I am no expert but to me the difference between a truly gifted child and a hot housed learner is that the gifted child is always at least 1 step ahead of where the caregivers are expecting (usually many, many more :)). The hot housed child is learning at or just below the expectations of the caregiver.
Opportunity will always allow a child to learn things that another child may not know, which is one of the reasons that low income and minority gifted children so often fall through the cracks and get missed in early identification programs. However, it is what the child does with the knowledge that points to the difference between high average and gifted. For example: Does the child point to an animal and say elephant at 18 months or does the child look at you and ask why does the elphant have a built in shower?
A personal experience for us was during a trip to the Aquarium when he was 3. Our son was facinated with trying to identify as many of the fish as possible from the identification signs. He was sounding out latin names and seeing the similarities between different names and then looking at the fish to see if he could tell what made them different. Many parents looked at Dh and I like we were abusive parents as we stood at the same exhibit for close to an hour helping him to answer his own questions. Things didn't get ugly until we got the the reef exhibit. There were about 20 young children screaming NEMO!!!. Our child calmly looked in the tank and said " That's Marlin not Nemo. Nemo had a deformed fin. That fish doesn't." To me that is an example of gifted versus opportunity. It is the ability to not only learn but to make connections beyond what is expected or anticipated. The connections do not always have to be correct or valid. Often they can be a bit off the wall. But in my experience, most preschool age children do not watch a sting ray move and then compare it to how the sheets on his bed ripple when he waves them. And start talking about movement, momentum and air and water currents.
I think it is harder for schools to tell the difference between gifted and hot housed. If I remember Dottie's posts correctly, many of the tests for preschool age children CAN greatly inflate the results if a child already knows how to read or do simple math.
I'm glad I'm not one of the people who have to decide which of the applicants are going to be accepted and which are not!
