Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How to Hothouse Your Kid

I'd like to say it's not hothousing. (Hothousing is something different, I think because again, it's the "not ready for this yet" stuff.) But it's not something I would have done, I don't think--but my kids were spontaneous readers, so easy for me to say, right?

To be honest, none of us really know each other and none of us can say with anything approaching certainty whether what we are doing in our homes with our kids is over the gray line or not. As I say, I haven't always been sure myself. I don't really lie awake at night over this, but I think it's good to maintain self-awareness. I don't know adults who have been traumatized by "hothousing," EXACTLY, but I do know those who felt their parents were too pushy, too invested in their success, their identity as smart, etc.

If I spend a lot of time with my kid teaching her math, which she is quite capable of learning at a higher level than currently taught but not very interested in, as opposed to taking her birding, which she loves, and which is also educational, but doesn't produce quite the same "Ooh, ahhh" on-paper results, then I think maybe I am exchanging her priorities and interests for someone else's and making her a bit of a show pony. So I don't do this.

But it's important to realize that is not the ONLY thing in the parent-child life and again--gray areas. Even with Amy Chua (whose book I read)--I saw some crap that made me cringe like crazy, but it seemed like there was some warmth happening as well. Relationships and personalities are so multilayered.

I had a friend who did some things with her kid re discipline that made me shudder--not illegal stuff, but OMG gah I would never do that. But they have a warm and very close and fun relationship otherwise and it seems all good.

Nah, blackcat--that's just called teaching your kid how to ride a bike, I think!

Thanks, I was perhaps confused by the reference to bars, whose context seemed to indicate a limitation of parental knowledge (a glass ceiling?), and began to wonder if "parents know best" had morphed the subject to parental level of confidence in homeschooling (familiarity with specific academics, grade level curricula, outcomes/expectations, etc)...?

Regarding the ongoing search for the bright line: This may be like defining land and sea... obvious at a distance, but when focused on it closely that demarcation of shoreline may be elusive... high tide... low tide... a moving target. Fortunately that gray area of ever-changing shoreline is a much smaller mass than either land or sea.

My sense is that hothousing is systematic and habitual with an objectively parent-centred focus. If any of those conditions isn't met, I personally wouldn't call a parent a hothouser.

I think so, too, Aquinas.

I have never derived a moment's enjoyment from imposing my will on my DD. Even when my heart as a parent told me that it was necessary.

She's a kid that is so risk-averse that she often requires fairly firm push-parenting. I hate doing it, and I never ever force her to do things that I don't think SHE will value just because we do.

A question often puzzles me is how a child can gain self discipline. I have just read this very informative thread: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted....5724/Gifted_8_year_old_NO_DISCIPLIN.html

It appears that while "hothousing" and "discipline" are often derogatory terms, but they may help provide a child with self discipline, one of the most important factors for success, far more important than intelligence.

Re that thread, iynait--a great post by Old Dad hits on something key for me:


Passions can be used to instill discipline and comprehension of the value of hard work without hothousing X random skill for parent bragging rights.

Now, when you have a kid who expresses a strong interest, then freaks out with perfectionist stuff when he/she meets a challenge with it and wants to quit...tricky.

We have one of those, but we are making great progress. Quote from today: "Mom? Am I working in my zone of proximal development?"

:-)

Granted, I'm not even sure what "success" is, or what the point of "succeeding" is.

I haven't chimed in before now but I read everyday astonished it keeps getting longer. And I think it does because it touches a defensiveness in all of us, about being called on our parents gut truthfully I think this debate is irrelevant to our kids and really indicates the difference between our kids and other kids, even those considered moderately regularly gifted - the needing of new inputs, new knowledge, it's like food or air or breathing to them. I think parents who do not have kids that need new knowledge the ways ours do do not understand and will never understand - unless you put in terms they do. And I think at some point all of us have had tor realize this necessity - usually after having denied it or resisted it.

Often parents of 4-8 year olds talk about "having" to have them in sports or take them to the playground because the kids have so much energy and are bouncing off the walls if they are not physical - well that's what our kids need it's just not physical - but that doesn't make any sense to parents who don't have kids who prefer to sit and read a good book on the periodical table rather than run around chasing other kids at the playground. And in fact many of us have kids like my DS who has to make up explanations or stories for the mindless running around that his friends do in order to semi-tolerate participating.

Interestingly the parents who have their kids in physical activities everyday also get critiqued for "over scheduling."

I think of it in terms of the bell curve, there are norms in every community and the more you appear to be violating those norms the more people will question why, and there is something about it being about intellectual skill that just rubs people wrong way. Fortunately, it only took a few of my misguided efforts to conform for me to realize I actually didn't care about those norms and feel perfectly comfortable not conforming.

In reading the whole thread, I keep being reminded of Val's discussion of definitions - my plant is rare, and needs special tending, and a special greenhouse, with extra soil and nutrients, without which he would atropy. So do I hothouse, no, do I enrich, no, I provide what is necessary!

DeHe