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Did anyone see the article in Parenting for High Potential Dec issue about Dr. Maureen Neibhart?

I just read it at the GI's office this morning as I waited for the doctor. I thought it was interesting how she noted, as an objective analyst, the differences in western and asian parenting. Views of how we see our kids etc.

What made me write this post was Alaskamom and my posts about Alia Sabur. What struck me was how diverse her interests were and how she excelled at all of them. She played clarinet so well that she played with the Philadelphia orchestra while doing her PhD, she got her black belt in karate or some martial arts while a young teen and did volunteer work in LA after Katrina, while doing her PhD.

It made me think, is overscheduling a good thing for a PG child?

Just posting to provoke thought. Just as someone mentioned Condalezza Rice, this was a child who did music, dance etc. etc.

Maybe PG children thrive on the overscheduling.

Ren

I think that parents looking for ways to justify over-controlling the lives of their children always find a way.

I think that there are risks with forcing a child to do what mom wants because that's what mom wants. They have been discussed ad nauseum recently.

I think that many parents forget that love of music, sports, math, or whatever comes from within and that they cannot force passions onto their children. There is a difference between healthy exposure to something and unhealthy pushing.

I think I should stop replying to these threads, but I feel compelled to do so in the hopes that someone, somewhere, will read ideas that are skeptical of hyper-parenting, and one kid will be spared its toxic effects.

That's all.

I wonder, are there any actual "chinese" moms on here that can provide some insight?

My kids don't do any extra curricular activities mainly because we're broke but also because I just can't seem to find the time! They're too busy learning how to do laundry, make food and learn other things that will prove very useful later in life.

Hi Ren,

I watched a really interesting documentary about this (well, about over scheduling generally, not specifically for gifted kids) not long after the flurry of posts about the Chinese mother article. The show was called Lost Adventures Of Childhood.

It basically focussed on research in to what the impacts of over scheduling are. What the researchers featured found is that kids who are really scheduled, who don't have significant free time playing by themselves, - as well as unstructured play dates - had lost a variety of important life skills (of course I didn't pay enough attention to who did the particularly studies they mentioned, though they were from respected universities). In particular they lost the ability to use their initiative, to take calculated risks and they didn't develop leadership skills or normal social skills. They never needed to. Everything they did was organised and instructed by adults. Adults defined how they should behave, instructed them on what actions they should take - and the structure meant that in group and team sporting activities kids never really spoke to each other or worked with each other other than within the narrow limits defined by adults.

Now I appreciate that this was one show and I haven't looked in to it any further - dd only does one class a week and could do with a bit MORE scheduling I suspect! But the outcomes they spoke of seemed logical enough and I guess I don't see how these outcomes would necessarily be any different for a PG kid than an ND kid.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have an issue with extra-cirricular activities and giving kids lots of opportunities. I also think that when it comes to parenting, each to their own (not withstanding abuse of course), which is why I didn�t get involved in the Chinese mum thread. However, for what it�s worth, I know for certain that my initiative, common sense, and my leadership and social skills are more useful to me than anything else I've ever learnt in a class. So I�m going to aim for a mix � as �they� say, everything in moderation

I think that in the previous thread Wren was arguing along that end of the spectrum?

This idea has occurred to me after hearing about the schedules of a few families I know with PG kids. I know the kids well enough to believe that they actually thrive on lots of extracurriculars.

These are kids with two characteristics that, IMO, justify such scheduling: they have since infancy slept less than the average child (some, according to their mothers, basically never napped), and they have that unquenchable, always-on, intense drive to find things out. Hence their multiple foreign-language and musical-instrument lessons and participation in more than one sport at a time.

Remembering the tone of many posts I've seen on gifted forums wondering frantically how to occupy an extremely energetic PG toddler or young kid, I think their parents are just answering an intense need for learning opportunities.

To someone who doesn't know kids like this well, such a situation might look or sound like overscheduling. But for the kids, it's really just 'scheduling'!

