Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Hothouse Spinoff

Yeah, I feel that way sometimes. It's almost as though one's kid isn't gifted enough if he doesn't figure out everything for himself or if you teach him. I don't get that. I understand that some people just figure things out and that they teach stuff to themselves. But everyone needs teachers and mentors. I figure you can only get so far on your own before you need help from another person who knows more than you do or who thinks differently from you. This is just my opinion.

This just seems to make sense, intuitively.

I recall wanting to do this in math and science when I was younger. I don't think my parents knew what do to with me. But those were my areas of interest. That and short selling the stock market (and economic analysis, generally).

Although I think I was "hothoused" to become valedictorian. My father was the school superintendent, so he, quite literally, had some control over this process.

Yes, I feel like this sometimes too, and being untested, it does get to me. This doesn't mean I don't believe that some kdis do practically teach themselves, because the 'teaching' was so subtle, noone knew they were doing it. They were just living, you know?

I also don't think anyone tries to make me feel that way, I'm just really insecure, lol!

Hothousing has a negative connotation because in my mind, it is a very fine line near child abuse. There was a Law and Order episode a few years ago about gifted daughters that were hothoused in a basement. It was TV drama done up for effect but it was essentially Tiger Mom goes bananas.

I have met ONE hothouser. She was a part of our mom's club in our neighborhood. Every single day, she put her 8 month old in the high chair with flash cards for Babysigns. The only way that baby got lunch was to perform. He had to sign the sign on the card for a bite. She bragged about this all the time and didn't see anything wrong with making him work for his lunch. In fact, she encouraged others to come and see because he had close to 100 signs! Did that make him gifted? Who knows... but it certainly made him hungry.

I haven't met anyone (or read of anyone) here that I would describe as a true hothouser. Sure... we all probably push our kids here or there, even when we don't mean to or try to be child led. But there's no way my kid would EVER have learned to write if I hadn't shoved him a bit. He was completely unmotivated, had no reason to learn and didn't see any benefit other than getting me off of his back.

I really agree with you here, though I have never managed to express it very well and have perhaps caused offense to those who do have very self taught learners. I sometimes think about this in terms of my kids learning to talk. They have to do it mostly themselves, especially at the start, and I believe most parents think of their child as "teaching themselves" to talk - unless they end up in speech therapy - but in fact I believe the quality of their communication with their primary carer has got to have a significant impact.

I am better than average (possibly a lot better than average) at noticing that a baby is trying to talk, figuring out what they are saying and positively re-enforcing. It's not conscious, it's just how I am with babies, mostly because they fuss less if I can respond appropriately. Do I think of myself as hot housing learning to talk? No, I don't. I don't even think of myself as teaching speech. But the fact that I listen and respond to everything my kids say from babyhood probably has something to do with them being early talkers.

I like that analogy, it makes sense. I think you can probably only affect it within a certain range though, that they might be super early talkers because you did that, but without it they'd still be early talkers iykwim.

I was thinking about how my oldest two learned colours. If you'd asked me, I would say my DS1 knew all his colours fairly early, without me teaching him. Then I thought about when he was a baby and how he would only be happy in the pram if he could hear me talking, so I would talk and talk as I walked and a lot of of what I said was about the cars we were passing. "Here comes a blue car, and there's a white one parked there... blah blah blah..." I wasn't even thinking about teaching him colours, I just ran out of stuff to say! I think that's probably where he learnt it.

I didn't do that with my second, and he didn't know his colours as early has his brother. But then he was sent a colours workbook from his grandmother and he really wanted to do it. Within two days of getting that he knew the colours.

Innate ability is obviously a huge factor, but they don't learn to speak (or their colours) in a vacuum. My kids have all learned to speak at different ages, they all have different personalities, strengths, weaknesses, etc. But it's not 100% nature, environment counts...

Just like some parents provide a rich environment for developing speech, others are good with colours, or ball skills, or music, or maths. And when we have a child with the innate ability to pick something up easily when the inspiration is in their environment we may be inclined to feel the child "taught themselves". Gifted children can learn a skill way in advance of their peers without any more exposure than an average child of their age, I absolutely believe this happens. But I suspect that often gifted children have gifted parents who naturally do things a bit differently to average, and because the inspiration/support is part of their lives in a way that feels completely natural/normal to us it is perhaps somewhat invisible to us that we are providing better than average support to learn a skill.

Some families wouldn't ever go to the park without a ball. They probably don't think they are hot housing ball skills. It has never once in 9 years occurred to me that I should take one, at least not before I got there and saw someone else's. But I wouldn't leave the house without pencils and a jigsaw in my bag.

My feelings are not that strong on either side of this issue (which is unusual for me)because I can imagine so many variations of parent-child relationships and so many definitions of hothousing. Which is also unusual, is that I am going to participate in this discussion in a personal, not theoretical way:

It we take hot-housing to be regular, intensive, child FORCED lessons, I would most likely think that was potentially harmful, but on the other hand, who am I to say how that dynamic will play out for a particular parent-child pair? Kids are not that fragile and we can't walk on eggshells worrying that everything we do is going to send them to the couch.

I met a mom with a possibly gifted child the same age as my DD5 who is from an Eastern European country who sits down with her son and enforces learning every single day. From the outside, it appears harsh, but I don't have enough information to make that judgment that clearly.

