Praise for Hothouse Kids
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Christian Science Monitor
Today prodigy is cultivated in realms both typical - math and music - as well as the more unconventional - skateboarding and scrabble. Written by a former childhood prodigy, who penned her first novel at seven, “Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child” is a cautionary tale. A few of the geniuses Alissa Quart interviewed for her book manage to blossom and flourish in later life, mostly by carving their own paths independent of parental expectation or direction. But just as Icarus flew too close to the sun, Quart worries that child prodigies risk being "undone by the failure to accept human limits."…After all her research and reporting, at the end of her book, Quart concludes that "there are actually very few deeply 'gifted' kids with transcendent cognitive or artistic abilities." But this hasn't stopped many parents from imagining otherwise. What sociologist John Sutton wrote of Victorian England seems to describe many contemporary parents just as accurately: "The child had become a hothouse plant, and the parent a careful horticulturalist." Like any parent who wants only the best for a child, those Quart meets are well-intentioned. But extreme. They are driven by a society in which claustrophobic competition can take hold at a startlingly young age. Parental ambitions are further fueled by an industry that preys on their overwhelming anxieties: from Baby Einstein DVDs and infant enrichment classes to evaluators who act as gatekeepers, bestowing the prized numerical scores that lead to coveted labels like "profoundly gifted" (IQ 175 and above). In this sweeping book, Quart touches on just about every aspect of giftedness - from birth through adulthood, glancing everything from public schools and the No Child Left Behind law to the private programs available for the gifted…Her warning is worth heeding. In the hothouse, children are categorized from what one educator calls "garden variety gifted" all the way through to the "terminally gifted." But even the "garden variety" label, especially when imagined or imposed by a parent, can come as a liability.
Salon
Across America, for those who can afford it, childhood has begun to look a lot less like a summer camp and a lot more like a training camp. In her new book, "Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child," author Alissa Quart dubs this conflation of childhood, competition and commerce the "Baby Genius Edutainment Complex." While careful not to vilify parents who want the best for their kids, Quart -- who was herself a gifted youngster who discussed modernist painting at age 5 and entered national writing competitions at 13 -- turns a skeptical eye on the growing genius-building business and paints a bittersweet picture of what the life of a child prodigy really looks like. Along with the social isolation that comes with odd obsessive interests (who can a 6-year-old carnivorous plant expert talk shop with?), the hothouse kid is burdened by a premature emphasis on maturity and professionalism. And unfortunately, as Quart discovers, for every well-adjusted child-math ace who sails smoothly into life as a financial service wiz, there are two prodigies whose adult lives never live up to their fantasies. It might be tempting to roll one's eyes at the sufferings of kids who are showered with language tutors or ushered into concert piano careers before they're even 9. Indeed, though bemoaning the "overburdened" lives of kids has of late become a familiar refrain in magazines and newspapers, it's a credit to Quart's work that she confronts the fact that students who are stressed out by too many extracurricular gigs remain a tiny, privileged minority in a country where gifted programs are being gutted from public schools, and the bare-bones mandates of No Child Left Behind have driven the divide between the haves and the have-nots even wider.
Los Angeles Times
Alissa Quart confronts the many-headed question of giftedness — the public school enrichment classes and IQ tests, the Baby Einstein videos and the Scripps National Spelling Bee. There are two basic issues here: how to support exceptionally bright kids, and how to manage exceptionally ambitious parents who blur the line between a child's will and their own. Quart starts with the second one, describing what she calls the Baby Genius Edutainment Complex — the conviction among some parents that enough stimulating media and enrichment classes can endow their young offspring with genius. Quart lays it all out, from the prenatal BabyPlus system (a speaker strapped to the pregnant belly) to toddler soccer, French and baby sign language. Her bias is clear. "As long as you don't put a child in a closet, nutritionally deprive him, or cause trauma to his developing brain, he will naturally learn," she writes. Quart firmly believes that exceptionally bright kids need attention. So what is best for the child who is bored to tears by the public school curriculum, the child whose parents can't afford enrichment programs? Here, Quart declares, is the true dilemma of giftedness, "an American knot, where impassioned ideals of individual excellence and exclusiveness are tied up with our pride in egalitarianism.”…Quart enlivens her argument with plenty of vivid characters — Scrabble champions, Math Olympians, 4-year-old artists, teenage preachers — but "Hothouse Kids" is social criticism, not sideshow. She calls for expanded access to and funding for public school gifted programs, with more teacher training and more school psychologists to evaluate talent. Flexible curricula should encourage creativity and risk-taking, enhancing the quality of academic work, not just assigning more of it. Most of all, Quart advocates a new definition of giftedness. Those former prodigies who grow into successful adults share elusive qualities no video can teach: "intrinsic motivation, resiliency, and mental independence." And plenty of children are prodigiously strong outside the mediagenic fields of music, math and spelling. She points to Harvard education professor Howard Gardner's theories of "multiple intelligences," moving beyond numbers and letters to spatial relations, observation skills and leadership. "Children who can integrate information will be best prepared to be life learners with flexible minds," Quart concludes. "This sort of flexibility depends, in part, on children not tying learning to obligation — rather, learning how to learn with a certain lightness and adaptability." In other words: Back off, parents. Encourage your child's interests and leave them time to play. Be willing to follow where they lead. And above all, "exercise restraint." If we could stop obsessing about future potential, "maybe childhood as it is classically imagined would come back into style: more play, more messing about, more experience of emotion, more obliviousness to time's passage, more nondirected activity, more living in the present tense." Quart's message, thoughtful, often eloquent and bracingly frank, injects common sense into the overwrought rhetoric of parenting.