I totally think it depends on the kid...I never pushed my DDs at anything but when they were quite young, we moved from So Cal to E. TX and because of the huge difference in cost of living I was able to stay home with them and sign them up for lots of activities. I thought they could just try everything out and see what they liked and we would go from there. They liked everything lol!!!

They took Karate, Tennis, TBall/Softball, Soccer, Dance (Ballet/Tap/Jazz), Swimming and Gymnastics (plus space camp, drama and science camps in the summers). They would be changing from dance outfits into softball/soccer outfits in the car while eating PB&J sandwiches as I drove them from one activity to another.

Once they were in regular school, the academics were really easy for them even in the gt program and after grade skipping/early entry so they didn't have to worry about finding much time to study or do homework. It was crazy and hectic but they both really thrived during this period. They weren't the best in the group at every activity but they held their own and they still stayed on top academically with straight A's.

When we moved again years later, we had to cut out most activities for financial reasons giving them more free time. Their temperaments have always been very different and they responded very differently to the change. One DD was always very sociable, she did just fine with the transition, using the free time to do things with friends. The other DD who was never too sociable to begin with just started to wilt.

I am looking back with new perspective now. My more sociable DD I think is what you consider "optimally gifted" while my other DD is either HG or PG (and possibly 2E). HGDD's grades went down after we moved so I took away the one extracurricular activity she had left and that just made things worse. I didn't realize it at the time but in hind sight I believe that being so busy with extracurricular activities helped her tolerate not being terribly challenged academically. I think she used school as her time to relax but once the other activities ceased, she became somewhat despondent.

"In particular they lost the ability to use their initiative, to take calculated risks and they didn't develop leadership skills or normal social skills."

I don't believe the crazy schedule caused one of my dds to lose abilities or fail to develop skills while not affecting the other dd at all in this regard. I do think the DD without the natural social tendencies thrived more in an environment of over-scheduling though. Not scientific, just anecdotal.

After saying each to their own, now I'm going to butt in again. I guess what I don't understand (and I am genuinely interested in the answer), is why does this need to learn and be stimulated have to happen outside the home? Why not provide kids with stimulating things to do at home too, which they can manage themselves? DD5 is really in to science at the moment, but she's just starting school. There are science clubs I could send her to, but in reality she's an introverted (though social) kid who I suspect will find 5 days a week in school a challenge from an emotional energy perspective. Once she's settled in we'll look in to activities more. In the mean time I've signed her up to one class and spent the money I would have spent on a science club on equipment for her to study science at home. I got a microscope, basic chemistry set, electronics kits, etc. This she can fill her time with, come up with her own ideas, set up her own projects. Even with an additional extra-curricula activity or two we would make sure she had access to and time for following her own interests in her own time (though I wouldn't have invested in all that stuff without being pretty sure she was going to use it - though it will all be useful over time anyway).

Now my kid is a demanding kid, she wants and craves interaction and stimulation all day every day. Sometime I wish I could hit the off switch. So I get that there are kids for whom 5 days a week of school simply isn't enough stimulation and they're going to want/need more - but I don't understand why all of it needs to be structured and directed and presented by an expert (though I appreciate there is a place for that too). There aren't too many passions that's can't be nourished, at least in part, away from a class.

I am interested in what benefits those of you, whose kids do do a lot of outsourced activities, see your children getting from being �overscheduled�? What makes it better than spending time footling about with your own ideas, in your family�s case? (Some have already been touched on I know, and I hope I don�t sound like I am being flippant � I am genuinely interested in the answer). Sorry Ren, I hope I haven�t hijacked your post � I think my questions are related, but will start new thread if more appropriate.

