and probably before) the mom made her daughter do math workbooks and by the time she was in first grade she was doing long division. I do also think that child was gifted (or close to it) and ready to learn the material. So is that hothousing? Obviously it's also a cultural thing but kids in Asian cultures do much better in math, so maybe it's not all bad. Is it hothousing to push a kid a little bit if they are clearly ready to learn advanced material?

My own DS in first grade is very lazy but we also have IQ results showing the 141 non-verbal IQ and he can clearly learn things quickly. So if I have him do math at the right level after school (since he gets no differentiated work in school), and he's not asking me for this, is that hothousing? He doesn't fight me on anything but doesn't ask for it either.

Just curious.

No. Not unless/until they happen to be developmentally ready.

What is true is that it's good to have an intellectually stimulating environment so that as they play and explore the world they can learn what their minds are ready for.

Blackcat, you seem really anxious about this.

I think a great deal has to do with the family's choice of how they want to live: it's personal and not one-size-fits-all.

Our choice has been to provide a stimulating environment (as 22B notes). There are a ton of books in our house and no cable TV, because that's what we prefer. We are actively math-friendly-- when we bake, we talk about fractions, and so forth-- but we do not give our kids extra schoolwork outside of school. Again, that's a matter of taste and family style.

We want our kids to have a balanced childhood with time for fun, music, and physical activity. If other families want different for their kids, that's OK with me.

My own kids happen to adore academic learning (in certain subjects, not across the board), so they casually pick up knowledge; I don't think I could stop them, so hothousing isn't a major issue for us.

I'd just say: do what seems right for your child's overall well being, whatever that looks like.

DeeDee

I'm not anxious about it and don't care what anyone thinks about me personally, I'm just confused. If people think I'm "hothousing" my lazy, gifted DS and use it as a negative term, that kind of bothers me, though.

My opinion is that it is hothousing when the child stops enjoying it or it substantially gets in the way of other activities.

I agree with Kai, I think. But I think it can be a gray area.

Let me emphasize that we KNOW that part of why upper-middle class children of educated parents succeed in school is because their parents have been talking to them about letters, phonics, math, etc since babyhood. I don't think there is any call to get hysterical about worrying that this is a bad idea. It is helpful to children, and more parents should be doing it. We just don't want to get totally out of control with it and push it so much that kids don't also play outside, do art, get muddy, have pretend tea parties, etc. In fact, I don't think many parents really create a hyperactive hothousey environment. It's too much work! I think the real concern is excess screentime, which may or may not be "educational."

My definition of hothousing would be:

- When the child is spending so much time on academic enrichment that it's crowding out play.

- When the child is given no choice to spend time on academic enrichment by a parent or guardian.

When both of those conditions are met, it's hothousing, because there's nothing wrong with compelling your child to work in short bursts, and there's nothing wrong with occasionally losing out on play time. It's when they're both part of the daily pattern that it's a problem.

And when you have a toddler with a passion for books, reading aloud to them IS play.

I can agree with this. But on the other hand, I continually get lectures from people about not working with DS enough in terms of his delays (he is 2e). I am supposed to be doing vision exercises, writing exercises, motor activities, etc. But I'm not, not on a regular basis at least. Because I'd have to fight him and it's unpleasant. So if I did do it, in one sense it would be hothousing (because DS doesn't want to do it and it takes time away from other things), but in another sense it would be good parenting. I guess I'm in the middle somewhere...I'm not going to let my kids totally slack off but I'm not going to get into a big battle either. I'm taking DS to OT and PT and swimming which is the compromise and that will have to be enough.

My ds11 refused, absolutely refused to do anything academically he didn't want to do. My older son (also gifted) wanted to do extra things when he was young but not my youngest.

For ds11, our style is very much like Deedee's. We're all a reading family, no cable TV, travel when we can, learn on the fly, etc. There's lots of room for play and dreaming because ds11 needs that time.

I think it is also a question of effort and return. If it takes ten times more effort to teach/train a concept at one age than it would at a later age maybe that is hothousing. Like if you spend two hours a day for two weeks to teach a kid the letter A.

On that principle, I wonder that kindergarten isn't functionally hothousing for a significant portion of kids attending.

You'd be surprised how motivating parental anxiety can be.

We're not concerned about too much (educational) screentime. We have lots of it in our house. It's part or our intellectually stimulating environment.

Doing therapy homework isn't the same thing as hothousing. Generally kids aren't in therapy unless they are struggling. When you require him to do the assigned exercises, you are doing what's necessary for him to become successful at the "work of childhood" (to quote my sons' OT).

I love to read...my children have learned to love reading (boy do they love reading)...in fact today I said the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree and my son said I thought it was apple doesn't fall far from the tree...(I looked it up and I think both are acceptable idioms...that is how we hothouse intellectual curiosity, it just comes up and we race to find out the answer as soon as we have the chance). I said that because he currently has three books going. I generally have a car book (for waiting for kids), a bedside book, and a purse book. He has a school library book (first one in a series on King Arthur), a classroom library book (4th in the Haddox series Among the Hidden), and a paperback book we own all going. Sometimes he will have a public library book in the mix too. And he should have a book in Spanish in the mix too but he "forgets".

Hothousing is when a parent determines the area of study or enrichment without asking for the child's input or considering their interest and continually enforcing the spending of afterschool time in learning and advancing in that area. In my neighborhood, there are "learning centers" for these things when the parent cannot hothouse. Afterschool vans pick up kids and put them in these centers where they drill math, science (and piano/violin and I don't know what else), prepare for math competitions, timed tests etc and it starts at the lower elementary level (one such program says proudly that their youngest participant is still in diapers!). And they send homework home (to take care of what little free time the kid might have). I think that is hothousing because there is no regard for whether a preteen boy wants to sit in a small room afterschool and spend time memorizing facts or playing the violin.

I can provide an interesting but non-rigorous perspective on whether or not you can teach a toddler to read.

My kids went to a small in-home daycare before they started school (12-15 kids). The woman who ran it is very bright and she used to do "school" with the kids every morning. One of the things they did every day was to learn letters and letter sounds (in addition to singing and a ton of arts and crafts). They also sounded out words.

Participation was voluntary. Kids could play if they didn't want to go to school. Most of them wanted to go to school because it was so much fun. They usually started when they turned 2.

I used to talk to this woman about how much the kids learned after 3-ish years of school with her. She told me that most of them would go into kindergarten knowing their letters and letter sounds, as well as being able to recognize a few sight words or even sound out some very basic words. She told me once that none of them learned to read like my DD had. Okay, DD wanted to work on reading at home, but at least some of the other parents had to have been doing stuff with their kids, too.

So, this was not a scientifically rigorous study by any means, but it was (continues to be) a nurturing environment that can't be called hothousing in the negative sense of that word. The kids were a fairly standard cross-section of the population: the parents were office workers from admins to engineers, as well as military people, people in allied health, tradesmen, etc. etc. I knew a very few kids who ended up in special ed. and a very few kids who will probably be in GATE programs (they're still too young).

Based on what I saw at daycare, I suspect that you can't teach a child to truly read before s/he's developmentally ready. There is presumably some sort of brain development that has to occur.

The ultimate in hothousing may be Amy Chua's book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother". There are many articles about and reviews of this book.

Carol Bainbridge, writing for About . com, has offered articles on the differences between nurturing and pushing/hothousing (link- http://giftedkids.about.com/od/glossary/g/hothouse.htm and http://giftedkids.about.com/od/nurturinggiftsandtalents/qt/pushing.htm and http://giftedkids.about.com/od/nurturinggiftsandtalents/i/nurture_push.htm)

There are resources and milestone guidelines available on parents . com, education . com, and many other websites, which may be used to enrich/encourage or to hothouse/force.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any particular resource or tool, only how it may be utilized... the difference being the degree to which something is genuinely of interest to the child or is parent-pushed. To an outsider it may be difficult to distinguish when a child is being "hothoused" from when a child is pressing up on a glass ceiling... a limit to growth which not everyone may see. For example: a child may be ready, able, and interested to read books above the level to which s/he is limited by what is available. The lack of higher level books may present a limit, or glass ceiling. A parent searching the library for 5th-grade-level books with their 1st-grader may be erroneously perceived as hothousing when they may simply be helping their child break through the glass ceiling.

Focusing on toddler/preschool age, children's brains are said to grow more connections in a positive environment. There are many scientific articles and also many for the general population. Some links which parents may find interesting- http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain, http://brainrules.net/brain-rules-for-baby. An enriched environment, including having simple books available, reading to, and talking with a baby may provide benefits.

There are many who push and press their kids to achievement and even to emulation of common characteristics of giftedness. A telltale sign may be the use of any adult-imposed external reward/punishment as an incentive for learning/performance, rather than the child feeling internally/intrinsically rewarded by attainment of the knowledge which answers his/her question. The use of external rewards/punishments was evident in the writings of Amy Chua, and may be more subtle among parents one encounters every day... for example giving a child his toy truck after he recites poems for the camera. Unfortunately hothousing can be successful because children often "want" to receive their rewards and avoid punishments, therefore they may "want" to learn/perform as dictated. This can be detrimental to a child.

