I posted at some point a suggested conjugation: "I support, you push, he/she/it hothouses". Tongue in cheek, of course, but I think this is the essence. Few parents literally provide material and no guidance at all to the child on what to do, at least not once the child reaches school age and e.g. homework kicks in. We call it e.g. "support to persevere with a task" when other people might call it "pressure to perform". The question is just, how much pressure is the right amount? It's "supporting" when the speaker thinks they have the pressure just right (or doesn't recognise what they do as pressure at all) "pushing" when the speaker thinks it's a bit too much, "hothousing" when the speaker thinks it's far too much. (This doesn't cover *all* usage of the terms, of course, e.g. we had a thread about hothousing executive function and I think we all understood.)
So IMO, by the commonest definition a child cannot hothouse him or herself, although by a secondary definition such as the one we used in that one thread, s/he can.
I was recently accused of hothousing DS7 in maths (same conversation I vented about the other day). He was away from home at the time, and I tidied his bookcases. When he got back, he was delighted that he could now easily find any book he wanted. The first four books he chose - and he read all four cover to cover in his first 36 hours home - were all maths books (three Murderous Maths books and The Number Devil). In the sense you mean, he certainly hothouses himself! But I think it would be rather confusing to promulgate that usage.
