Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How to Hothouse Your Kid

I think I hothouse and enrich. It is probably a "parenting a 2e kid" thing.

I consider enrichment activities things like watching documentaries, audiobooks, science, nature, art and music camps and programs. These things are of interest to him and don't require any push from us.

The hothousing comes in with addressing 2e issues. If he is asking to play Angry Birds, I might say "Sure, after you sit and read with me a bit" or "You can after you do 3 pages in your HWT workbook" or "Let's work on math facts or sight words first".

DS3.5 who started reading simple sentences around 2.5 and now is reading quite fluently (but in hiding ... and especially not in front of strangers) could absolutely NOT be hothoused! He won't even let ME read one single book to him. I've read 3 books total to him in his 3 and half years of life. It's all his work. It's either learning his way or no way! lol

Oh, and see, KJP, I call that "parenting." My definition for hothousing is much more than that.

I think that pragmatically, it's hothousing when most objective outsiders, possessed of omniscient observation of the entire parent-child relationship, would assert that particular activities are for the parent's benefit/goals/wishes, and have NOTHING to do with the child's interests, in spite of what the parent rationalizes.

Amy Chua stuff, in other words.

Honestly, we're pretty firm about the need to do things like practice the piano (even though DD seldom WANTS to), but it's very definitely not about our own desires, nor about some fantasy of our own regarding the activity. DD is not going to become a professional musician, and while she is easily talented enough to be a proficient amateur performer if we PUSHED her enough, that isn't why we insist on piano. We insist on it because it is important for her to develop the habit of discipline and see for herself that results are proportional to effort.

I've definitely done some things that might seem like hothousing... but they are really about parenting a child with a will of iron and the judgment of her chronological years. LOL. I had to laugh at the observation about another poster's 2yo being an immovable force when it suited him to NOT cooperate. Bingo.

I feel that even Kindergarten is too early to teach reading (unless it's a child who truly picks it up on their own). Why push it so early when a year later they might pick it up a lot faster?

We would read every evening and more with my DS now 10 since birth, and still do. Somewhere around 3 he would point out words he could recognize. This was probably due to the fact we would read the same books over and over (you know one more book.... pleaseeeee). So we would pick out a book from the quick book stack, he loved Snoozers by Sandra Boynton.

It just snowballed after that. He would read everything. Cereal boxes, nutritional information on everything, warning labels on everything. Then we put him in a daycare much like Vals. He loved it, especially the math. But reading was his claim.

The one funny look I can remember well. We were at a pool party and my son was reading the label attached to the a floatation device he was holding on to. We got the strangest looks from all the parents sitting around the pool wading their feet. I just shrugged. "Kids".

So wait, are all these activities being done to address 2E issues?

One thing that's come up for me is whether to "hothouse" a skill that is more age-appropriate (in my son's case, writing) so as to catch it up to the rest of his skills and make him a more "skippable" package. I wrestle with this. I don't think it would be hard to do this, but it's not a thing I would naturally do (such as the enrichment activities you name).

Yes, so there's that. Is it hothousing when you teach your child things that he/she isn't asking to learn...could easily learn...but isn't really intrinsically excited to learn? But wouldn't HATE. For instance, I KNOW I could teach my DD9 more math than she is getting. She isn't especially interested in math, though. She doesn't hate it or anything. I don't think it would be a nightmare. But if I said, "Hey...want to do some more math in your free time?" she'd be like, "Uh, next." However, she IS writing a book in her spare time, of her own accord.

Math is an especially clear example here because it's not something you really teach in casual conversation--you know, we talk about history, biology, etc at the dinner table, but we don't factor at the dinner table. (Maybe you guys do.)

I don't think there is a clear answer here. It's the gray area.

Yes! I used to have a terrible time understanding DS, who didn't really speak to communicate or have a conversation until after he was two -- but he could read before that. I would just give up after having him repeat something a few times, and ask, "how do you spell that?" Which he would, and then it would become clear. I still have a hard time understanding DD7 sometimes, when she's on a roll, but her spelling leaves something to be desired. It's usually good enough to get the idea across, though.

I think if I knew how to hothouse a 2-year-old to learn to read, I'd be in a different business and a lot nicer house!

I don't see addressing 2e challenges with work outside of school as hothousing at all - I'd put that under the "therapy" category. I also have a number of friends who's cultural background emphasizes a lot of time spent on homework and music lessons starting at an early age, and I don't really see that as "hothousing" either - I see it more as a cultural value placed on the importance of putting time into learning that is rooted in a history of needing to work hard to get ahead. My perception of hothousing is that it refers to parents who think that by insisting on a ton of extra work outside of school they will be able to "up" their child's prospects in life - get them into gifted programming, get them into competitive private schools, get them into great colleges - but the race to do all of this is more tied into the parents ego than it is child-led. I don't see sending a child to after-school math tutoring as hothousing if the child loves math...or because a child is behind in math either due to a learning challenge or poor instruction at school or simply not understanding math - but if the reason the child is in the tutoring is because their parent wants them to go to the head of the class in math when the child is already performing well and really doesn't give a flip about math... that's hothousing.

I also don't think it's possible to hothouse anything into a young child that they aren't ready for developmentally. If a child wasn't meant to learn to read at age 2, they aren't going to learn to read. OTOH, I think there is probably a semi-large portion of children who are capable of working ahead of what the average early elementary school is offering (at least in my mellow part of the woods). This is part of the reason there are so many parents in early elementary latching on to outside enrichment and attempting to get their kids into gifted programming - the programming in the regular classroom really isn't all that great for most kids, not just for out-of-the-ballpark ability kids.

polarbear

oh man, we are clearly über-nerds over here... DD5 does (prime!) factor at the dinner table, but it's SO not from hothousing! she just thinks it's super-cool. interestingly, though, with all the school drama we had last year... the fact that she knew alllll about fractions (and could add non-commmon denominator ones!) in Pre-K was used as evidence that we were hothousing.

nope - we were just baking an awful lot! (but they didn't believe me)

funny, i came to the conclusion that possibly some teachers (and other parents/friends/etc) truly believe that anything a child learns IN SCHOOL is learning, but anything a child learns AT HOME is hothousing. sigh.

I knew someone was going to say they factored at the dinner table. I guess my point was that with a lot of math, you have to sit and do it on paper and practice. Of course, some of it can be discussed without need for that, but it's not as easy to teach casually at the dinner table, IMO.

(I have the feeling I am going to get pushback on this. Maybe it's just that we are not mathy.)