A child who is pushed to excel may stop exploring or sharing what his/her current interests are, in order to avoid being pushed. They may also salve their resentment with comparative/competitive statements about being "better than..." or being "best", and develop a fixed mindset. They may feel inordinately threatened by others' growth in various areas, and exhibit strong negative reactions to others' success. This may be a sign that they do not feel valued as a person, but only by virtue of their performance relative to others. There may be many downsides to "hothousing". Rather than learning a balance between indulging in their own interests and passions, and the practice of self-discipline, respecting the needs/wishes/boundaries of others, they may learn to manipulate (as they may perceive that this is what has been role modeled toward themselves... how they have been treated).

I agree that this is negative--but is it hothousing or is it just aggressive, pushy parenting? Semantics, I guess...

Wow-- LOVE this.

I was trying to formulate something coherent here, and I think that Zen Scanner just nailed it.

That, along with Val's post-- I know that what we encountered with our DD was that people assumed, just as with other parents up-thread, that we MUST have been drilling relentlessly, or pushing really hard or something. Well, or that we had the recipe for some secret sauce-- being educators.

I honestly have no idea how my DD learned phonemes by 15-18mo old. But we deliberately did NOT expose her to learning materials so she wound up holding about 3/4ths of the tools for literacy for several years. I think that with the same "instruction" that we offered at 4yo, she COULD have probably learned to read at 2. She was ready. We were uneasy about following her obvious lead at that age. Seriously.

That's a really interesting point--it makes me wonder whether it might be the case that kids who read early basically have skewed brain development that puts the emphasis on different areas than other kids in the early stages--and then perhaps increases the possibility of delayed brain development in other areas, causing an increase in 2e-ness?? Almost like a micro-example of the changes in brain development during evolution (you know, something like they're talking about here).

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketsc...-delayed-genes-separate-human-brains-fr/

But maybe somebody like Simon Baron-Cohen has already written about something like that already, and I'd love to see it.

I think I hothouse and enrich. It is probably a "parenting a 2e kid" thing.

I consider enrichment activities things like watching documentaries, audiobooks, science, nature, art and music camps and programs. These things are of interest to him and don't require any push from us.

The hothousing comes in with addressing 2e issues. If he is asking to play Angry Birds, I might say "Sure, after you sit and read with me a bit" or "You can after you do 3 pages in your HWT workbook" or "Let's work on math facts or sight words first".

DS3.5 who started reading simple sentences around 2.5 and now is reading quite fluently (but in hiding ... and especially not in front of strangers) could absolutely NOT be hothoused! He won't even let ME read one single book to him. I've read 3 books total to him in his 3 and half years of life. It's all his work. It's either learning his way or no way! lol

Oh, and see, KJP, I call that "parenting." My definition for hothousing is much more than that.

I think that pragmatically, it's hothousing when most objective outsiders, possessed of omniscient observation of the entire parent-child relationship, would assert that particular activities are for the parent's benefit/goals/wishes, and have NOTHING to do with the child's interests, in spite of what the parent rationalizes.

Amy Chua stuff, in other words.

Honestly, we're pretty firm about the need to do things like practice the piano (even though DD seldom WANTS to), but it's very definitely not about our own desires, nor about some fantasy of our own regarding the activity. DD is not going to become a professional musician, and while she is easily talented enough to be a proficient amateur performer if we PUSHED her enough, that isn't why we insist on piano. We insist on it because it is important for her to develop the habit of discipline and see for herself that results are proportional to effort.

I've definitely done some things that might seem like hothousing... but they are really about parenting a child with a will of iron and the judgment of her chronological years. LOL. I had to laugh at the observation about another poster's 2yo being an immovable force when it suited him to NOT cooperate. Bingo.

I feel that even Kindergarten is too early to teach reading (unless it's a child who truly picks it up on their own). Why push it so early when a year later they might pick it up a lot faster?

We would read every evening and more with my DS now 10 since birth, and still do. Somewhere around 3 he would point out words he could recognize. This was probably due to the fact we would read the same books over and over (you know one more book.... pleaseeeee). So we would pick out a book from the quick book stack, he loved Snoozers by Sandra Boynton.

It just snowballed after that. He would read everything. Cereal boxes, nutritional information on everything, warning labels on everything. Then we put him in a daycare much like Vals. He loved it, especially the math. But reading was his claim.

The one funny look I can remember well. We were at a pool party and my son was reading the label attached to the a floatation device he was holding on to. We got the strangest looks from all the parents sitting around the pool wading their feet. I just shrugged. "Kids".

So wait, are all these activities being done to address 2E issues?

One thing that's come up for me is whether to "hothouse" a skill that is more age-appropriate (in my son's case, writing) so as to catch it up to the rest of his skills and make him a more "skippable" package. I wrestle with this. I don't think it would be hard to do this, but it's not a thing I would naturally do (such as the enrichment activities you name).

Yes, so there's that. Is it hothousing when you teach your child things that he/she isn't asking to learn...could easily learn...but isn't really intrinsically excited to learn? But wouldn't HATE. For instance, I KNOW I could teach my DD9 more math than she is getting. She isn't especially interested in math, though. She doesn't hate it or anything. I don't think it would be a nightmare. But if I said, "Hey...want to do some more math in your free time?" she'd be like, "Uh, next." However, she IS writing a book in her spare time, of her own accord.

Math is an especially clear example here because it's not something you really teach in casual conversation--you know, we talk about history, biology, etc at the dinner table, but we don't factor at the dinner table. (Maybe you guys do.)

I don't think there is a clear answer here. It's the gray area.

Yes! I used to have a terrible time understanding DS, who didn't really speak to communicate or have a conversation until after he was two -- but he could read before that. I would just give up after having him repeat something a few times, and ask, "how do you spell that?" Which he would, and then it would become clear. I still have a hard time understanding DD7 sometimes, when she's on a roll, but her spelling leaves something to be desired. It's usually good enough to get the idea across, though.

I think if I knew how to hothouse a 2-year-old to learn to read, I'd be in a different business and a lot nicer house!

I don't see addressing 2e challenges with work outside of school as hothousing at all - I'd put that under the "therapy" category. I also have a number of friends who's cultural background emphasizes a lot of time spent on homework and music lessons starting at an early age, and I don't really see that as "hothousing" either - I see it more as a cultural value placed on the importance of putting time into learning that is rooted in a history of needing to work hard to get ahead. My perception of hothousing is that it refers to parents who think that by insisting on a ton of extra work outside of school they will be able to "up" their child's prospects in life - get them into gifted programming, get them into competitive private schools, get them into great colleges - but the race to do all of this is more tied into the parents ego than it is child-led. I don't see sending a child to after-school math tutoring as hothousing if the child loves math...or because a child is behind in math either due to a learning challenge or poor instruction at school or simply not understanding math - but if the reason the child is in the tutoring is because their parent wants them to go to the head of the class in math when the child is already performing well and really doesn't give a flip about math... that's hothousing.

I also don't think it's possible to hothouse anything into a young child that they aren't ready for developmentally. If a child wasn't meant to learn to read at age 2, they aren't going to learn to read. OTOH, I think there is probably a semi-large portion of children who are capable of working ahead of what the average early elementary school is offering (at least in my mellow part of the woods). This is part of the reason there are so many parents in early elementary latching on to outside enrichment and attempting to get their kids into gifted programming - the programming in the regular classroom really isn't all that great for most kids, not just for out-of-the-ballpark ability kids.

polarbear

oh man, we are clearly über-nerds over here... DD5 does (prime!) factor at the dinner table, but it's SO not from hothousing! she just thinks it's super-cool. interestingly, though, with all the school drama we had last year... the fact that she knew alllll about fractions (and could add non-commmon denominator ones!) in Pre-K was used as evidence that we were hothousing.

nope - we were just baking an awful lot! (but they didn't believe me)

funny, i came to the conclusion that possibly some teachers (and other parents/friends/etc) truly believe that anything a child learns IN SCHOOL is learning, but anything a child learns AT HOME is hothousing. sigh.

I knew someone was going to say they factored at the dinner table. I guess my point was that with a lot of math, you have to sit and do it on paper and practice. Of course, some of it can be discussed without need for that, but it's not as easy to teach casually at the dinner table, IMO.

(I have the feeling I am going to get pushback on this. Maybe it's just that we are not mathy.)

No pushback from me um, I am a total math geek but um, no way am I interested in factors at the dinner table lol! OTOH, I don't really enjoy using baking as a teachable math moment either... but that's just me

FWIW, we never really "taught" our kids any of the things they are uber-ahead at, they just picked them up through something that must be similar to osmosis (as well as possibly a lot of independent reading). We've also never really had anyone suggest that we've hot-housed our kids. The only parents I've known who seem to concerned that achievement in kids other than their own is related to hot-housing are... parents who are achievement-oriented and attempting to perhaps hot-house. That's been my personal experience both with academics and sports - and it usually drops back dramatically once you get past the early years of either elementary school or sports league - because all the outside "practice" in the world can't make up for differences in natural ability.

polarbear

Mathematics is definitely casual conversation in our house.

wow, sorry - it wasn't pushback AT ALL - i was honestly poking fun at our family!

re: teachable moments... that's actually not even how we're approaching them - mostly it's just from natural situations like the fact that our sugar canister is narrow and can't accommodate the 1 c measuring cup. literally, that's why DD learned fractions - because she had to use the smaller cups to get in there.

sorry if i'm OT. (and that i'm so touchy on this point - i'm bowing out right now.)

The statement that anything in school is learning and at home is hot housing...

My response is then of course all the projects, dioramas, power points, posters, reports, science fair projects should be done AT SCHOOL because that is where the true learning takes place!!!!!!! Tired of doing those at home and would gladly throw those back on the teacher's plate and off of mine. I am even willing to send in shoe boxes and poster board and a bin full of crafty supplies.

