What's wrong with hothousing?

OK lazy is perhaps not always the case. Other reasons are:

1. No time available. Fair enough. But maybe try and make time even if it means being more poor / stressed.
2. Genuinely believe (and probably wrongly so) that hothousing will damage their kid. A lot of this believe is a cultural thing in my opinion.

2nd point. No knowledge of Ruth Lawrence but don't worry my wife isn't about to leave me. Mathematical geniuses are most often very strange people and I think it is probably not going to be meaningful to link their situation in life to their parenting. Most people who are profoundly talented at maths have quite a lot of social interaction issues. I've known one or two and read on the subject although I'm not familiar with RL.

I'd be disappointed naturally if he had little interest in music, although at this stage this seems unlikely. I wouldn't really want him to pursue a career in music as it is a very difficult career with very little money in it for the most part. I'd be happy for him to do a maths degree or something, then he can go on and do whatever he likes. So long as he does something productive with his life the details don't really concern me too much.

I think I probably am a lazy parent - it's all so knackering. But philosophically, too, I just think my job is to set my kids up to make choices and achieve balance. I'm also faintly unimpressed by high performing toddlers - perhaps because I started school way way ahead of the other kids (reading before 3) but it turned out that was my peak and I have been resolutely ordinary ever since.

On music, in my teens I was friendly with Hephzibah Menuhin, sister of Yehudi and a concert pianist in her own right. She used to have me round to stay and helped me with my piano practice, and sometimes I'd turn the pages for her when she made records at Abbey Road. Her parents had invested everything in getting their three kids to be musical. They started at 18 months old and by the age of 3 were having to practise 8 hours a day.

It clearly worked with Yehudi. But Hephzibah told me it had killed off all her joy in music. She hated playing the piano, just did it to earn money to fund her real enthusiasms (feminism and human rights). So what the hell was the point of that? Just to make her parents proud?

If you are hothousing you are making choices about your child's future interests and career, because there isn't time to do everything. So there is a high chance you will get those choices wrong. Far better, I think, to raise a well balanced child who can make their own choices. They won't be a child prodigy. But they may be a happier adult.

Kids probably are starting school too soon in my opinion. What do you mean by 'bullshitting parenting'? Are you criticizing my parenting or do you simply have a mouth that turns into a gaping potty every time you open it?

@ThunderDad
what is the reason behind all this?

what are you trying to prove?
And
On other pages on MN parents are moaning that kids are starting school too early/soon , so why are you needing your son to do all these things before the poor bugger is even three - bullshitting parenting

Hothousing = a parent's desperate strategy to feed their ego in exchange for their child's mental health.
If only really the super bright went to the "prestigious" schools, we wouldn't be hearing so much about mental health issues at those schools. Parents' vanity and egos are a huge part of the mental health issues we see today.

Yes girls do mature much faster than boys. This is a very big problem in mixed schools as it damages the self-esteem of boys.

Where are you getting your data from about boys doing better in co-ed schools? You're wrong. It's the other way round. The imbalance is particularly pronounced when it comes to learning English. Boys succeed very, very much better at English when educated in single-sex classes compared to in mixed classes. Go do your research before you write a load of misleading nonsense on here. You sound a bit woke so maybe your ideological prejudices are your source of data. Am I wrong?

As to why do boys do better at English (in particular) in boys-only classes? We don't know but many educators suspect it is to do with self-confidence and boy's perception of their own ability at the subject being negatively influenced by far more advanced girls of the same age.

@ThunderDad
I'm not exposed too widely to schools and class environments to say that the teacher's pet ought to be a girl.
But if that is a case , it may be that because girls are maturing faster up until around 14. Then boys catch up and excel.

My 10 years old boy loves to play with girls and boys. He has friends on both sides of the fence

I'm enjoying the father of a single toddler teling us all about education. Please come back when they are older and tell us how it works out. Education is a marathon not a sprint and filling a toddler's head with facts without context is not educating them. To learn creativity they need to play board games and have time to do imaginative play. That helps them develop their abilities in abstract thought which is required for higher level learning. Different cultures value different things and you appear very critical of education in the UK. Whereas my experience is that the good state schools my DC have attended work hard to teach nuance and complexity and value independent thought. I value that more than them learning things by rote.

Also @ThunderDad , you've got it the wrong way round. Girls are the ones who do better in single sex schools, probably because they aren't exposed to the sexism of teenage boys andso are allowed to flourish. Boys, on the other hand, do better in mixed sex schools, probably because they are influenced by the more studious girls. However, girls and women still outperform boys and men until they have children.

That all sounds rather anecdata to me. Not borne out by my children’s experiences really.