The family CAN provide some stimulation. One of our favorite things to do is "window math" - for some reason, learning new math skills is ten times more fun when it is done in dry erase marker on the back door. We take trips to local historical sites, state parks, etc - and both of the kids have a great time and learn a lot at the same time. But we can't do it all at home. DS7 recently got his black belt in tae kwon do. It gave my normally timid and self-conscious boy something to be really proud of, and there's no way I could have done that at home. I put both of them in team sports (although I let them pick their own sport) to help them learn to work as a team and keep them active. DS7 wants to learn music, and if he's asking, I'm certainly not going to tell him no - we're planning to let him start lessons on some instrument this summer. Plus he has school, Odyssey of the Mind, and other various activities. It's busy, but I also think it's important for him to have some time to just go outside and play with the neighborhood kids. A busy schedule has been good for him - when he has too much free time, he tends to get a little anxious. (He gets that from me - I'm happiest when I'm so busy I'm stressed out of my mind). My point is there's a balance to be found. You can keep them busy without giving them so much to do, they don't have time for friends and fun.

I totally agree! The more I have scheduled, the more time I seem to have and the higher quality of that time! We never seemed to lack time for family bonding, art projects, reading, cooking, creative play, friends, sleepovers, etc at home - even with all of the outside activities. Maybe in addition to "it depends on the kid" I should have added "it depends on the parent". I did as much as I could with my DDs at home without losing my mind, but they learned everything and moved on so darn quickly, and just seemed to need so much more than I could offer.

I think for our family, the busy schedule was good for all of us: we were all so intense we would have gone crazy and driven each other crazy spending any more time than we did cooped up together in the house. For my DDs, the scheduled activities were also fun time and friend time (in the batter box, watching siblings games with other older/younger siblings, waiting turns at gymnastics or swimming, there is a lot of socializing that goes on there.

I try to get mine into extras so that he is around other kids and adults. It is just DS9 and I. This is a chance for him to be around men. One of the scout dads took him off and taught him to toss the football. I just can't do it, I throw and catch like a girl b/c i am. We are also so dependent on each other, it makes him trust and interact with others that it's not all about us. we do alot of the learning history and science things but scouts has been wonderful. It pushes both of us out of our comfort zones, I hate camping and have bad knees. Off my little man goes hiking up hills and trying rope bridges while I relax.

FWIW, I had dinner the other night with the only real Chinese mom that I know. Her daughter is my daughter's best friend. The mom grew up in mainland China under Chairman Mao and lived through the subsequent changes. She moved here about 13 years ago with her husband who is also Chinese. She said that when she grew up getting into good schools was political but that started to change when she got to high school. During her last two years, getting into a good school started to be a function of testing.

She said, "What we do to children now in China is terrible. Everything is about the test and that is how you get into good school. We don't allow our children to have a life. In China, they study until 10 o'clock at night. Everything is memorizing for the test. We did not want that for our children, that is why we came here."

Her children are involved in a lot of activities -- weekend Chinese school (language and cultural instruction), music (violin and flute), ice skating (figure and hockey), indoor soccer, theater, etc. She wants her children to have the opportunity to try the things that are not offered in school. She said that the only activity that is not optional is Chinese school because it is an important connection to their culture. She allows her kids to have sleepovers.

When I asked her what she thought of the "Chinese mom" article, she laughed. She pointed out that in China she would not have been allowed to have three children. She sees her two younger children in particular as her special gifts. She said that she would never treat her children that way. She said that she grew up in a culture were choices were very limited and school was very structured. She did not want that for her children. She thought maybe the article was more typical of American-born Chinese.

I'm a parent that can seem like a so-called "Chinese" parent...
we're not unschooling parents philosophically (though our child is home-educated), we value genuine excellence over faux-esteem-building gold-star-trophies-for-all culture, our child has a disability that requires constant oversight (ie-- we can seem very "controlling"), every member of my nuclear family is a volatile and outspoken type-A personality with an extra genetic helping of mouthy snark on the side, and we have a HG/PG child who is and has always been an e-ticket ride.

