I "require" my child to do a lot of things in addition to his school academics. These may include after schooling, sports, music, robotics etc. I am trying to develop a well rounded child and this is my way of doing it in spite of the drawbacks in his schooling. My child is good natured and energetic and enthusiastic and I try to find very interesting ways to accomplish what I require him to do - but, if both our personalities were any different, it might start to look like hothousing or Tigermothering.
To me, Hot housing is when a child is not able to accomplish the levels of output that the parent expects and the parent makes the child work night and day to measure up to expectations with a lot of displeasure and consequences for not producing the output that the parent expects.
Lack of free, unstructured time is not an indicator of hothousing - most intense, gifted kids that I know are busy doing something structured that they hardly have any free time (I know a few that are very good at violin, chess and soccer and each of them is so busy at a young age).
