Great posts here.
There have been times when I've been tempted to hothouse in the sense of...my kid can do this and seems good with it, and it's kind of fun to see it. DD was very interested in text at about 18 months and learned some sight words on her own. I thought "Hmmm...cool!" and made some word cards and left them out. She would sometimes toddle over and get them, or I would take them out, in the same way you'd take out Duplos or a puzzle. After a while she amassed about 50 sight words. She seemed to mildly enjoy this game, just as she would enjoy other things we did, like Playdoh or gluing things or whatever. But I began to feel anxious that I was hotbhousing and to see that this might be more my "Gee, cool!" side taking over, so I put the cards away out of sight to see if she would ask for them. She didn't. They stayed in the drawer and never came out again.
I don't know if this was exactly hothousing. It's an interesting call. She participated, happily, but she did not ask for the info, and did not seem either wildly excited or, certainly, opposed.
Somewhat similarly, I guess, we put a world map up in DD's room when she was 2. This turned into a nightly thing of naming countries before bed. She did seem to love it ("Three more countries!"), but it was not her idea and I admit that we enjoyed the party-trick aspect (though again, no one outside the family knew she did this). One day the map developed a rip, and we took it down. She didn't ask for another.
Much later, we got her a US states placemat and she promptly memorized all the states. She became somewhat famous in kindergarten for this. Then the placemat fell apart and we threw it away and that was the end of that, though I think she still knows most of them (she's forgotten most of the countries--her geography was literally better than mine at one point, in that she knew most of Africa and the new Eastern Europe).
I am making her sound very obedient or something. She isn't. She eats up information, somewhat indiscriminately.
Last edited by ultramarina; 08/24/11 06:33 PM.
