Back to my hothousing experience. We dabbled with "learning time" which was my attempt to work on her math facts with some high points and some very low points on my part. I lapsed into some Tiger Mom moments mostly when I became frustrated with my DD's silly disctracted antics, not that she didn't know something, but that she wouldn't cooperate. She isn't one to want to please or to follow and once we tried learning time, we began to butt heads, so for the most part, I had to drop any attempt to ENFORCE my WILL. Now we do a little something here and there if she is willing, and that's it.
I can see that this probably happens a lot when the topic of 'hothousing' comes up, but let's think for a minute about what happens to an actual plant in an actual hothouse.
A plant that couldn't normally thrive in a particular environment (school?) is taken out of the local environment, and placed in an environment that meets it's own natural requirements for warmth, water and sunlight. It grows really well. The grower takes responsibility for learning as much as possible about the plants actual needs, and there may be some trial and error. People look at the beautiful flower and feel jealous, but console themselves that the flower could in no way thrive in the regular environment. So they remember not to compare their own flowers, which do, to the 'hothouse flowers.' And use the term as a put down.
If one accepts that our kids' learning needs are mostly inborn, then why not get started figuring out how much of a 'not-typical-for-local-plants' kind of environment that particular plant might actually need to grow.
When folks start up pointing out that the plant would die if it weren't in the hothouse, I remember that there isn't a species of plant alive on this planet that isn't native somewhere. I feel like it is my job to hothouse as much as necessary (and no more than is useful) until the plant is well enough established to thrive in it's new environment, or move!
Where we live, lots of people have 'semi-hothoused' plants that move inside for the winter, or start in a hothouse as seedlings and move outside after being 'hardened off.'
I think that because a lot of our childrens' difficulties come from being 'asynchronous' rather than truely alien, that being so careful about the growth requirements academically is mostly needed during childhood years. At 15 it's appropriate for my son to be able to balance his needs with other kid's needs in a classroom - at 7 it was just asking too much of him. Plus in his current environment it truly is a question of balance, since he is often getting his learning needs met. At 7 the classroom was very different, and the expectations for balance were quite a bit more lopsided. If he had been a high EQ kid in a classroom that was meeting 45% of his learning needs, I would have expected more from him in terms of going with the flow.
So that's my personal definition of hothousing...certainly not the standard, just mine.
Grinity