(And especially those that have to be done in Spanish!)

Ditto.

We "taught" logarithms to our 4 year old during dinner one night. It was more naming the concept and challenging his thinking on a concept he brought up. I place this more in the category of "feeding the monster" or "fanning the flames" than "hot housing."

In the same way, we discuss the books we read together. Am I hot housing reading comprehension by, say, putting a name to "foreshadowing"? The boundaries are often fuzzy.

I keep thinking about this thread. I feel in some ways gifted children hot house themselves or at least I feel my DD does anyway. She becomes obsessive about a topic and demands to learn more and more about it. I don't think it's hot housing if I provide the info that she's asking for.

Aw, it won't take you that long. Thirty minutes, tops.

Oh, I wasn't offended or anything, doubtfulguest. No worries!


Well...most kids would not know how to add fractions with different denominators from doing this. What they would learn was "I have to use the littler cup." Not saying you were hothousing, though. Combination of very bright child and parent who explains stuff.

A recent study found that smart children demand more stimulation.
Quoting a commenter on Steve Sailer's blog
http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=9430835&postID=7167347658738183037

Here is the paper:

http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/group/TuckerDrobLAB/website/pdf/Tucker-Drob%20&%20Harden%20(in%20press,%20Developmental%20Science)%20Reciprocal%20G-E%20Transactions.pdf
Early childhood cognitive development and parental cognitive
stimulation: evidence for reciprocal gene–environment transactions
Elliot M. Tucker-Drob and K. Paige Harden
Developmental Science (2011), pp 1–10

I think a lot of this goes back to average folks on some level not liking smart people.

When we are at the zoo and my two year old points to a gibbon and says "Look Mama, a monkey" I will correct him and tell him it is an ape and go on to explain some differences.

If I get weird looks, so be it.

ok, i guess i'm back. here we go...

DD: uh, this won't fit.
Me: yep - use one of the smaller ones.
DD: how many?
Me: here's the one cup - add them into it and sort it out.
DD: cool!
Me: yeah. (DD keeps puttering while i'm busy)
DD: huh. i can mix them up, too - and it still works.
Me: what do you mean?
DD: well, one 1/2 + two 1/4s is 1 cup.

and it rolled out from there. and more questions and more experiments. i guess it's a good thing we're homeschooling now. (really going, now - i have no business here.)

I think some kids are just wired differently - partly due to genetics. Some kids just suck everything in and are more intuitive, perceptive than others. Some of it does stem from exposure and environment. Here, I mean my child was exposed to different vocabulary, transportation systems, different lifestyles and housing, etc. - from just living in NYC that my VT niece is simply not exposed to.

I was thinking about this recently. My 2e pg son was nearly 4 years old when he decided and insisted he wanted to be a curtain wall tester for Halloween. We had gone to the NJ Science Ctr and experienced a curtain wall test himself. He was so fascinated by the curtain wall test at the NJ Science Ctr that he wanted to be a tester again for Halloween.

My VT niece is now the same age and she is showing eg/pg signs. Still, she's got no clue what a curtain wall test is. She lives fairly close and been to Montreal so may have seen skyscrapers there, but it's not NYC.

IF my son had not been to the NJ Science Center would have been a curtain wall tester?? No. I don't think so. IF I had been oppositional to him being a curtain wall tester for Halloween would have still been one? Perhaps. My son is very independent. But IF my son had a different personality and temperament, then he may have not been a curtain wall tester IF I had discouraged him.

I found myself explaining Bayesian updating of priors to DS2 the other day when a cab just about ran us down in the street against its red light. I said something like "what are the odds?" and it just sort of popped out contextually. Odds are he won't absorb that kind of material but, being an extrovert, I tend to vocalize a lot of my thoughts. I think he gloms onto some odd topics by dint of this habit of mine.

It's also much more interesting for me to revisit topics I like than to say in a banal falsetto, "Oh look at the doggie-doggie going pee pee on the tree!" Shudder. (In no way am I implying that you or anyone here is guilty of spewing that kind of nauseous tripe. I just offer it to contrast the kind of nonsense I hear most children being subjected to.

So the combination of a nerdy verbal parent and neat stimuli makes for some interesting opportunities to learn, as long as learning isn't what the parent expects from the interaction.

off to google curtain wall test because I have no clue what that is...Now I know what a curtain wall is and a curtain wall test is but...



What does a curtain wall tester look like? Someone in a lab coat or is it a costume of a wall?

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how the use of rewards for work well done is possibly a telltale sign of a hot housing parent. Perhaps you're speaking more of the use of excessive punishment?

In the world of adult work, what of bonus incentives, or the threat of a demotion/getting fired? I think using rewards/punishments for performance/non-performance normal.
---

When I first signed in to Davidson, I had a signature line that went something like, "You can't teach an elephant to dance." I got a lot of bad reviews on that and it went bye-bye. However, I feel this expresses my feelings on hot housing to a gifted level. It's just not possible. If reading at three qualifies a child as gifted and that child was shown Sesame Street and had a book of the alphabet before then, is that hot housing? If so, why don't more children read at three, what with the readily available resource of tv and the library?

Oh, and I once read a review of the Baby Can Read. It involved isolating the child in a restraint of some kind, in a dark room, without anything but the program playing. THAT is hot housing.

!!!

Truly, utterly speechless. What kind of parents/adults would ever subject children let alone babies and young toddlers to this? That is horrible.

DD8 was at the zoo with me in the reptile room, and she was clearly anxious about how to tell venomous snakes from the other kind. I had to give her some information as a way of calming that anxiety. So we talked about pit vipers, identified the pits that give them their name, and also noted the distinctive shape many of them have to their heads. We discussed how certain keywords in species names are telling, because "rattlesnake," "viper," and "cobra" always mean venomous, but "boa" and "python" always signify constrictors. We identified the difference between venomous coral snake and its friendly doppleganger, the scarlet king snake.

We didn't draw much attention during our conversations. The weird looks came a couple days later, when DD went back to the zoo with a couple of her friends, and she delivered her version of the same lecture as she led them around the room.

this is exactly my dilemma. Here, it isn't just about getting a certain IQ test or ability test score to get into the gifted magnet school. Unless the ability test shows intelligence above around the 99.5th percentile, they ALSO have to have achievement test results in reading and math. And in order to score that high they HAVE to be working above grade level. If the school does not instruct kids above grade level, the kids either have to teach themselves or the parents have to do it. So the majority of the kids who qualify for the highly gifted program here are most likely hothoused. I made DD do reading comprehension tests over the summer for practice in hopes that she can pass the dumb reading achievement test (98th percentile or above) so that she has a chance to get into that program. Since she already has the math score I'm not worried about math at all and we never talk about it. And it's because the regular school classroom is grossly inadequate. If I felt it was meeting her needs, I wouldn't bother. It's not about my ego or about her being labeled "gifted"--it's about getting her out of her heinous school and into something more appropriate. Since she has some 2e issues, I'm not sure what's appropriate for her yet and she needs more testing. But I at least want to give her a chance.

Plus, there's that whole seeking-parental-approval thing that small children have going on. "Mommy... LOOK AT WHAT I CAN DO!!"


And possibly, child abuse.

I was reading this the other day and thinking if some people might consider it hothousing:

http://www.heritagesource.com/profiles.htm#SayAllen

I consider it parent-led enrichment but she was 9 when he began requiring her to write essays for him, not 3 or 4.

I'm starting to wonder if I should be doing more to prevent DD from hothousing herself. It was such a hot and lingering summer here that we got into spending too much time indoors to avoid the heat outside. We need to reset our schedule/structure.

For one thing, not parents who are following the Doman TYBTR method, which I think is the original (there are lots of imitators). I got rid of the book, but as far as I remember they recommended seconds or at most a few (under 5) minutes of reading exposure at a time, and only when the baby was happily paying attention. I decided against it because it seemed pointless, not because it seemed wrong.

The distinction is generally between activities which the child finds intrinsically rewarding, determined by child's depth of interest, natural curiosity, and the child's own sense of work well done (curiosity satisfied) -vs- activities which are parent-prodded and possibly evaluated as work well done by an adult who determines whether the child has achieved the adult's desired outcome for the child's achievement or performance.

The adult world of work is a different context entirely, then that of hot-housing children.

This is an interesting thought and one that some may disagree with... as alluded to in this article discussing whether children's abilities even out in third grade (link- http://giftedkids.about.com/od/schoolissues/i/even_out.htm).

It is my understanding that having books available is considered a positive and enriching environment. There is nothing inherently wrong with any particular resource or tool, only how it may be utilized... the difference being the degree to which something is genuinely of interest to the child or is parent-pushed.

It is my understanding that for some this may depend upon their neurological development, and for others it may be lack of stimulation.
I've not heard of this, but your account of it does not sound good. I share your concern. That being said, babies do spend an amount of time in "restraints" such as car seats, child swings, cribs, pack'n'play playyards, bouncers, exersaucer activity centers, snuglis, boppy nursing pillows and the like in the company of their parents and caregivers... having something play in the background may be common, whether it is the radio, tv, or a program...?

Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. Caricaturing a little, people have been suggesting it's hot-housing, i.e. undesirable, if

a) the child would learn whatever it is faster or more easily later. But almost everything is easier to learn later (languages maybe an exception), because you develop emotional maturity and learn how to learn in a deliberate way. It may be that reading is taught too early in our schools, but I don't think evidence that children who are only taught later learn faster is necessarily evidence of this. You have to start somewhere.

b) the child has any reluctance to do the work required. But doesn't everyone go through a process of learning that you don't dissolve if you do something that's hard work, maybe even to the point of being mildly unpleasant, and that sometimes the result is worth pushing through the hardness and unpleasantness for? I venture that very, very few professional musicians never had anyone insisting against at least mild resistance that they had to practise. Are academics different, or is there just a tradition of letting schools be the bad guys?

ETA noone's put my favourite irregular verb in this thread yet, have they? It goes:
I support
You push
He/she/it hothouses

The problem here is that you're painting with a brush that is much too broad. In many contexts, the process of a parent prodding or otherwise motivating a child through activities the child does not find intrinsically rewarding is called parenting. They don't always like sitting on the potty chair, picking up their toys, rinsing their dishes, or doing their homework. If parents don't prod in these circumstances, they're not doing their children any favors.

Posit one sliding scale here of ratio of effort... one end is 1 to 1 the other is 100 times the work. Somewhere on the path to 100 it gets fuzzy. I was comfortable with 10x being in the "too far" zone; not so confident that 2 or even 5 is.

I'll let you know when/if I learn that. But I'll again suggest a sliding scale here.

Let's toss in a nebulous additional sliding measure:
Trained or learned? At one end the product is empty repetition... say a kid who successfully says "Stop" whenever they see the word stop (and receives their animal cracker treat,) but doesn't even have a guess at "Slop."

Painting with the brush provided by information in the links to articles on hot-housing, by experts.

Agreed. However the activities you list would not be mistaken for hot-housing, therefore attempting to apply the criteria typically used to distinguish enrichment from hot-housing simply does not fit.

Actually, we're hot-housing dish-washing skills right now. Long story.

LOL yup. With my two it was pencil and paper to simply illustrate the concept, and then they were off and running. "Practice" was too repetitive and totally killed the joy.

My DD was a really early reader (she was obsessed and followed me around with books in her hands) and I was perfectly happy to take credit for doing the time and teaching her, until a friend asked me to teach her toddler son too, and he just stared blankly at me. I then realized it wasn't my fabulous teaching skills (lol) that resulted in my daughter's early reading, but rather her voracious fixation with it.

I'm not really sure what the real definition of hot housing is, although I do agree that it's connected to a lack of interest on the child's part (excluding 2e therapy/support, obviously - that's just good parenting).

WOW.

I seriously do not remember that being a feature...

ETA: ahhhh-- yes, like Colinsmum, I simply decided that it was foolishness of the first order and ditched the ideas not because of a sense of wrongness, but of pointlessness.

Here it's animal husbandry and yard cleanup skills.

I haven't read through this entire thread. But, to respond to the OP's original questions: I live in a community with RIDICULOUS hothousing parents. Some of them are immigrants who come from a country where, to do well (go to a good university), you have to do exceptionally well on whatever test is administered. But, apparently, in that particular culture, there are BIG tests along the child's educational journey, so you are always preparing to do very well on some test. This particular nationality has brought the same sentiments here and so from age 18 months or so, they are hothousing their babies like crazy.

Then we have just regular ol' American pushy parents who hothouse for whatever their reasons are. What I have seen is this: my DS7 PG DYS son was NOT identified for our gifted program in K (really a nothing program of 45 min pull out fun-sey stuff once a week). Why? Well, in large part, to the untrained eyes of the teachers, my DS didn't look so special next to the hothoused children. The hothoused kids could read very well upon entering K (maybe at the 1st grade level). They could do very well, at whatever is taught at Kumon or the local weekend hothouse program. My DS upon entering K at 5 years old, was a very weak reader....not really interested. He strongly preferred watching the hour long Nova special on string theory and then taking the time to discuss the theory with DH. He was busy rewiring outlets in our house because he understood the principles of electricity and had the dexterity to do it (but would start to cry if he had to write out the alphabet).

Now my DS is in 2nd grade. The hothoused kids have started to "even out".

I think the irregular verb quoted is fairly accurate. I consider talking non stop about everything to my kids to be normal but not everyone does. I consider teaching my kids basic maths and reading readiness part of being a parent too. I think sending your kids to afterschool drill centres (if they are not struggling) and 5 afterschool activities is hot housing.

Basically to me hot housing is asking more of a child than a child of their IQ and age than is reasonable.

Well then we've hothoused no biting, not throwing your cup on the floor, and leaving the poor dog alone.

The talk about "Your Baby Can Read" and Glen Doman reminded me of a website I came across years ago. When the YBCR infomercials first came out I did a little searching on the internet to see if anyone had posted reviews, results, etc. I happened on a site called "Brill Kids" (http://www.brillkids.com). It's a company that sells computer products for parents that want to engage their babies and toddlers in what they call "early learning" (I suppose "hothousing" isn't a great term for pushing their products.) The site has a forum full of parents working on reading, math, science, etc. with their young children. It provides very different views on the topics than the ones expressed here...

I had completely forgotten about it! I obviously don't ascribe to their beliefs, but it's interesting to see these parents' perspectives on the topic.

Indigo, thank you for posting "This is an interesting thought and one that some may disagree with... as alluded to in this article discussing whether children's abilities even out in third grade (link- http://giftedkids.about.com/od/schoolissues/i/even_out.htm)."

I recall reading this earlier, but had forgotten it. It does a nice job of separating achievement (which is really what these parents seem to be trying to accomplishment) from giftedness. If parents want to help their children achieve more, that is a very different thing than then equating early achievement with gifted ability.

Beautifully put.

Because I'm officially the meanest mom in the world tonight, as I "hothouse" my 14yo with respect to college essays which are due tomorrow, and prevent her from-- hmm--



well, okay, she's eaten dinner, and she's free to use the bathroom at will. I guess I did prevent her from using Skype until she's got something drafted.

LOL. Is this "appropriate" for a 14yo? Well, I have no real idea, but I know that it's the expectation for THIS 14yo, all right, and it's entirely reasonable.

Possibly a future thread could be "How to Helicopter Parent Your Kid"? (link- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent)

As DH once acidly quipped after a particularly nasty advocacy exchange with DD's school;

So, Mrs. Howler, do you see yourself as more of a Sikorsky? Or a Huey?

SNORT. Hey, it made me laugh on a day when that should have been an impossibility, so...

When a kid is going through a growth spurt and they are hungry all the time; is it not abusive *NOT* to feed them more?

The same applies for mental growth IMO.

I have done things that might be and have probably been considered 'hot housing' just by exposing my DD8 to things like logarithms and solving simultaneous linear equations but she has just gobbled them up. It isn't as though I have had to use a 'gavage' to cram things in, at all.

If a girl were fascinated with Disney princesses, for instance, would it be abusive to indulge her? (Actually, on second thought, it may be in that particular case LOL.)

Agreed! This brings to mind the all-too-common experience of gifted kids in school. Readers may wish to see the recent thread "How do you feel about the public school system?"

Exposure provides an enriched and positive environment. The element of imposing an expectation on the child to learn above level, is present in hot-housing.

While she is gobbling, she's not being hot-housed. When her attention or interests may change to something else... parents may wish to follow the child's lead.

I really like the observation several posters made that gifted kids essentially hot-house themselves. Unfortunately, the schools seem to be aware of this at some level... taken to the extreme, this may lead to the myth that gifted kids will do fine on their own, without school support, throughout their educational "careers".

As a statistical generalization the "myth" is true -- even in a state like Massachusetts where there is very little gifted programming, gifted children "will do fine" in the sense of going to college and getting good jobs at higher rates than non-gifted kids. With gifted programming they might do even better, but policymakers are not thinking about that.

But as a group, without appropriate support, gifted children may fall further short of their potential than any other group.

I suggest you read your own sources again, then, because this clear-cut statement from your first one says nothing about intrinsic reward:


You're putting too much emphasis on this statement, which is poorly written, and I suspect, based on the examples given, the author intended it to be directed towards toddler and pre-K age groups:


The above is true for the years prior to 1st grade. Once they start pursuing a formal education, every child, no matter how intrinsically motivated, is going to find something they'd rather not learn. Making them learn it anyway is not hothousing.

Finally, the appeal to authority is a fallacy, and the term "experts" loses some of its authority in reference to About.com.

Well, some of them will be fine.

I'd argue that those who are most likely to be "fine" while being utterly neglected are most likely to be MG and not have extreme needs socially or educationally.

The others, though... a great many of those children will NOT be fine.

MA may do better than most places this way due to a number of other factors, too. After all, the state, tiny though it is, is also home to what is likely one of highest concentrations of the best institutions of higher learning anywhere on the planet.

Imagine being an utterly neglected PG student in...

Wyoming.

This is how I distinguish between an enriched environment and hot housing. I buy my kid Lego blocks. She is happy to get them. Once I open the box for her, I walk away. She builds with them, uses them as projectile objects, or water containers or anything else she chooses. I don't interfere. While she makes a mess using lego blocks in every unintended way, she is talking to herself or questioning me on gravity, liquids vs. solids, balance, etc. I am as engaged or disengaged as she wants me to. Otoh, I buy her a Lego set that can only be put together one way. I make her sit and watch as I assemble the kit. Then I make her practice till she gets it right, I am hovering right there to make sure she doesn't make any mistakes. Yay, my kid can build complex Lego kits. I am a proud (hothousing) mama.

