Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion I am a hot housing helicopter parent?

Yes, yes, yes!

I sound incredibly cynical, and this is a tad of an over generalization, but university is one big anti-intellectual orgy these days. I say this having done grad school at a top-10 global university. Want to think outside the classroom's narrow scope? Better not step on Professor Insecure's toes or disagree with the tunnel vision with which he's wasted the last three decades of his life in some meaningless dalliance in minutiae. Want to get a research grant? Practice your grovelling skills and buy some knee pads! Don't forget that your thesis has to be inextricably linked to the Guvment's Ideogical Whim du Jour and must be beneficial on a narrowly defined cost-benefit framework derived by people who have no perceptible appreciation for the subject you practice in.

Challenges and fulfillment are largely self-created. (Yes, I'm an internal locus of control kind of gal, TYVM.) Everything I've ever done of any value has come from within, and that takes grit and courage. DS isn't going to learn any of that playing intellectual mental masturbation in a room full of people who think he's "being met at his level" by being given an extra digit to add. He's not someone else's social experiment to mess up, he's my child, who deserves the opportunity to fail and build character in an environment with an appropriate parental safety net. There's no value in his sitting in some dismal office 20 years down the road, doing the same white collar sausage factory garbage day in and day out, resenting the world, never having tested himself or done anything meaningful.

Whew. Do I trust "the system" to help my child build character? A resounding 4-letter-word no, hence my interventionist ethos.

I have no idea-- the problem is still that STEM requires this way and pretty much no other.

But we are thinking about what other options look like.

It's soul-crushing-- and we certainly didn't expect that, having been faculty ourselves. I'm hopeful that maybe it's just the lower division/gen ed coursework. But I'm keeping my mouth shut on that score, tyvm. I'm not making this child any more promises about "it gets better when _____" because I quite simply don't even recognize some of what I thought I truly knew.

It's kind of surreal.


PS-- for anyone that thinks that I'm exaggerating some of this, my daughter has spent the last 72 hours memorizing the phrases that shall pay from a 300 page HEALTH textbook, including such "gems" as the number of calories present in 1g of each of several "essential nutrients" (a list which includes ethanol, let me hasten to add), etc. etc. Do you know how to define the following acronyms? FIIT, SMART, FIRST, EMDR. Do you know the five steps to behavioral change? Can you give examples of General Adaptation Syndrome, explain the three hormones that are released as part of fight-or-flight responses, and explain the difference between essential body fat levels and healthy ones for both men and women?

This is a class that she and every other freshman on this campus is required to take in their first year. 90 multiple choice and/or matching and true-false questions, courtesy of Pearson's extensive test bank, I'm sure. You know, since they wrote that hash of a textbook, too. It has more different typefaces, photos of homogenous (smiling, model-thin, young, and distinctly WHITE) people, and BOLD, colorful text bubbles per square inch than a TIME layout does these days. Much of the information was outdated or inaccurate when it was "written" three years ago. And yet-- 40% of my daughter's grade in that course depends upon her facility in memorizing over two HUNDRED "factoids" that she has committed to memory with index cards laboriously produced. Have I mentioned that my child struggles with hand writing due to a probable connective tissue disorder? Her dad and I have quizzed her, helped her play a timed "game" with them in groups of 24 cards, etc. etc.




I hope it's enough. We're all like AEH's kids around here. WE don't (generally speaking) "memorize" our way out of anything rougher than a wet paper bag. We've been trying to make this fun by joking heavily about nutria ("Contraindicated" is sort of asking for this kind of definition, isn't it? As in "my nutria is a service animal") and cracking wise on the concept of dietary fiber... but really, this is awful. It wouldn't feel that way if it weren't for the fact that a lot of this is either unmitigated corporate-speak horse-derived fertilizer of the first order, and some of it is flatly WRONG-- not to mention just how much of it there is. It's astonishing, this kind of volume. I don't think I had this many notecards after a year of organic chemistry, or gross anatomy.

I know we're not hothousing now, because the one extracurricular DD10 is spending the most time on is the one we're pretty sure she'll never become famous for. Also, her coaches are pushing her, and we're gently asking them to chill out a bit.

But yeah, we've been down a road with DD where you could look ahead of her path and see something that looks a lot like greatness in the far distance, and no obstacles in between that are insurmountable by her.

Definitely make sure your kids are getting unscheduled, unstructured time every day, though. The lack is absolutely toxic to children. If they're not free-playing, that's an indication of hothousing.

True for adults, too. Play is essential for mental health.

This is where the nutria came into things. I won't mention some of the other jokes that have been made lately around here, as they are not fit for print. Suffice it to say that the choice was largely one of laughing or crying, and my family takes the attitude that NOTHING "isn't funny" and hey-- go big or go home.

Ahem.

But yeah-- I've thought of JonLaw often this week.

Adding a link to a post in Bostonian's thread on Differences between public and private schools which spawned this topic.

The thread from 2013 on How to Hothouse Your Kid, by KathrynH may also be of interest.

HowlerKarma, have you seen Quizlet? It's flashcards on computer basically. Download the App. My DD uses it. Great for factoid learning. There may already be a Quizlet set on what she needs or you create your own.

And big hugs HK. It sounds like a tough time. I can empathise, the sun isn't exactly shining here today. Googling new schools!

No, you are not a bad parent. It sounds like she has enough skills to enjoy music as a hobby and she isn't asking for formal lessons so I say don't open that expensive can of worms.

I am not positive, but I think I have happened, by chance, across at least two live interviews of the 'tiger mom' book author and her spouse on cable news outlets; the couple that I saw and heard are professors together at the same ivy league university. There is a main point about their theory that I think I heard over and over and to which I could not relate, but I think there is meaning in the distinction. To what I heard, they think it is tiger parenting when the actions of parent / students are coming from a place of insecurity and a feeling that if you don't do x, then y will not happen. For the GT / HG kids and parents, it might be more that their abilities are coming from and overflowing out of them from a place of confidence (more like, how are they reading those big words at such a young age when no one ever taught them?, why do they understand that scientific theory so young?). Higher order thinking comes naturally to the GT / HG children. I have never met anyone who could make a child have higher order thinking, so I have no idea how that dynamic would work. The example that I have heard used the most is forced practice of the instrument, the violin. Again, I have no idea how you would force practice. The personality type that I am most familiar with from all of my experiences is that the GT / HG children somehow from a very young age seem to reason, verbalize and argue like an adult and if they do not want to play or practice the violin, not only will the violin not be practiced, there will be a lengthy debate requiring water for your throat and tremendous patience because you are talking to a child but it feels like they are already of a member of Parliament or Congress. I have tried explaining to family, friends, neighbors our family dynamic. I have literally told family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, I am sorry I cannot do that right now I have to save my energy and voice for parenting this child. What I have concluded so far is that the experience is not common and you cannot worry about whether they are labeling you, they are probably not having the same experience. I hope that helps. I think sharing might be the way to help gifted families and I sincerely hope that there is even more support and understanding for people in the future.