The social aspect is the usual reasoning I hear as to why mixed schools are better. However I don't agree. My recollection of primary school is that there is really very little socialising going on between boys and girls. Boys play with other boys and girls play with other girls. Perhaps things have changed in the current year but it seemed to be such a fundamental phenomenon that I'd doubt it.

One thing I do remember throughout primary school is that the teacher's pet is always a girl and always will be a girl. This has a lot to do with the fact the girls understand how to please the teacher and be pet much sooner than boys do. Ultimately this undermines boys' confidence as they are being compared to girls who are at this age vastly more socially advanced than boys.

@ThunderDad
There are boys only school where I live ( Richmond/Kingston upon Thames): Tiffin Boys, Hampton Boys, Richard Challoner etx Maybe boys perform better in single sex school but they miss greatly on an important social lesson on how to interact with girls. I would not consider single sex school for my son. Definitely a mix.

@ThunderDad I'm just genuinely interested why you would prioritise him learning the names of all those shapes over other things.
I just can't really see how that knowledge is useful to him at 2!

Omg...what a weird advice. Everybody is different and it is the diversity thay makes us stronger as a society. Definitely a gifted child should not aspire to be mediocre. Intelligent children will appreciate to have outstanding buddies.

@ThunderDad - your DS is probably just gifted. Don’t hothouse him further would be my advice…

In the long run, it really doesn’t help children to be too different from their peers. Much of being happy in life is about building successful relationships with other human beings, first at school, then at university, then in the work place, then finding a life partner. Being too different and having different interests at a young age makes things harder for children to bond with other children as they don’t have common interests/want to play totally different games etc. It can be really lonely and sad for such children.

If they are gifted academically and musically they will do well anyway, as long as they are happy and settled. Making them too different doesn’t help them. Plus why risk early burn out? Makes no sense to me.

There are so many stories of child geniuses who were unhappy later on. They might have been much happier if less emphasis was put on their minds/talents and more on them fitting in, having friends, just being children for as long as possible rather than performing zoo monkeys enslaved to their talents with overenthusiastic parents.

Oxford is now very resistant to taking on anybody younger than 18.

Yes, I think it depends how you define hot housing, the child, the age etc. One of my children is genuinely curious and engaged, so I do do a little hot housing. Another is really resistant to anything that looks like work, but I insist they do their homework and practice an instrument. But both go to birthday parties and play dates - relationships are an important part of education.

https://www.ft.com/content/d38a9fea-d587-42d6-b62d-089087011796 The relationship between education fever and East Asia’s “lowest-low” fertility rates is well documented and widely discussed among demographers.

It’s the sign of a population under stress and is not a psychologically healthy way of organizing a society.

I'm honestly not really a fan of Singapore as a place to live. But they are great on education. They produce a lot of very smart and successful people for such a relatively small place.

I suspect that hothousing toddlers probably doesn't increase mental health problem incidence. I don't have the stats but I suppose if hothousing toddlers were causing mental health issues later on then you would expect, for instance, to see much higher suicide rates in Singapore compared to Western countries where hothousing toddlers is not the norm.

As for birth rates, again I doubt that there is any real correlation here. I'd need to see some data but its hard to see why there would be. Birth rates are also very low throughout Europe despite there being no hothousing culture for toddlers.

ThunderDad

I'm not in a sulk. My point, however poorly made, was that I recognise my children's achievements as their own, I do not see them as a reflection of my parenting.

What I do see as a reflection of my parenting is their manners, their outlook on the world and their kindness to others. Rather than academic achievement.

Likewise. Your original post was very insulting and if you are in a sulk now then its not my problem lol.

Yes I'm very happy with my achievements! Thank you! Also needn't worry about my marriage as it is great too. My wife is a stay at home mum and does a fantastic job with our son. She really supports my hothousing does lots of stuff herself, although more in the reading / arts and crafts department.

Regarding hothousing, well I'm inclined to think it might be worth looking at it from a more objective point of view. Perhaps there is some value in it? Who knows. But I can say that seems to be working well for my son.

Educational pressure in Singapore (and similar countries in East Asia) long ago went beyond the level of what is societally or economically useful and has just become a miserable competitive zero-sum game that has made childrearing expensive and stressful for parents; it’s been cited as a major reason why fertility rates are incredibly low in these societies.

Singapore and other similar countries would actually be better off if everyone just chilled a lot more, accepted somewhat lower (but still good) levels of educational attainment, and felt confident enough to have another baby. They won’t, of course, because once a society has got itself on the educational competition hamster wheel, nobody is sure how to step off. Many of these countries will be giant nursing homes in a generation or so.

ThunderDad

I wish you all the best

I'm trying to figure out whether this post is a joke ....