I don't think all gifted kids are self-driven or motivated to learn to their level. The other day I asked DD what she is reading in school. She told me and then she said "S is reading Harry Potter! I can't believe it! That book is SO LONG and huge!" I said "You can read Harry Potter too if you want. You are certainly capable of reading at that level." Dh went into the basement and dug into boxes to find the books. He gave it to DD and suggested she sit down and try it. A couple hours later she was almost done with book 1. She finished it the next day and then asked for book 2. Now I have the dilemma of trying to figure out if the rest of the series is Ok for a kid who just turned 8 or if they are too dark and creepy.
Without a little "pushing" DD would never have picked up that book. She probably would have picked up Rainbow Magic instead which she could read a few years ago and is meant for first or second graders.

Some may notice that in reading comprehension tests, the exact words of the Q&A may *not* be found in the story thereby testing the understanding of the meaning of various words and concepts. Similarly, in this case, the concepts presented by the words "parents push" may contrast with the child experiencing "intrinsic reward" when something is "appropriate for the cognitive age of the children".
As with many circumstances in life, the degree to which ideas resonate with different people, and each individual's take-away may vary considerably based upon their uniquely accumulated previous experiences and resultant knowledge base.

Agreed that this is geared toward toddler, pre-K, and/or years prior to 1st grade. The OP introduced the topic of hothousing focused on getting 2 & 3 year olds to read; The links I offered focused on this as well. Keeping the posts in context may be key to understanding. Rather than critique these sources, if you do not like them, might you offer other sources to consider?

Agreed. That is not the topic of this conversation and adding it here may be called "kitchen sinking".

Some may say that your change of focus from the specific author (Carol Bainbridge) to the generalization of the overall website (About . com) is perhaps flawed logic? Ms. Bainbridge has both education credentials and experience with the gifted sufficient to write expert articles. She is listed several times on the Davidson Database, and is also one of recognized names endorsing the book "A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children".

In summary, parents tend to know when they are hot-housing their kids. Some parents believe these are good approaches to keep their kiddo/s competitive... others believe these practices may be detrimental. Some may believe hot-housing works (or they would not engage in it), others believe at least certain hot-housing practices do not work, still others observe hot-housing may provide a temporary boost to achievement/performance after which the child/ren's achievement/performance may even out.

+1 great example
The enrichment described may encourage growth mindset; the hot-housing described may limit a child to a fixed mindset, sans exploration, inquiry, and resilience.

While it may be true that not all kids are self-driven or motivated to learn at their level, this may be a child's response to a glass ceiling, direct discouragement to their past attempts at inquiry, exploration, etc. (For example, think of how many times kids ask questions, get told that it's a good question, receive an answer, or an admission that someone does not know the answer but will help find an answer... versus being told they don't need to know, they ask too many questions, that's an odd question, or the child's question may just be screened out (ignored)...)

In the example provided, the only "push" may be the removal of a glass ceiling. There is encouragement for the child to explore what their challenge level may be. There is the support of providing an enriched and positive environment. There is the child's demonstrated interest which has been fostered by the support and encouragement.

DD has plenty of challenging books in her room at her reading level, she just doesn't pick them up. She often chooses books that are below her actual grade level. Whether it's laziness, or lack of self-confidence, I don't know. I've threatened to take all the books out of her room that are below her level so that she tries the more advanced ones. I sound like a horrible pushy hothousing parent but that is what I'm dealing with. Lazy gifted children. DS, my younger kid, is even worse and has been able to read chapter book for a couple years (and can read them in about 20 minutes) but every time I suggest one he whines and says that they are way too long. He had a teacher last year in Kindergarten who made him read Beverly Cleary books like the Mouse and the Motorcycle and that was probably a very good thing for him. I don't do that at home--it's not worth getting into a battle.
Now this year in first grade he is actually going backwards in school with his reading because the teacher is giving him stuff below his level. He is bringing home picture books with 5 words on each page.

I've not heard this, do you have a source to share in which she discusses this belief?

I understand that her focus is on linquistics, so this may be her specialty. May I ask what informs your belief that she discounts the abilities of the mathematically gifted (other than this is not her focused area of study)?

Personally, I do not find her to be advice-y, but more explain-y or present-y. That being said, the vast array of knowledge to be learned, aspects to consider on any topic, and the lens of one's own personal experiences... give rise to varied viewpoints. This is why parents seek a good "fit" in finding teachers, schools, pediatricians, testers, psychologists, columnists, pundits... all kinds of experts. We share one earth and hopefully decide to peacefully coexist.

May I say, your child is also quite fortunate to have you as a parent, as you sound vary compatible in your learning/teaching styles. Nice how that works out sometimes.

Books can be comforting, the presence of books she has read may almost be a trophy of sorts? Some kids very much enjoy pictures, charts, graphs, any kind of illustration... and may cling to books which stimulate this part of the mind. Some families have success in talking with their children about how the words paint a picture in our mind... even how this picture may be different for each person who reads the words... some may even compare and discuss details of the pictures in their minds, when reading a book with few or no illustrations.

Not to me.

It may be the 2nd e?

It may be the 2nd e?

You might wish to ask the teacher how your son approached the books... whether he liked reading them... did she ask him questions about the books... was he in a group also reading at that level... if he was motivated then, possibly those conditions could be replicated to support and encourage him now?

YIKES! I share your concern. There is a saying, "What you reward, you get more of." Somehow reading at his level was rewarding (hopefully intrinsically rewarding) last year. Wish I had answers for you... I only have these questions which I've shared.

I asked her about the Mouse and the Motorcycle (I was very skeptical that this was an appropriate book for him) and apparently he did not complain about it and was able to answer comprehension questions. One other boy in the class was reading it as well. The teacher last year said he whipped through the Level O assessment in the middle of the year (they do Fountas and Pinnel). She said he could probably read more advanced material but she didn't have higher level assessments.
Fast Forward to this year. First grade teacher says that DS is reading at a Level L. (is it a coincidence that this is the highest level she has in the classroom?). Even the picture books that DS reads here at home are a higher level than that. i told her that doesn't sound right and she said he needs to learn to answer comprehension questions better. The stuff he is bringing home isn't even Level L most of the time. He has brought home books that are about a Level B! Very frustrating. I talked to another mom in the class and she said the same thing (and her kid had a different teacher last year). It is like we are going backwards one complete year.

blackcat - might he be trying to blend in with expectations? (and possibly feel that higher level work would be some sort of punishment?) just speaking from my extremely limited experience.

I don't believe I hothouse ds6, but I do encourage. He is not working to his ability at school and is trying to fit in. I do "make" him read at his level and offer enrichment as he requests in math and science. Yet, isn't that what parents do? Support learning and help when kids have questions? No matter where my child was, I would want him challenged.

For ds3 (not sure of his ability/ iq), he is very different from his brother. Everything is child driven or he won't engage (with me). We play word and number games. He loves gear toys and building toys. I read to him as much as I can. However, no flash cards or baby can read type activities.

He definitely tries to blend in. At first he told the teacher in first grade that he wants to do higher level math and now when I ask him about it he says he is "just fine". But he has mastered the first and second grade math curriculum and half of third grade according to the testing that has been done. So how can he possibly be happy doing first grade math?
Part of it is probably the 2e situation--writing is extremely difficult for him and he hates it. What he would really like is to get on the computer to do math but the teacher won't do it.

We've seen that in spades with DD.

As long as she isn't aware that most kids her age do X, not Y... then she is perfectly happy doing Y with occasionally brilliant flashes of Z, even...

but as soon as she gets the idea that this is NOT normative, she seems to retreat to the lowest common denominator in a hurry, and to deny that she was ever doing anything else.

It's maddening.

HK- I am seeing this with my ds which is making me want to change his school situation (homeschool or gifted school). It is maddening! He is also starting to say, "I can't." Makes me sad, and frustrated with school who thinks "he's fine".

A fallacy is still a fallacy.

Ms. Bainbridge has a bachelor's degree in psychology, and has published no peer-reviewed research papers on gifted psychology that I've found. That does not make an expert. She volunteers for a gifted organization, and has a gifted child of her own, which doesn't make her any more of an expert in the topic than many of us here.

So yeah, she fits the profile of About.com "expert" very nicely. And since I'd already verified that about her specifically before making the comment about About.com generally, there was no mistake.


They do?? Keeping in mind Ms. Bainbridge's definition of hothousing as teaching a child something before they're cognitively ready for it, Amy Chua doesn't seem to know when she's doing it: Why Chinese Mothers are Superior

"Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them."

"Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children"

"Jed took me aside. He told me to stop insulting Lulu—which I wasn't even doing, I was just motivating her—"

Etc.

Could it be that she enjoys reading books that are targeted to her age level? These would obviously not be the same books that are written for her reading level, as you have mentioned that she skipped a grade.


I have heard this from my 6 year old sons, who are also in first grade. I think they just do not enjoy sitting and reading one story for very long, and they don't want to read part of it and come back to it later. They just really aren't ready to enjoy chapter books, even though they would be able to read and comprehend them. They do enjoy reading non-fiction books, and longer picture books or longer "readers" and will read them instead.