Time
Quart sought out former prodigies and gifted kids while researching her book, as well as the parents of high-achieving children. Her hard work has paid off: her book has garnered praise. Mary Pipher, the best-selling author of "Reviving Ophelia," is a fan: "[Quart's] conclusions manage to be both commonsensical and profound. In the end, she makes a scholarly argument for the benefits of sandboxes, recess and goofing off. I love this woman." And many parents might too, if they can benefit from Quart's hard-earned wisdom about how to nurture talent gently, without crushing it.
Atlantic Monthly
Alissa Quart, in Hothouse Kids, writes about a visit she paid to Philadelphia’s prestigious Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, and offers this observation: "For many [parents], the school was the center and pinnacle of their own lives. One mother told me that upon arriving at the school, when her son was one year old, her husband cried because he felt they had “wasted a year of our baby’s life.” ... Woe to the one-year-old who’s being pitied for blown deadlines, for having spent the first twelve months of his life drooling and cooing without educational purpose. Imagine how this father’s boundless quest to fulfill one’s Potential—whatever that vague word means—will unfold as this infant comes of age. Quart offers this extraordinarily telling tableau: "A boy undone by the failure to accept human limits, Icarus is a useful metaphor for the hothouse kid. Building these champions does create a generation of high achievers. But they do not necessarily stay aloft. They may grow up resentful of their parents’ inculcations. They may forever romanticize the childhood they never experienced. They may spend their adulthood aspiring to be children. They also share a feeling that normality is banal, even terrifyingly so. They may feel as though they fell from glory. And in fact they have. The attention they once received has never returned."
Bookslut
In the current climate of bigger, better, faster, more, this book serves as an excellent call for parental consideration. Alissa Quart considers less a specific group and more the pressures forced upon children nationally. Her questions and hypothesis are assertive and excellent ones. One chapter in particular, "Children of God, Teen Preaching Tournaments," is a dazzingly shocking section, a section that could easily support an entire book-length examination on its own. Quart has wonderfully captured the feelings of both neglect and suffocation that accompany frantic schedules and unbearable academic pressures. She manages to do this while capturing an array of painful childhood experiences and the range of coping techniques called upon to survive these pressured upbringings. She painstakingly emphasizes her call to focus more on uniqueness and intelligence and less on quantifiable, standard measures of worth.
Village Voice
A skilled reporter, Quart travels the country to meet with music prodigies, math and science whiz kids, teenaged evangelical preachers, and young Scrabble champs, among others, to uncover the pressures they face. While she often comes down hard on affluent parents who spend money on fancy gizmos and private lessons, she finds, in a small Midwestern city, the real need for gifted programs in public schools for children of low-income families who often can't find enrichment at home. She criticizes the No Child Left Behind Act for gutting many of these programs and emphasizing rote learning to improve scores on standardized tests. The darkest tale in the book, to demonstrate the pressures faced by a child labeled as "profoundly gifted," describes Brandenn Bremmer, a home-schooled boy who entered college at age 10 and killed himself four years later. Quart met with him and his mother the year before his death. When she asked Brandenn what he thought about being seen as gifted, he replied, "America is a society that demands perfection." His use of the word perfection in a discussion about giftedness disturbed her. Quart is reluctant to guess what caused Brandenn to take his life, but evidence in her book suggests that singling out a child as being highly intelligent often has negative effects. A study of the effects of adults' messages to children about their performance found that children praised for their intelligence were "less persistent in their tasks and less joyful" and performed at a lower level than the group of children who had been praised for effort alone. Fascinating to read, Hothouse Kids is wholly convincing that overscheduled children are not better off than those who are given time for free play and relaxation. As Quart smartly points out, being a later bloomer may be a good thing: Albert Einstein didn't speak until he was three years old and he did just fine.
