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

You'd be surprised how motivating parental anxiety can be.

We're not concerned about too much (educational) screentime. We have lots of it in our house. It's part or our intellectually stimulating environment.

Doing therapy homework isn't the same thing as hothousing. Generally kids aren't in therapy unless they are struggling. When you require him to do the assigned exercises, you are doing what's necessary for him to become successful at the "work of childhood" (to quote my sons' OT).

I love to read...my children have learned to love reading (boy do they love reading)...in fact today I said the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree and my son said I thought it was apple doesn't fall far from the tree...(I looked it up and I think both are acceptable idioms...that is how we hothouse intellectual curiosity, it just comes up and we race to find out the answer as soon as we have the chance). I said that because he currently has three books going. I generally have a car book (for waiting for kids), a bedside book, and a purse book. He has a school library book (first one in a series on King Arthur), a classroom library book (4th in the Haddox series Among the Hidden), and a paperback book we own all going. Sometimes he will have a public library book in the mix too. And he should have a book in Spanish in the mix too but he "forgets".

Hothousing is when a parent determines the area of study or enrichment without asking for the child's input or considering their interest and continually enforcing the spending of afterschool time in learning and advancing in that area. In my neighborhood, there are "learning centers" for these things when the parent cannot hothouse. Afterschool vans pick up kids and put them in these centers where they drill math, science (and piano/violin and I don't know what else), prepare for math competitions, timed tests etc and it starts at the lower elementary level (one such program says proudly that their youngest participant is still in diapers!). And they send homework home (to take care of what little free time the kid might have). I think that is hothousing because there is no regard for whether a preteen boy wants to sit in a small room afterschool and spend time memorizing facts or playing the violin.

I can provide an interesting but non-rigorous perspective on whether or not you can teach a toddler to read.

My kids went to a small in-home daycare before they started school (12-15 kids). The woman who ran it is very bright and she used to do "school" with the kids every morning. One of the things they did every day was to learn letters and letter sounds (in addition to singing and a ton of arts and crafts). They also sounded out words.

Participation was voluntary. Kids could play if they didn't want to go to school. Most of them wanted to go to school because it was so much fun. They usually started when they turned 2.

I used to talk to this woman about how much the kids learned after 3-ish years of school with her. She told me that most of them would go into kindergarten knowing their letters and letter sounds, as well as being able to recognize a few sight words or even sound out some very basic words. She told me once that none of them learned to read like my DD had. Okay, DD wanted to work on reading at home, but at least some of the other parents had to have been doing stuff with their kids, too.

So, this was not a scientifically rigorous study by any means, but it was (continues to be) a nurturing environment that can't be called hothousing in the negative sense of that word. The kids were a fairly standard cross-section of the population: the parents were office workers from admins to engineers, as well as military people, people in allied health, tradesmen, etc. etc. I knew a very few kids who ended up in special ed. and a very few kids who will probably be in GATE programs (they're still too young).

Based on what I saw at daycare, I suspect that you can't teach a child to truly read before s/he's developmentally ready. There is presumably some sort of brain development that has to occur.

The ultimate in hothousing may be Amy Chua's book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother". There are many articles about and reviews of this book.

Carol Bainbridge, writing for About . com, has offered articles on the differences between nurturing and pushing/hothousing (link- http://giftedkids.about.com/od/glossary/g/hothouse.htm and http://giftedkids.about.com/od/nurturinggiftsandtalents/qt/pushing.htm and http://giftedkids.about.com/od/nurturinggiftsandtalents/i/nurture_push.htm)

There are resources and milestone guidelines available on parents . com, education . com, and many other websites, which may be used to enrich/encourage or to hothouse/force.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any particular resource or tool, only how it may be utilized... the difference being the degree to which something is genuinely of interest to the child or is parent-pushed. To an outsider it may be difficult to distinguish when a child is being "hothoused" from when a child is pressing up on a glass ceiling... a limit to growth which not everyone may see. For example: a child may be ready, able, and interested to read books above the level to which s/he is limited by what is available. The lack of higher level books may present a limit, or glass ceiling. A parent searching the library for 5th-grade-level books with their 1st-grader may be erroneously perceived as hothousing when they may simply be helping their child break through the glass ceiling.

Focusing on toddler/preschool age, children's brains are said to grow more connections in a positive environment. There are many scientific articles and also many for the general population. Some links which parents may find interesting- http://www.urbanchildinstitute.org/why-0-3/baby-and-brain, http://brainrules.net/brain-rules-for-baby. An enriched environment, including having simple books available, reading to, and talking with a baby may provide benefits.

There are many who push and press their kids to achievement and even to emulation of common characteristics of giftedness. A telltale sign may be the use of any adult-imposed external reward/punishment as an incentive for learning/performance, rather than the child feeling internally/intrinsically rewarded by attainment of the knowledge which answers his/her question. The use of external rewards/punishments was evident in the writings of Amy Chua, and may be more subtle among parents one encounters every day... for example giving a child his toy truck after he recites poems for the camera. Unfortunately hothousing can be successful because children often "want" to receive their rewards and avoid punishments, therefore they may "want" to learn/perform as dictated. This can be detrimental to a child.

A child who is pushed to excel may stop exploring or sharing what his/her current interests are, in order to avoid being pushed. They may also salve their resentment with comparative/competitive statements about being "better than..." or being "best", and develop a fixed mindset. They may feel inordinately threatened by others' growth in various areas, and exhibit strong negative reactions to others' success. This may be a sign that they do not feel valued as a person, but only by virtue of their performance relative to others. There may be many downsides to "hothousing". Rather than learning a balance between indulging in their own interests and passions, and the practice of self-discipline, respecting the needs/wishes/boundaries of others, they may learn to manipulate (as they may perceive that this is what has been role modeled toward themselves... how they have been treated).

I agree that this is negative--but is it hothousing or is it just aggressive, pushy parenting? Semantics, I guess...

Wow-- LOVE this.

I was trying to formulate something coherent here, and I think that Zen Scanner just nailed it.

That, along with Val's post-- I know that what we encountered with our DD was that people assumed, just as with other parents up-thread, that we MUST have been drilling relentlessly, or pushing really hard or something. Well, or that we had the recipe for some secret sauce-- being educators.

I honestly have no idea how my DD learned phonemes by 15-18mo old. But we deliberately did NOT expose her to learning materials so she wound up holding about 3/4ths of the tools for literacy for several years. I think that with the same "instruction" that we offered at 4yo, she COULD have probably learned to read at 2. She was ready. We were uneasy about following her obvious lead at that age. Seriously.

That's a really interesting point--it makes me wonder whether it might be the case that kids who read early basically have skewed brain development that puts the emphasis on different areas than other kids in the early stages--and then perhaps increases the possibility of delayed brain development in other areas, causing an increase in 2e-ness?? Almost like a micro-example of the changes in brain development during evolution (you know, something like they're talking about here).

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketsc...-delayed-genes-separate-human-brains-fr/

But maybe somebody like Simon Baron-Cohen has already written about something like that already, and I'd love to see it.