I suspect the teacher thinks I'm a nut-case and she may even be lying to me. When I told her that DS tested at a Level O in January or February she said that the kindergarten comprehension tests are different and the questions are not as complex. But a Level O assessment is the same no matter what grade a kid is in, right?! That has been my experience working as a tutor last year, although I never actually gave anyone those assessments.
At conferences she told me that they could not subject accelerate DS for math because of scheduling conflicts. She showed me an advanced workbook and told me she would have DS do it during independent work time. A couple days ago I asked DS about the workbook/harder math work and he insists that the math that he is doing is exactly the same as the rest of the kids. I asked the teacher yesterday about the workbook and she hesitated. She said she is mixing it up with other stuff and it's in his packet. I just don't know what to think. It's like the teacher is deliberately trying to sabotage any efforts to get DS to work at the right level. She is the opposite of hothousing.

Cool!

Some may say the glass ceiling was at level O.

Some may say the glass ceiling is at level L. To increase the pool of books, some schools have made wish lists, used scholastic book fairs, obtained donations of used books, and had student-run community book drives. At one school, in response to student food allergies, some children brought a book to donate as an alternative to bringing a food treat.

Some parents like to keep a list of books their child reads... including reading level, and date. Such lists may prove valuable for future advocacy... for example substantiating interests, and/or demonstrating independent preparation or self-study in an area, when an opportunity arises which may have prerequisites. This may become important especially if the student appears to be regressing in reading, to document what their true level is. As a bonus, kids may find adding a book to their list to be very exciting. (What kind of book would I like to add next... I've read a lot about _______ recently... maybe I'll read about ______... )

Here are two stories of families having an experience like this...
1) One family learned that the teacher's "comprehension questions" came with a grading key on which the teacher would tick off words which the child recited from the text verbatim. If a child put the story into their own words (for example, saying "pig" in place of "piggy", "rabbit" or "hare" for "bunny", "swiftly" or "quickly" for "fast") the child received a poor score for essentially demonstrating understanding/comprehension/vocabulary rather than rote memorization. It was not explained to the child that he needed to remember the story words exactly and say them back to the teacher... this was a "comprehension" test: tell me what happened in the story you just read.
2) One family learned that their child elaborated, theorized, and thought deeply about the reasons why each character may have done what they did, other things they may have done instead, how he thought the author would be leading to one ending, and felt that may have been better than the ending which the author chose... etc.

Obviously both of these kids were "beyond" in their comprehension of what they read. Some may say the test was flawed... or the testing conditions were flawed in not setting parameters proactively, for the child to keep in mind when discussing the story.

You may wish to find out how your son's "comprehension" is being assessed?

Yes, I am definitely seeing that. He will read very advanced science books but they have to have diagrams and pictures! But even if I give him a chapter book that has pictures, if there is any indication at all that it's a "chapter book" he turns up his nose. I have no idea how the teacher last year got him to read The Mouse and the Motorcycle without complaining.

Dude, on the topic of Amy Chua, a lot of people tend to miss her whole point - every single thing she says in her book is not to be taken at face value. This is a really smart woman who is using a ton of self-deprecating, tongue in cheek humor to sell a lot of books on the topic of how she raised her daughters.
Amy Chua's daughter got into an Ivy League college. Her daughters were not hothoused - they were highly talented, very smart and hardworking kids despite the impression that she gives. Her daughter Sophia loved playing the piano. It is a long shot for a hothoused kid to reach levels where they are invited to play in Carnegie Hall or get accepted to Yale. They "even out" eventually and burn out. Amy Chua simply uses certain stereotypes to reinforce her points - and it is comical and humorous if you look closely (maybe, I should have posted in the Tiger mom thread, instead).

Hothousing parents tend to know that they are doing it - because it is harder to get the same results out of their kids than it is for the parents of kids who are excelling at something.

It is my understanding (and I may be wrong), that she also holds a doctorate degree, has taught at the university level, held a board position for a gifted organization, and has authored articles on gifted for nearly two decades. Peer-reviewed research papers may not be the only criteria for developing/sharing expertise on the gifted. Similarly, Hoagies Gifted Education Page is run by an individual without this credential yet few would doubt her expertise. These people were among pioneers in the realm of gifted; Much has changed and evolved in part thanks to their efforts.

1) Yes, I presented Amy Chua's work in my first post in this thread.
2) You truncated my post above "... parents tend to know when they are hothousing their kids...", removing the following: "Some parents believe these are good approaches to keep their kiddo/s competitive... Some may believe hot-housing works..."
3) A source in support of Ashley's post: Amy Chua's website... in Ms. Chua's own words... http://amychua.com/

Might you encourage your son, saying, "you can't... YET..." so he might see the value in persistence? This is part of the growth mindset promoted by Carol Dweck, Po Bronson and others. There are short youtube videos... I've recently posted the links to them on another thread...

The concept of fixed mindset vs growth mindset is nicely summarized in these youtube videos:
Ashley Merryman & Po Bronson: The Myth of Praise (link-

) and
Teaching a Growth Mindset (link-

) by Carol Dweck whose research was mentioned in the Bronson video clip. These links provide quick summaries, their books contain more info. One aspect or application of a fixed mindset is that gifted kids, in order to be seen as "right" or "smart", may stop taking appropriate risks, possibly shunning a challenge and preferring easy work which may represent a level of underachievement. A fixed mindset may work against them and be exhibited as a lack of resilience.

I think this is termed benign neglect?

Indigo- my ds says "he can't" to think he CAN do, because kids at school are not doing. I have been gently encouraging him and pointing out that he can when he is willing to try.

Recently, I have told him that it's ok to read different (aka more challenging books) at home. He doesn't have to bring them to school if he doesn't want to.

As far as other things (math, science, etc), he asks lots of questions and talks outloud about coming up with his own solutions. This makes it easier to explore topics with him.

The negative effects of peer pressure... sigh.

Good job overcoming this and encouraging him to read at higher levels at home. Great that he thinks aloud for exploring math topics! It becomes difficult to support, encourage, and advocate for them once they "hide" their ability and interest, attempting to fit in.

Her doctorate (not yet completed) is in linguistics, which has as much to do with the topic at hand as my expertise in service oriented architecture topologies. She's an English professor... again, unrelated to the topic at hand. I believe I mentioned the gifted organization.


Yes, you did. Was there a reason why you felt it necessary to say this?


Yes, because in the name of brevity, I tend to cut out parts which I do not intend to address.

Bainbridge says hothousing is when you're teaching things that your child is not cognitively ready for, and Chua is saying she was teaching things her children were cognitively ready for. Therefore, by Bainbridge's definition, Chua was not hothousing.

I say this to highlight two things:

1) Bainbridge's definition isn't very useful.
2) Chua illustrates how little awareness parents often have that they're hothousing.

There always seems to be a certain level of uncertainty and stress in these hothousing threads. Personally, I don't like the term "hothouse." A hothouse is a warm nurturing environment for plants that keeps them safe from the weather outside. Why is that bad? I get the impression from some of the messages here that parents who teach stuff to their kids in the absence of the kid begging are somehow doing something bad. This leads to the idea that only gifted kids should be taught by mom and dad.

It seems perfectly reasonable (to me at least) for any parent to teach stuff to his/her child. There are loads of perfectly valid reasons for teaching math or music or reading to a child outside of school. As has been pointed out, there are times when, as a parent, you have to teach your child the importance of doing something or following through on something even when you'd rather be doing something else.

Obviously, there are parents out there who live vicariously through their kids and end up treating them in unhealthy ways. Amy Chua's thing with not letting her kid pee or eat until she got some chord just right is a perfect example of that. Parents who consider an A- to be a bad grade are another example of that. Parents who use their kids as status symbols are a third example.

I'm not going to say that forcing your kid to do something when he's miserable is one of those things. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't. It's easy to identify the extremes but not so easy to identify the stuff in the middle. I expect we all make mistakes in that regard.

Again, this all goes to how you define "hothousing."

I did not miss out on some of the gallows humor she used, particularly in that anecdote about the piano lesson, because obviously she made a bunch of threats she never intended to carry out (and Lulu called her on it).

But reading between the lines, it's not at all clear that Lulu "loves" the piano, nor the three hours' worth of daily practice it takes up. Furthermore, the ability to play a very difficult piece on the piano at a 7yo's recital would be significantly outside of age-appropriate expectations, so why is she forcing her child to spend so much of her time at it, displacing other activities which are VITAL for healthy child development, when she clearly doesn't want to do it?

What's wrong with developing the skill at the piano to play that piece at age ten?

To me, that's a classic case of hothousing. And if a reading of her complete works leads you to conclude that she's not hothousing, then that tells me that that's what she's thinking, too.

So yeah, she's totally unaware.

Of course, the fact that her child played at Carnegie Hall will be used as a justification, but the research says tiger moms are mostly devouring their cubs.

A hothouse is a controlled artificial environment that forces plants to fruit and flower against their natural inclination.

Not necessarily. Zen Scanner made a point about an effort spectrum earlier that I agree with. A gifted hothoused child might still learn a skill more easily than a NT talented child [ETA: or another gifted child, even]. It can be tricky to disentangle the fast learning and intrinsic motivation of giftedness from hothousing on the output side of the equation. To my thinking, the relevant comparator is the child's ability to learn relative to his own best performance when not pushed, not an external comparator.

Or aware and self-deluded. Repeat an untruth often enough to yourself and it starts to seem true.

"I am not a hothousing mother...I am not a hothousing mother..."

Yup.

And look, even refusing to accept an A- may not be bad... it's situational. For DD this year-- it would be really bad news. But we didn't even blink at a B when she was a freshman.