Chicago Tribune
Alissa Quart starts with what she calls "the Baby Genius Edutainment Complex," discrediting the much-ballyhooed notion of brain plasticity, the theory that a child's brain has a spongelike ability to learn before 3, at which point the window of opportunity slams shut and you might as well give up and try again with another kid. Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientist at the University of California and an expert in brain plasticity, tells Quart: "It's not as easy, but I can take up a new language when I am twenty. It's not as easy not because I am less plastic, but because I became so damn proficient at my native language." Quart presents a cogent argument that a baby can learn more playing in a sandbox with another child than sitting in front of a bright-baby video. "As long as you don't put a child in a closet, nutritionally deprive him, or cause trauma to his developing brain, he will naturally learn." Sadly, in the rush to nurture brilliance in our children, we give them precious little time to play, when it is only through play and boredom that kids figure out who they are and what they are interested in. "Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience," Quart quotes German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin as saying. By keeping our children at the grindstone, we are effectively robbing them of themselves. A former child prodigy, Quart has firsthand knowledge of the pressures put on kids to excel. And it is with this empathetic eye that she considers her subjects: math and science whiz kids, chess savants, music and art prodigies. She includes a fascinating chapter on teen preachers and the pressures on Christian children to excel in the realm of evangelism and Bible study. Quart also traces the current frantic, test-happy yet enrichment-poor school curricula to President Bush's calamitous No Child Left Behind policy, which penalizes schools with low test scores, forcing administrators to cut "non-essential" programs like recess and art from kids' already overscheduled school days. Most disturbing is the fact that many parents don't seem to value their ordinary children, foisting specialness upon them. Quart gives a thorough account of parents' scrambling to have their children tested as gifted. These parents "can make it seem as if having a gifted child is essential to the parent's identity as well as the child's. . . .They are willing to publicly exalt in their children, although they would find exalting in themselves to be socially unacceptable." The specialness of our children affirms the specialness of ourselves. "[B]eing `gifted' has become something so cherished over the years that the designation of giftedness itself, and not the specialness it implies, has become the primary object of desire."
Cookie
What? Deny your child any advantage? Today Mozart serenades fetuses, babies do sign language before they babble, and kids have so many scheduled activities that recess is just a fond memory. But does enriching your child create a kid who is truly special or one who is especially distressed? Nurturing children into following their bliss is different than pushing them into a mold, argues Quart, and parents need to know the difference. Full of incredible portraits of prodigies (there's a tot earning millions for her paintings), Hothouse Kids examines why gifted programs may be a surprise package you wish you hadn't opened so quickly. Whether or not you agree with this book, it's a provocative look at the tightrope parents walk between doing what's best—and what could be the worst—for a child, and how to tell the difference.
Alternet
As the rich are getting richer, their children are gaining the opportunity to get smarter. States are gutting funding for gifted education in the public schools even as well-to-do parents fight for appointments with specialized intelligence evaluators who charge a thousand dollars or more per child. What Quart dubs the "Baby Genius Edutainment Complex” has resulted in a world where extra services for kids are increasingly available only to those who can pay for outside tutoring, extracurricular activities or the high tax rates of elite suburban school districts. Call it the privatization of giftedness, where all too many children are being left behind. What makes Quart’s book unique is its systemic look at the world of these children and their families, from the Mozart tapes their parents play to them in utero to the conventions held for gifted children and their parents. She spends time with both the true prodigies -- those with unique skills manifested at an early age -- and those with just extra high IQs or other talents that are less than extraordinary but still special.
Entertainment Weekly
Lit prodigy Quart, who wrote her first novel at 7, studies the movement to ''invent gifted children,'' from Baby Genius videos on. Utterly fascinating—Quart's meticulous research and insightful analysis range from teen preacher competitions to the link between mathletes and Wall Street recruits. Grade A.