In other words, DD11 is stubborn as all get-out, most activities require a level of parental advocacy that seems extreme (it's for her safety), but she has the energy/time/ability to do many of the myriad things that she wants to accomplish-- and, so long as she actually follows through on her commitments, she still has plenty of time left over to do regular "kid" stuff like playing with sidewalk chalk and thinking about Pokemon. You know, once she's done evaluating opportunity costs of a business decision, and completing a critical essay on Othello or some such thing, but that's life as a HG/PG kid. When people meet her in person for the first time, they are mostly struck by just how normal and, I don't know, 'free' or relaxed, she is. And how relaxed WE are. You'd never know just how gifted she was by observing her doing normal 'kid' stuff, in other words. That's the way we like it-- and we have fought HARD to give her that slice of a normal childhood.

Our end of things is the "follow through" and "oh no, you don't" when she decides that playing computer games sounds like a lot more fun in the here and now than actually completing a paper that she needs to write for a high school course. "Half-a**ed" is what we don't tolerate from her there. So that aspect of Tiger-mothering I'm entirely on-board with. <shrug>




So are we pretty hard on her? Yes. But with love, and on an 'as-needed' basis. We never ask for more than she's capable of delivering, and we also never ask for more than is appropriate-- but the problem is that our demands probably SEEM like they are way out of line-- because for most 11yo kids, they sure would be.

For this 11yo, though? Not-so-much. She's most pleased when she has a LOT of demands placed on her. We assume that she's tough enough to weather most of what life throws her way. We just try to keep her from biting off more than she can chew. That's a moving target.

Listing all that she gets completed in a week would make most adults' heads spin. Learned the hard way that being frank about that tends to provoke the same kind of horror that I've seen in response to Amy Chua. We seem kind of hard-core like that, too, I think. My daughter'd like to think that being asked to clean her room is "abuse," that much I know... but like most parents, we just want to instill an understanding that work comes before play. Heh.


Is Amy Chua doing the wrong things with her kids? I have no idea. I don't know them, and I'm not a fly on the wall in her home. What I do know is that I'm not willing to dismiss it out of hand by using my own family's measuring stick against her parenting. It wouldn't be right for my daughter, and it's interesting to read about... but that's all I really know.

~The Karmic Howler Monkey

PS. LOL at "window math." We don't have a sliding glass door, so my DD has always stood on the back of our sofa and used our living room's huge picture windows. She used to beg me for dimensional analysis problems.

Oh-- and to add to that, since DD is educated at home, without "extra-curricular" activities, her social life would be pretty limited, as well. She's an only child.

Or first generation, maybe? I know that my friends growing up who were daughters of immigrants were parented much more strictly than their cousins who still lived in the country of origin.

I'm finally going to chime in on this one. I agree strongly with the posts that there is not One Way to raise our children. Every decision my husband and I make is based on our understanding of OUR son and how he reacts to situations. Sometimes that means he thinks we are unfair in our expectations of him compared to his friends. Other times, it means taking a longer view and accepting DS's limitations positively but with a long term plan to help them improve.

Since his school environment is not overly challenging academically but incredibly overwhelming to him on the organizational side, we do not let him get away with poorly thought out and executed assignments. However, we relax the bar when it comes to neatness of his locker and notebooks. Those are still a work in progress. We have standards he must meet for his organizational level, but as his parents we KNOW our son and understand that he does not have the executive function skills expected of a 6th grader yet.

DS does not respond at all positively to external pressure. The key with him is to figure out what will self motivate him to do his best in an activity or assignment. Extra activities outside of school, often teach him more about himself than anything he does in school. My intention for a least a few more years is that he always be involved in at least 1 creative activity, 1 physical activity and 1 music activity in addition to school. However, DS gets to choose the activities and may change them once a specific enrollment period is completed. Currently, he is enrolled in a Comedic Acting Class, Figure Skating and a Chorus.

I can't answer if he is over scheduled compared to any other child. For our son, this schedule works. He has activities several nights an week and on Saturday but he has Sunday and a couple days in the week without external activities to unwind or work on projects. In my opinion, his schedule helps him to stay more organized and has begun to teach him not to procrastinate and to use the time he has more efficiently.