Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Hothousing- did you, didn't you, will you?

Well, if the explanation is as above, I am guilty of hothousing my kids before they entered school.
Let me explain.
I quit work when my daughter was born and Ghost was 2 years old. I was a "full time stay at home mom " for close to 5 years.
Ghost has always been quite a noisy child (put gently), so we needed some good, long down time/quiet activity time when his little sister was sleeping during the day. I did not want him to watch TV, we limited that activity VERY CAREFULY, so I read tons to him but only in my mother's tongue. Well, as you can imagine, I also wanted to take advantage of the fact that one of my children was out of the way (asleep) to do some chores. So after short reading sections, I introduced Ghost to coloring books. But as you remember, at that tender age of 2 or 3 or 4, there is no activity that would occupy them for longer than 10-15 min. There was a need to change activities frequently. Different coloring books were changing into activity books . But funny as it may sound to you now, since I never speak to my children in English, I was always translating the text into my mother's tongue. Then I had an "aha" moment. Why not get him preschool books in my native language? And that is how I began a journey of teaching my son to read in my native language. By the time he hit kindergarten age, he was a fluent reader in both languages, of course only of books at his level (Bob Books, Dr. Seus books etc.)My mother's tngue is very phonetic, so he absolutely had no problems reading phonics books. My daughter followed the same path.
So I guess it was hothousing, because there is no way Ghost at 2.5 years of age would tell me, hey I want to read in two languages. Did my kids enjoy it? Tremendously! Once they started K I stopped teaching them my language, I just made sure that whenever we go to Europe they do not have any English books with them so they have to read in my language :-)
If it wasn't for the hothousing, my kids would not be able to speak and read two languages equally well.