At around my DD5's fifth birthday I began making an attempt to "hothouse" math facts since this was the one area that was not at the same level as the other areas. She was no genius in remembering simple math facts even though math concepts came easily as did things like telling time, fractions, etc. Actually, I came to find out that in this so called "weak" area, she was still quite ahead of her peers, but I thought we should work on that one area in case we met with a grade skip in our near future since she was so advanced in all other areas. Truth is, I thought the schools might actually see the ability to do math facts as a telltell sign of giftedness and ignore her creativity, insight, humor, and so on and so forth and use it against her if that area wasn't at the same level as everything else so I didn't want it to get in her way. I guess I don't trust the public school system and know that their idea of intelligence may be very different than mine.

Of course the intention was good, but we had some low moments that actually made me flip flop back and think that there was no point for me to try to teach this child anything that isn't of interest to her, but really, how fascinating are math facts in and of themselves? They are a tool for other things and once we get over that hump, then other doors will open.

In our community MOST moms send their children to preschools, enrichment, classes, do workbooks, have kids do online learning games, have tutors etc. so I was actually LATE to the game partially due to the attitude I encountered on online forums for gifted kids. I felt a little guilty for not doing something when I saw what was around me and simultaneously, didn't want to be that evil hothousing mom. Of course I wanted to reach that golden mean, but that has never been a natural skill of mine.

I did want to teach my DD5 discipline and to allow someone else to lead, things I was never good at until late in life. Sure, marching to the beat of your own drummer has its merits, and I was not a follower as a child, and an outright rebel through my late twenties, but on the other hand, it would have been helpful for me to know how to contain and control myself and to at least play the game when it would be beneficial. My parents also took no interest in my learning / academics (Neglect!)and so I have no personal experience of ever being pushed or even having academic expectations placed on me from a parent.

Back to my hothousing experience. We dabbled with "learning time" which was my attempt to work on her math facts with some high points and some very low points on my part. I lapsed into some Tiger Mom moments mostly when I became frustrated with my DD's silly disctracted antics, not that she didn't know something, but that she wouldn't cooperate. She isn't one to want to please or to follow and once we tried learning time, we began to butt heads, so for the most part, I had to drop any attempt to ENFORCE my WILL. Now we do a little something here and there if she is willing, and that's it.

I think we need to talk about the difference between teaching and hothousing. Some sports coaches push kids beyond their limits, is that always wrong, or do those kids not know how far they can go unless stretched beyond what they thought they could do.

Truth is, in some ways, I'd like to be able to hothouse my children if we define it as teaching them things in an adult directed way. I like learning and teaching and it would be fun to see how far we could go, but my children would never submit to that, I always think of the joke about "herding cats" when I see my girls so they just aren't the type that would make that process enjoyable enough to continue. If we define hothousing as a step beyond adult directed into something much more harsh and intense, I know how bad that would make me feel and how damaging it is to relationships, so I'd like to avoid that at all costs. I tasted its bitter taste a few times and I didn't like myself.

On the other hand, there have been some very fun moments where we are learning and teaching together and my DD5 is excited and interested and discovering. Those moments are the best and I need to remember how right that FEELS compared to the times where I got very frustrated with how darn stubborn my children are and how much they resist having their heads opened up and knowledged dumped in by an authority...ah, they are going to love public school...

I have a heard of cats too twinkle toes. Thank you for your thoughtful post.

I can see that this probably happens a lot when the topic of 'hothousing' comes up, but let's think for a minute about what happens to an actual plant in an actual hothouse.

A plant that couldn't normally thrive in a particular environment (school?) is taken out of the local environment, and placed in an environment that meets it's own natural requirements for warmth, water and sunlight. It grows really well. The grower takes responsibility for learning as much as possible about the plants actual needs, and there may be some trial and error. People look at the beautiful flower and feel jealous, but console themselves that the flower could in no way thrive in the regular environment. So they remember not to compare their own flowers, which do, to the 'hothouse flowers.' And use the term as a put down.

If one accepts that our kids' learning needs are mostly inborn, then why not get started figuring out how much of a 'not-typical-for-local-plants' kind of environment that particular plant might actually need to grow.

When folks start up pointing out that the plant would die if it weren't in the hothouse, I remember that there isn't a species of plant alive on this planet that isn't native somewhere. I feel like it is my job to hothouse as much as necessary (and no more than is useful) until the plant is well enough established to thrive in it's new environment, or move!

Where we live, lots of people have 'semi-hothoused' plants that move inside for the winter, or start in a hothouse as seedlings and move outside after being 'hardened off.'

I think that because a lot of our childrens' difficulties come from being 'asynchronous' rather than truely alien, that being so careful about the growth requirements academically is mostly needed during childhood years. At 15 it's appropriate for my son to be able to balance his needs with other kid's needs in a classroom - at 7 it was just asking too much of him. Plus in his current environment it truly is a question of balance, since he is often getting his learning needs met. At 7 the classroom was very different, and the expectations for balance were quite a bit more lopsided. If he had been a high EQ kid in a classroom that was meeting 45% of his learning needs, I would have expected more from him in terms of going with the flow.

So that's my personal definition of hothousing...certainly not the standard, just mine.
Grinity