I'm combining my reponse for this thread and the hothouse spin off thread here because I want to take this
In my intial posts after joining the board, I mentioned how guilty I felt for not realizing his behavior and desperation for tv was all about a need for new inputs - I was literally starving him by not providing the information his exponential development needed in that moment - instead of a growth spurt he had a brain spurt but I had no idea.
I did this too. I'm still struggling with it. Here's the dilemma I have: If I provide information I think he's ready for, I'm directly teaching him. If I'm teaching him, he's not learning by himself. If he's not learning by himself, he mustn't be gifted (because really gifted children would learn it by themselves), if he's not gifted, I am hothousing him.
The other twisted spiral I have is that when he stops learning, he get restistant to effort. I have to push him again to get started. So the less I do, the less he wants to do. The less I do the more I feel like what I DO do is hothousing.
Add the gifted child/hothousing stereotype and I'm a mess!
DeHe and anyone else - how did you get out of it?
