Where as if your child is more of the thinks-great-thoughts-but-needs-help-with-the-basic-facts type, then you may actually need to do work with them to enable the progress they want to make - which might then leave you wondering if those hot housing accusations are justified.
Personally, I don't think that working with your child is hot housing--especially when it's to get your child the tools to do something that he or she is yearning to do. I think that there are a lot of leapers who need support with some of the basics because they jump over that stage of learning following the bigger, more abstract concepts and thinking. One of the easiest places to see this is with young writers whose ability to express ideas and feelings in writing is well outside the norm, but who may have spelling and punctuation that no one would ever point to as proof of giftedness. A supportive teacher or parent provides opportunities for the child to soar with the expressive aspect of writing, while working on bulking up the spelling and punctuation.
To my thinking, leapers aren't always kids who absorb facts and never need any facilitation to learn anything. It seems to me that some leapers are the kids who swallow ideas whole and have difficulty motivating themselves to go back and fill in the details. I'm thinking that both kinds of kids need an instructional approach that minimizes in-class repetition and maximizes pace and depth.
I think part of the problem is that we are parenting these children in communities and schools that still operate under a lot of myths about giftedness. When schools still operate under the premise that "gaps" negate giftedness, we either need to work on filling in the gaps or resign ourselves to having our children starve in classrooms that have nothing to offer
other than the filling in of a few gaps. As that is intolerable for our children, it becomes intolerable to us too.