As I understand it (and I may be wrong) the analogy developed due to the gardening practices of "forcing" a bloom when a bulb is kept warm to flower early or out-of-season. Authors have discussed "hot house tomatoes" as being bland and flavorless, as compared with those from plants which are "hardened off" as seedlings after the first frost and grow their fruits outside. Teachers have complained that "hothoused" kids are similarly sheltered from real life and unable to survive when not catered to.

Some believe in hot-housing, others believe it is detrimental.

Begging was not mentioned... just child-led or child-chosen or child-requested, supporting the child's interest in learning at their preferred, comfortable depth and pace.

Most posters tried to maintain neutrality, not judging the practice or the parents who may hot-house, but rather focusing on:
- whether it works,
- whether some practices work,
- whether it provides a temporary boost before a child's achievement/performance evens out,
- whether it may be detrimental.

Au contraire, children of all abilities may benefit from an enriched, positive environment with books, in which they are encouraged and supported to explore, inquire, and learn. Active, engaged parents who answer a child's questions may often be surprised where a conversation/exploration may lead.

Absolutely! Parents are their child/ren's first teachers. Parents know their children best.

Agreed! What a humorous bunch... as evidenced by posts upthread on "hot-housing" the teaching of dish-washing, animal husbandry, yard cleanup skills, no biting, not throwing your cup on the floor, and leaving the poor dog alone... when the children have no interest in learning these life skills or manners.

While most of us would not choose to parent that way ourselves, we may walk a fine line in trying to maintain a relationship with those who are at that point... if only so that we may gently persuade them of another way of looking at the situation from perhaps their child's view.

Growth mindset... we all learn as we go.

I think it's more of a perspective thing... see CM's irregular verbs (one of my favorite games ever):

I - am an involved parent
YOU - are kinda pushy
THEY - are hothousing to the point of child abuse

That one was a gem. You're right...the deluded hothouser pushes judgment outward, not inward per first person singular.

Dude, I so agree with you. Yet I see that Amy Chua describes her book as an exaggerated vent... or at least presents it that way now in retrospect. In the end, what we take away from this is... dark humor or abusive truth... would we choose to parent our child that way?

That's what brings me to the funny thing about Amy Chua, is that while I'm reading her Times article, I'm appalled at certain things, and nodding my head at others.

My DD8 is extraordinarily self-critical. She's always quick to make excuses for her successes, and to point to any slight imperfections in her results to show why she's not any good. She avoids certain activities because she's afraid she'll fail. This mindset makes her her own worst enemy, holding her back from realizing her true potential.

So when, in the Lulu anecdote, she dropped this line, I was like, "Oh yeah. I've been there."


And like Chua, I was put in a position where an option in front of me was to push my DD through, so she can come out on the other side and say, "I DID IT!", rather than cripple herself with, "I CAN'T!!!"

Unlike Ms. Chua, however, I did not push the issue when the ultimate outcome was not very important. My DD took up guitar at 6. She decided she was no good. I continue to encourage her to pick it up again, and it's available for her at any time, but when it comes down to it, guitar playing is unlikely to be a life skill that is vital for her adult happiness, success, or survival.

In other occasions, I pushed or pulled, as appropriate. She didn't want to learn her multiplication tables, and it was early for most kids, but she was developmentally ready, and failing to learn it was going to halt her math learning in its tracks. That's a vital skill, so we pushed. Once she got over that hump, she got access to new math operations that she found intrinsically rewarding. But she had to get through the irritating part of rote memorization first.

Once when DD was in 1st grade, she was in a play in school, and her fear of failure and avoidance had prevented her from learning her lines. We found out the night before the play. Rather than let her suffer the natural consequences by making a fool of herself on stage, and reinforcing her negative self-image as a result, we hothoused her through memorizing the lines that night... a process that involved a lot of nuclear meltdown before she was finally ready to work.

Coming out the other side, she discovered a new passion, and she's in an after-school drama class, has performed in two plays, and is trying out for the school's Talented Theater program tomorrow. I heard her performing her monologue last night, and I have to say, it sounded fantastic.

So there's a story that proves another of Chua's points... if a parent pushes a child through to a success, the child can enjoy that success, and discover a passion that becomes intrinsically rewarding. Or, as she put it:


However, where I would strongly disagree with Chua is:

1) Which battles to fight.
2) How to fight them.

Of course, Amy Chua also forbade her children to be in a play, so there's that.

+1 Dude. {nodding}

I also recognized myself-- a lot-- in Amy Chua's memoir... but with the exact same caveats.

I suspect that we have children with a similar mindset/outlook. Have I mentioned Mom's Carnival Funhouse of Math and the 42% midterm exam? Have I?

Not a proud parenting moment-- in fact, it was one of those where I got served by my 7yo every BIT as much as Dr. Chua got served by HERS.

It's called irresistable force (mom) meets immovable object (child with will of iron). Bad juu-juu. Most of the time, it's not worth it.

There are some things where it is worth it, however. I think that is what some of us are saying about "hothousing" (whatever you choose to call it or how to define it).

To use United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's words (on obscenity/pornography)...

Hothousing...I know it when I see it (other people doing it that is).

Can I wind the conversation back I am not sure how many pages to those of you who had precocious readers, such that they were reading before talking? Do you think your kids learned to read so early BECAUSE talking was harder for them (than talking)? My own kids are clearly not developmentally ready to read early (12-36 months being "early"), but were talking between 9-12 months and particularly the last two never really had a stage after that where they couldn't make their desires reasonably well understood (without resorting to spelling it on the fridge with magnets). I am fascinated about what leads one kid to be verbally precocious and another to be able to read and spell before they can talk. I honestly can not imagine my kids doing that - because talking seems so deeply fundamental to their reading foundations. I absolutely believe it, I am just curious about how that process even works and what might make one child take one path while another goes on a different journey...

Reading is input. Talking is output. Output is harder.

DS learned to read at around the same time he learned to talk. Let me clarify that by saying he said words when he was 1, put phrases together at age 2, but having a conversation with him was extremely difficult until he was around 4. Since he started to read around his fourth birthday, for a while his reading actually sounded better. But he is dyspraxic and had delayed speech/language. When he read aloud, his articulation, prosody, voice pitch, etc. actually sounded a lot more normal. Even the neuropsych noted that last spring so it may still be the case. DS is very visual and had very high scores on the non-verbal section of the WISC and also hit the roof on the TVPS with things like visual memory and visual spatial ability. So I think that seeing the words and sentences in print and decoding them helped him to gain language skills. I know it sounds hard to believe. When he got to kindergarten and now in first grade his speech therapist had him read (for instance conversations in stories) in order to learn how to speak with a normal pitch/prosody and rate. He sometimes reads more quickly orally than he speaks naturally. We are now at the point where I think his normal speech sounds about as good as his reading.

At 18 months, my dd barely met the developmental milestone for talking (6 words?). One of those words was "readabook," which she said as she plopped in your lap with a book for you to read to her. Because she was obsessed with books. By her 2nd birthday, she was reading AND talking up a storm. I have no doubt reading aided her acquisition of spoken language, although I don't think it was because talking was hard for her - just an unusual affinity for the written word. By age 4, she didn't want us to read aloud to her any more -- it was painful for her because it was just so darn slow compared to her reading silently to herself.

She (now 13yo and still obsessed with reading, and lightning fast) has always acquired a large amount of vocabulary through reading, and you can tell because she often mispronounces words when she says them, in ways that sort of make sense from the spelling.

I always thought it was weird that she learned to speak and read at the same time - it is comforting to see in this thread that she is not the only one!

Some find Forvo helpful for pronunciation (link- http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....4664/Free_resource_gives_pronunciat.html)

This thread is really interesting to me...one because we have definitely been on the receiving end of the "you must be drilling/hothousing" your child" conversation..but also because of the loose definition of 'play' in this house. My DS 3.5 is so...literal - he is not (or hadn't been until very recently) interesting in pretend play so much. He loves numbers (and letters) and has since forever. he could happily play with his number magnets and letter magnets, spelling out words, making numbers, making equations, writing on his easel the same sort of things etc etc, for hours at a time. Lately the numbers have become people (with faces, arms and legs etc) doing things like playing at the park etc...it's pretty cute). but I digress...

His play time is so very academic-y...math and science especially...that it sometimes feels like he it almost 'hothousing himself' (though not really, since it's fun and interesting for him). But it's just weird, because I'll say, "hey DS, wanna play cars?"
"No, mama, I'm doing numbers/magnets/multiplication tiles etc"
"...oh...ok."

We do have a lot of reading time, and he has started looooving drawing/writing stories (we go through a lot of art pads here). But for the longest time, it was like school at home, as per his interests. So it's just a sort of fine line, I guess.

In regard to actually drilling a kid...maybe if they were the agreeable sort of toddler, (does that exist??) but I know my stubborn DS and getting him to do ANYTHING he doesn't want to do is a lesson in futility. I simply loved the image of sitting on the child to brush his teeth, too funny!

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.

I'd like to say it's not hothousing. (Hothousing is something different, I think because again, it's the "not ready for this yet" stuff.) But it's not something I would have done, I don't think--but my kids were spontaneous readers, so easy for me to say, right?

To be honest, none of us really know each other and none of us can say with anything approaching certainty whether what we are doing in our homes with our kids is over the gray line or not. As I say, I haven't always been sure myself. I don't really lie awake at night over this, but I think it's good to maintain self-awareness. I don't know adults who have been traumatized by "hothousing," EXACTLY, but I do know those who felt their parents were too pushy, too invested in their success, their identity as smart, etc.

