The term "hothousing" bothers me a lot. It seems so judgmental, as though teaching your child something he doesn't want to do is somehow abusive. IMO, the pejorative use of this term derives out of insecurity and a lot of other uncomfortable facts (some can be controlled by us, and some can't). What's the alternative? Letting the kid do only what he wants? That sounds like a way to create a person who's at risk for only doing the stuff he likes or is easy for him. It also feeds into the (dangerous) myth that HG+ kids just love to learn and that it's always easy/fun for them. That's just not true. Learning arithmetic may be easy for these kids, but learning how to write good expository essays and do calculus is hard, even with an IQ of 160. The rewards come later.
Yes
Thank you.
That's exactly what happened to me. Spoiled, first born, HG, never enriched and treated like a princess. I had a blissful childhood free from any kind of strife. There are other advantages for sure, however... I generally only do what I feel like doing and I tend to ditch things as soon as they are too much work or too boring.
I want my kids to be able to see things through to completion and accomplish their goals, and that's not going to happen if I pat them on the head and indulge their every whim. Hot housing? Not a chance. Building life skills is more like it.
The thing is, these life skill learning opportunities are available for the NT kids in typical public education settings. For the clever kids we have to raise the bar in order to give them the same experience, and from the outside we look competitive and elitist which is not the case at all.
