Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Urge to hot-house?!?!?

I agree with people having trouble with advanced intellectual ability. Just the other day I encountered it with a friend who said something to the extent of, "You do more with her than I do with mine." It stings and I find myself internalizing some anger and trying to understand my own reaction.

On the other hand, I think of all those kids who go to the Olympics and other advanced competitions and how many parents make similar comments about what their parents do.

Sometimes I wonder if there is such a thing as average and whether we are all not victims of the parental insecurity trap that haunts most of us. I often say that raising a child is the biggest experiment ever and we do not really know the outcome until they are around thirty. I know that I thought some of the stuff that I was doing was right and I look back and see the faults in it. My biggest culprit has been idealism and of course it has/had to be done perfectly!

It is like book Outliers which argues practice over prodigy (and the 10,000 hour rule - start practicing something young and hit that hour and bam you are awesome). Somewhere between American norms and Tiger motherhood is a balance.

There are hothousers among us. To each their own I guess. But for those who do not remember - you do more with your kids because they ask for more. And you do more because you are more. Even if my kids were not pg or gt, I still would be the one at the zoo, pool, museum, reading, playing, building... that they are intellectually older than chronologically just makes some of those fun choices seem odd to outsides.

May they all turn out happy and ready to chase their own dreams. We succeed by getting them ready and then getting out of their way ;-)

I have hothouse envy. My DD4.5 would never submit to it so even if I do get passing urges to see what I can teach her, she likes to be in control and keeps me in check.

My DD4.5 began reading when she was 2 and a half. How did I teach her? Well, we read all the time. She couldn't get enough of books. I bought magnetic letters that said their letter sounds when she was 1.5 and she learned all the letter sounds in less than a week and how to recognize upper and lower case letters and then never touched the letters again. She started asking me to spell out words for her. This is how she was teaching herself. I wrote some words for her and they became sight words, then suddenly I realized she had a ton of sight words. I got excited and got some flashcards (my only experience with them). I showed her the card, and she already knew it or could learn it seeing it once or twice. The cards were put on the shelf as useless. I never used a single flashcard again. She just didn't need it and rebelled against them anyway. She would not let me teach her to read. She wanted to do the entire thing her way. She was learning behind the scenes, but not showing me. She would accidentally read over my shoulder, or when she forgot to hide it, but didn't like to read too much aloud to me. When she finally read an entire longer book to me, it had long paragraphs and complex vocabulary (at 3). It brought tears to my eyes because she had only been giving me glimpses along the way of how much she knew.

Oh, the early reading, writing, drawing, storytelling, spelling, advanced vocabulary, math skills yadda yadda yadda didn't help her pre-k to truly see her gifts or to work with them anyway. Others have had better luck.

Now I have a DD who will be three soon and things are different. She easily learned letter names and sounds before two, knows how to spell a few things, knows a few sight words and can be coaxed to sound a few things out, but she is not in the same place as my DD 4.5 was at her age. She is a bright child, in fact, people comment on it all the time, but she doesn't have some of the things that really shocked me with my first: early reading, advanced drawing, early writing and spelling, amazing memory, and more facility with numbers before three. She (my younger child) is more empathetic, has more commonsense, is more coordinated, and has less quirks so she certainly has her strengths.

I do have urges to really teach the younger one to read, but don't want to push too much. Everyone thinks I have some master secret because my older child read so early, but I just lucked out.

It will be interesting to see how they both grow and change.

HA! I didn't even know the first one could read. Figured a little here or there. Preschool teacher just thought she had a photographic memory. Until an american girl catalogue arrived, she wanted a doll. She was going on 5. I said sure when you can read a book like that (chapter books that come with the dolls) you can. She made me take her to the library (as I believed everything in the house was memorized).

Yeah, doll's name is elizabeth. I don't know what I think about these teach your baby to read programs. Here seems like they wake up one day and you are left wondering - what the heck?

Some days it is awesome - you can relate on such a level when they are still little. Other days it is a little sad ... makes them seem older and the trick is to remember - they are still little kids ;-) I digress!

I often feel tinges of sadness as it seems we pass through stages faster than the other kids and I have a little one for such a short time. On the other hand both my kids communicated well at a young age and I wonder how one does it when they decide to wait to communicate. Having two kids has also really shown me how different the children can be from one another.

I am shaking my head in agreement with you on this one. DD8 was not quite 4 when she decided to let it be known to the rest of us she could read. I almost dropped supper all over the kitchen floor as she sat there reading a new book from the library to me with no problems at all! We had been snow bound and finally made it to the library and I had read a million books to her that day and really needed to get supper made. She wanted to read more, so I said she could read to me while I made the food. - I was definitely sitting there asking "What the heck? How did I not know you could read?" DH was even more shocked when he got home from school.

I would agree with others also that it isn't hot-housing if your learner is willing and able and eating it up. I don't see it as any different than any other parent helping their child learn to read - just that we tend to do it at an unusually early age.

When my now 16 yo DD came to us, she was 10. One of the first major issues we encountered was her insane jealousy of DS(then 2). He loved to look at her homework and could figure it out quicker than she could. It drove her crazy! Her education up to that point had been very spotty, 11 schools in 5 years while living on the street most of the time. She thought she was stupid and in her mind, DS proved it to her every day. She didn't have any experience with little kids at the time and didn't realize just how different he was.

We had many conversations about the trade offs. It never occurred to her that while DS was smart, his life came with a whole different set of problems. Making friends, fitting in etc were all brought to the table. "Who will take an 8 year old to prom?" I asked. He will have his BA before his drivers license. All of the things that she had to look forward to in her teen years. I made some headway, but it wasn't until I accepted another foster child in, a 5 yo boy, that she could make comparisons to that she finally started to really get it.

Now at 16, she wouldn't want to trade places with her brother. She once told me that she thought as he got older things would get easier because he wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb. Now that she is that teen, she thinks that it will get harder for him and she is sad that he won't ever get the whole "teen experience". It makes me sad too, but I have to tell myself that his teen years will be great, different but great. He gets to create his own "teen experience"!

thank you for this!! It is so easy to forget this, and then we start to question ourselves and our kids abilities too! so thank you again

Flower, I think I know how you feel. Sometimes my mouth just drops open when I hear this much older voice coming out of my tiny little child. It is such a mix of feelings. I can feel proud, sad, worried,impressed, and amazed all at the same time.