Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Urge to hot-house?!?!?

Hi La Texican,

What I meant by hothousing was pushing the reading thing artificially (i.e. beyond her natural interest) when there's no pedagogical or cognitive-developmental reason for her to learn it at this age. And doing it for me and my ego, not for her.

That's good and concise definition of hothousing.

If your teachers don't get your daughter, it's possible that they just haven't been exposed to someone as bright as her. Maybe they can learn from her, too. It sounds like they're quite capable, from what you wrote.

Don't know about anyone else here, but in spite of having been ID'd as gifted as a kid, I didn't really get what it was about until I had kids myself and started reading about it. Could be the same with your daughter's teachers. And if they start to understand her, they could start looking for similar characteristics in other kids.

Oh, I definitely knew that I didn't look at the world (or experience it the way others did) by the time I was in third grade or so.



What I mean by "if you have a choice" about reading pedagogy is that many GT kids teach themselves out of sheer determination.

Unfortunately, you can't "un-learn" the way you learned to read.

While phonemic methods are certainly just about the ONLY way to teach struggling students how to read...

the phonetic method is definitely superior for teaching a variety of HIGHER literacy skills later. That is why seeing literacy in those terms is a distinct advantage-- even for gifted learners.

Spelling, root word identification, prefix/suffix identification, and contextual vocabulary building all are given a little boost by reading phonetically rather than with a purely whole language approach.

It's the way that higher mathematics is taught, as well. It's an algorithmic approach rather than a one which is based on empirical experience. (Reading words you've never seen is much less intimidating if you've learned how to approach things phonetically.)

That's all. I'm well aware that many gifted children initially learn to read using other means, and that fluent literacy tends to eventually rely pretty heavily on whole language skills. But I don't think that speaks to the superiority/efficiency of those methods of acquiring basic literacy so much as it does that we aren't offering little ones anything that they can get their teeth into, so they improvise instead. It's certainly where my daughter was headed, in spite of our AVOIDANCE (so not kidding) of direct instruction.

Why not offer a little phonemic awareness and see where it goes, YK? There's a lot of difference between that and pushing academics. Between the Lions was a PBS show that DD was enthralled by at two and three. Well, that and Elmo. LOL.

In my experience early reading doesn't make people "get" your child. Really precocious reading is sometimes totally ignored because people simply have no frame of reference and don't even process that the kid is actually reading. And, of course there is also the option that people will suggest the child is hyperlexic, autistic, or some kind of savant.

If there is something specific your daughter needs at preschool that she isn't getting I would talk to the teacher about it. From where I sit preschool was the best time because playing outside, playdough, blocks... it was gifted neutral.

... or that you as a parent must have a lot of unresolved issues. Enmeshment, much?




I'm kidding of course. Well, kind of. People do say those kinds of things.

I've been accused of "stealing" my daughter's childhood by accepting radical acceleration for her, for example. <sigh>

Yes, I had a tremendous urge to "work with daughter" DD4 (as in structured open-ended learning beyond PK letter/color/shape identification). I resisted until she completed Mild Asperger's diagnosis and then gifted testing 2 months ago. She is 2E..

I wanted her tested as she was..In a natural state, per say. Does she really read/decipher/decode words? Can she really memorize a rural to urban road trip turn by turn after just one trip? on and on.. Am I crazy?

Her 3 year old preschool did not see the thought patterns that screamed..I think in a special way! She was bored out of her mind and planning a way out with behaviors.

Four year old PK teacher is much more in tune.. Yet I still do not get the feedback that I expect...Why don't they get it? Does anyone have the time and energy to get it? Do they want to get it? ..Or is it easier to keep the learners in a manageable pack?.. If I say what I want to say it never seems to sound right.

And so ..I started working with DD4 beyond reading stories..Not beyond common sense. Thirty minutes or less in a structured way on various tasks/concepts reward at the end with a maze..her favorite. My mindset has moved from making a point, waking up PK teachers to working with daughter as a way to enjoy the possibilities and prepare for the next challenge.

I agree with PTP. Early reading never seemed to help anyone appreciate giftedness in my children. Honestly, nothing seemed to help our encounters with teachers early on -- not test scores, not interest, not ability, not depth of understanding, not vocabulary. I found that once my children were in other environments including private instruction, clubs, online environments, courses with higher level teachers or professors, then suddenly their abilities were appreciated and celebrated.

MegMeg -- I would hope your DD's preschool teachers would appreciate her capacity, but please don't be surprised if this doesn't happen. I had one K report card that announced to me that my child could recognize letters when he'd been reading for almost 4 years by then. It's been my experience that recognition of unusual gifts says more about the person recognizing than the student being observed!

I was just admitting I'm pretty sure I do hothouse. I don't have a problem with it at all if you want to be excited secretly over the thought that your Daughter might really be learning to read at a really young age and it might be making you feel a little bit giddy, even if you're guilty about it. I posted my snark on the social taboo before, or at the same time a few other posts went up taking the thread firmly in the direction of teachers "getting" the depth of a gifted baby, etc.
Can i add that I'm very afraid the teachers or other mothers at the school won't "get" me, when my kids are old enough to start school. And I hope the "hothousing" accusations is an Internet phenomenon and not really a real thing.

Well, in truth most other people are way too polite to say so to your face.


They mostly use anonymity there, or snipe to others about your obvious deficiencies as a person.

Make no mistake, it isn't everyone, by any means. But for some parents that really do seem to measure their self-worth by some cosmic competition to see whose kids are "better" than theirs, this is pretty much a given.

THOSE people are absolutely toxic to parents of GT kids. They'll dig and dig for ANYTHING that seems to be a potential flaw in you, your parenting, or your child... and then crow about it. Passive-aggressively, of course... so it always sounds as though it is "concern" for your family.

But it isn't. (I find that kind worth active avoidance myself.)

Our son's "early reading" has kept me wondering "how" since the beginning.

He started reading words at two+ and would often "read" books. I quoted "read" because we never thought he was actually reading -- we figured it was just memorization, as he'd long been demonstrating a keen memory.

And then one day, shortly after turning three, he got a new book as a gift and promptly sat down and read it front to back. It was a 2nd grade book.

We were amazed and, naturally, had to try out this little guy's new found skills. He was reading just about anything we'd put in front of his face. He rarely, if ever, went through the process of sounding out words, and his fluency and expression were tremendous.

Where did this come from? We taught him the alphabet on the refrigerator, along with his name and things like that -- nothing else. We did read to him constantly, and he had a voracious appetite. Reading for a solid hour every night was common, if not typical. But how he made the connection between the spoken & written word is still a mystery. (We never followed along with our finger or anything like that.)

It wasn't long after that we started to switch off our reading, alternating a page or so at a time. What still stands out in my mind is the way he tackled new words -- he'd take a whole word approach based on (I'm assuming) similar words bouncing around his skull. When he pronounced a work incorrectly, I'd give him the correct pronunciation and that was that. He would rarely miss a word twice.

When he got into school, I remember that the whole process of phonics absolutely drove him batty. And when he had to do a whole page of marking the vowel and circling "special sounds," I thought he would totally lose it. (To this day, I still don't know the difference between a special and not-so-special sound.)

Sorry to drone on... our son is now nine and as we are enjoying a more typical language development with his sibling, I'm even more stunned by what he pulled off at such a young age.