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".
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.