If I spend a lot of time with my kid teaching her math, which she is quite capable of learning at a higher level than currently taught but not very interested in, as opposed to taking her birding, which she loves, and which is also educational, but doesn't produce quite the same "Ooh, ahhh" on-paper results, then I think maybe I am exchanging her priorities and interests for someone else's and making her a bit of a show pony. So I don't do this.

But it's important to realize that is not the ONLY thing in the parent-child life and again--gray areas. Even with Amy Chua (whose book I read)--I saw some crap that made me cringe like crazy, but it seemed like there was some warmth happening as well. Relationships and personalities are so multilayered.

I had a friend who did some things with her kid re discipline that made me shudder--not illegal stuff, but OMG gah I would never do that. But they have a warm and very close and fun relationship otherwise and it seems all good.

Nah, blackcat--that's just called teaching your kid how to ride a bike, I think!

Thanks, I was perhaps confused by the reference to bars, whose context seemed to indicate a limitation of parental knowledge (a glass ceiling?), and began to wonder if "parents know best" had morphed the subject to parental level of confidence in homeschooling (familiarity with specific academics, grade level curricula, outcomes/expectations, etc)...?

Regarding the ongoing search for the bright line: This may be like defining land and sea... obvious at a distance, but when focused on it closely that demarcation of shoreline may be elusive... high tide... low tide... a moving target. Fortunately that gray area of ever-changing shoreline is a much smaller mass than either land or sea.

My sense is that hothousing is systematic and habitual with an objectively parent-centred focus. If any of those conditions isn't met, I personally wouldn't call a parent a hothouser.

I think so, too, Aquinas.

I have never derived a moment's enjoyment from imposing my will on my DD. Even when my heart as a parent told me that it was necessary.

She's a kid that is so risk-averse that she often requires fairly firm push-parenting. I hate doing it, and I never ever force her to do things that I don't think SHE will value just because we do.

A question often puzzles me is how a child can gain self discipline. I have just read this very informative thread: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....5724/Gifted_8_year_old_NO_DISCIPLIN.html

It appears that while "hothousing" and "discipline" are often derogatory terms, but they may help provide a child with self discipline, one of the most important factors for success, far more important than intelligence.

Re that thread, iynait--a great post by Old Dad hits on something key for me:


Passions can be used to instill discipline and comprehension of the value of hard work without hothousing X random skill for parent bragging rights.

Now, when you have a kid who expresses a strong interest, then freaks out with perfectionist stuff when he/she meets a challenge with it and wants to quit...tricky.

We have one of those, but we are making great progress. Quote from today: "Mom? Am I working in my zone of proximal development?"

:-)

Granted, I'm not even sure what "success" is, or what the point of "succeeding" is.

I haven't chimed in before now but I read everyday astonished it keeps getting longer. And I think it does because it touches a defensiveness in all of us, about being called on our parents gut truthfully I think this debate is irrelevant to our kids and really indicates the difference between our kids and other kids, even those considered moderately regularly gifted - the needing of new inputs, new knowledge, it's like food or air or breathing to them. I think parents who do not have kids that need new knowledge the ways ours do do not understand and will never understand - unless you put in terms they do. And I think at some point all of us have had tor realize this necessity - usually after having denied it or resisted it.

Often parents of 4-8 year olds talk about "having" to have them in sports or take them to the playground because the kids have so much energy and are bouncing off the walls if they are not physical - well that's what our kids need it's just not physical - but that doesn't make any sense to parents who don't have kids who prefer to sit and read a good book on the periodical table rather than run around chasing other kids at the playground. And in fact many of us have kids like my DS who has to make up explanations or stories for the mindless running around that his friends do in order to semi-tolerate participating.

Interestingly the parents who have their kids in physical activities everyday also get critiqued for "over scheduling."

I think of it in terms of the bell curve, there are norms in every community and the more you appear to be violating those norms the more people will question why, and there is something about it being about intellectual skill that just rubs people wrong way. Fortunately, it only took a few of my misguided efforts to conform for me to realize I actually didn't care about those norms and feel perfectly comfortable not conforming.

In reading the whole thread, I keep being reminded of Val's discussion of definitions - my plant is rare, and needs special tending, and a special greenhouse, with extra soil and nutrients, without which he would atropy. So do I hothouse, no, do I enrich, no, I provide what is necessary!

DeHe

22b I loved your response that input is easier - but I'm not sure it's true for my kids!!! My eldest categorically has a 50 percentile plus gap between receptive language and expressive (expressive higher).

And I have vivid memories of my youngest as a one yr old, walking around the first hour or two every morning practicing the words for things or asking for new words and generally repeating everything she heard (bordering on echolalia). For her speaking seemed to be a necessary part of her storage/filing system (like taking written notes at an exam I guess). She she still speaks-to-process, and is NEVER quiet....

Conversely decoding text doesn't come easily to them, their reading is highly dependent on context and meaning. My second child for example would test years lower on reading tests like the schonnel test which are based on pure decoding of random words, compared to what she could read in meaningful text...as early readers my kids really could not read beyond their comprehension level.

Still fascinated by the differences in the way people's brains work.

This is so interesting to me because when I think of how my son learns through auditory this is how I "see" it in him... He speaks to process information. He discusses and repeats and solidifies understanding through discussion. And like I said before, the neuropsych testing allegedly shows he learns primarily auditorily. And yeah I feel like he never shuts up, he is constantly asking questions and 'discussin' until he understands, etc. He does learn from reading though. But he does not seem to visualize or get much out of visual information at all.. except reading BUT he tends to like to read out-loud to comprehend. Also, teachers tend to see him spacing out which he does do a fair amount of no doubt... but what I see a lot is him mumbling to himself something he just learned and is trying to process, etc... He also asks people to repeat themselves a lot ... again some see this as attentional (and no doubt some times it is) BUT I often see this as him almost memorizing/processing what he just heard so he needs the person to repeat b/c he just mumbled-while-processing the last thing the person said and they moved on too quickly... I probably sound wacky LOL... it's hard to explain!

Yes passions provide good examples of hard working leading to good results. But seeing the importance of hard working is still quite different from being able to actually work hard...

Here are some dictionary definitions:

Success:
The accomplishment of an aim or purpose.
The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted: attributed their success in business to hard work.

I think it's good to have long term goals or dreams and work hard towards them. Success means achieving the goals, but can also mean making important progress towards them.

Irena, it is a hard thing to explain to someone who has never run into one of those people. My DD 'thinks' using her mouth. LOL.

She can DICTATE text about 2-4 years beyond what she can type for herself, much less write longhand. It's really astonishing.

Interestingly, my DD used to be one of those "I have no internal monologue" kids--yap yap yap yap--and became much less so. One of the weird things for me when she learned to read was that suddenly, I didn't know where she was at all times (before, you could just follow the sound of her voice). Also, her dictated writing used to be much better than her written writing, but we've seen that change as well. She was a super early talker and appeared somewhat echolalic as a tiny toddler--used huge chunks of "lifted" speech in her dialogue (but not from movies--from what she'd heard us say). Now she writes wonderful original prose.


Minds! So cool.

Yeah-- oddly, my DD has never been a read-aloud kid, either. I know exactly what you mean about not having an auditory beacon to follow!! She did the echolalia-like thing, too-- from everything around her-- movies, TV, radio, conversations. It was really creepy, but there was something about her intonation that would "shift" slightly when she was using whole chunks from elsewhere. I always knew-- but I was the only one who knew that it was 'borrowed' content that she was trying out. She usually managed to place it completely appropriately contextually, so people other than me didn't understand that she was quoting Emeril rather than making it up as she went. It wasn't exactly echolalia, either, because as noted, she was using it IN context. It was almost like a word-acquisition skill on steroids. She acquired whole phrases or paragraphs and used them. It gradually stopped when she was about five or six.

Scarily familiar. I'm an auditory learner; DS is a few degrees beyond me. I swear he can quote entire conversations from memory if he wants. Sometimes I have the feeling of déjà vu--probably because part of a months-old conversation is being replayed in a new situation.

I think it's partly genetic. DH has this weird skill where he can come up with movie quips for pretty much ANYTHING, and he also has phenomenal auditory recall. Definitely not a 'normal' part of what most little ones do, though! DD was always aware that she was doing it, though-- and often could identify where she had lifted the content from, if that makes sense.

So she'd say something... I'd nod and smile, then ask "Where did that come from?"

"Oh, Magenta said it." (Or something like that.) It was a little sly, like "oh, you noticed! Heehee-- Just checking!"



Oddly, I found it comforting. I always knew that anything she 'shouldn't' hear from other adults around her, I'd know about. She had a marvelous perverse streak that way.

DS did this too, but much younger, when he was first learning to talk. He had a delightful phase when he could talk in reasonably standard 4-5 word telegraphic sentences - or in fluent paragraphs from Thomas the Tank Engine. (He'd cut them about, change names etc. to fit his context, but clearly couldn't yet come up with anything like that level of language "from whole cloth".)

Yup. My DD does this a lot less at 3.5 than she used to but i can think of examples from this week were she's repeated near verbatim something I've said in later conversation, used correctly and the. Modified / reprocessed for an additional related thought.

Yes, EXACTLY this. It was not noticeable to others, except in the sense that she was very precocious verbally.

DS did not do this and was not as verbally advanced as a toddler. However, they both memorized very long books very young. He turned out to be the earlier reader, by almost a year, for whatever reason.

When I read about this long ago, I found some info about "gestalt" language acquisition.