Education Week
Quart’s book is extremely balanced, and she is not
willing to argue that an intensive focus upon a
child’s gift is necessarily a bad thing. Many children
depicted here are completely engrossed in what they do
and need little inducement to practice an instrument,
say, six hours a day. On the other hand, the line between coercion and
nurturance is almost hopelessly blurred—hence the
“dilemma” of the title. Quart details how what she
terms the “extreme parenting crowd” can damage kids by
harping relentlessly on their gifts. One
representative woman, once deemed a girl “genius” by
her father, now says, “I totally try to repress my
childhood. The ‘enrichment’ bled the joy out of me.”
Paradoxically, as childhood “genius” is worshipped as
never before, gifted programs in public schools are
being gutted to satisfy the No Child Left Behind Act,
which emphasizes boosting the test scores of
low-achieving students. Hence, gifted children without
resources are being “left behind.” The overarching goal, Quart concludes, is to find a
golden mean between normalizing kids and hothousing
them. That is, we should nurture giftedness while
resisting the temptation to overcultivate, which
inadvertently causes harm.
Newsday
The "dilemma" referred to in the subtitle of "Hothouse Kids" is how to identify the children who are truly gifted and then help them maximize and enhance their gifts while preserving their childhoods and their happiness. The answer, the book implies, does not lie in the plethora of products and programs pushed on ambitious parents. Quart, whose reporting is comprehensive, says there's little evidence to show that scheduling very young children for language and arts classes and loading them up with educational videos and electronic toys does anything to enhance their natural abilities. She also considers the plight of some older gifted children, such as those who have been home-schooled so they can enter college at age 12 or have been turned into professionals - in sports, music, art - at an absurdly early age. Quart argues that true giftedness is as much a factor of interest and passion as of innate ability, and that the motivation must come from within. The former child prodigies she interviewed who grew up to achieve the most and be happiest with their lives generally followed their own goals rather than their parents'. Obviously, parents aren't the only adults charged with a gifted child's education, and the book considers the national discussion about schools' responsibility. At the moment, there's no agreed-upon definition of "gifted," although Quart considers the exclusive use of intelligence testing scores to be overly narrow. There's also no agreement about whether these students are best served by being "hothoused" (separated into special programs) or mainstreamed into regular classes, where they can enhance other students' experiences and learn to function in a wider environment. Quart presents both sides of the debate, but one of the most convincing points is that identifying gifted students in the public schools early and separating them for special treatment is an effective way for talented students from lower socioeconomic families to get ahead…Parents who are convinced their very young children are exceptional should take a look at "Hothouse Kids" to see how they can best shepherd their kids into a happy and productive adulthood.
Booklist
Parental obsession with identifying and nurturing the slightest giftedness in children has produced a "prodigy industry" that is robbing children of simple childhood experiences, according to Quart, a former child prodigy who traveled the country to research the frenzied trend to identify and market products, services, and activities for gifted children. She examined research and talked to parents, educators, and child psychologists as well as current and former child prodigies for a portrait of what she calls the Icarus Effect. Quart includes her own story, describing herself as insufferable, an early reader who skipped a grade and wrote her first novel at seven. She visits an amazing range of competitions for gifted children, including spelling bees, Scrabble contests, and poetry slams, all part of enormous pressures placed on gifted children that sometimes result in resentment and rebellion as the gifted look back on stunted childhoods, haunted by not living up to their promise, being "a cross between a has-been and a never-was." A fascinating cautionary tale for overzealous parents of gifted children.
Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. Quart has direct personal experience to draw on. "I learned to read at three," she tells us. "My father counted on me to offer presentations on Modernist Art by the time I was five. . . . I wrote my first novel at seven." Understandably, she is especially concerned with the effects such high parental expectations have on the children subjected to them. Not content with simply delving into the existing literature, the author interviewed educators, professionals, parents and children. She visited various classes and attended competitions, including an evangelical preaching contest for teenaged boys. Her one-on-one interviews and insightful reports from the field give this book its sparkle. Quart's survey of what she calls the "Baby Genius Edutainment Complex" reveals an astonishing array of items aimed at raising the IQs of toddlers, infants and even the unborn, as producers of unproven products seek to persuade parents that they can enhance their child's brain development if only they act soon enough. Her look at the testing business includes a capsule history of ability testing and raises questions about the purposes of testing and the identification of children with special talents. She's also critical of too-avid parents who aggressively push early learning on their offspring and press schools to label their children as gifted; her message to them is: Let children have a childhood. In addition, Quart argues in favor of better training for gifted-education teachers and increased funding for gifted programs in schools, which she warns have been cut back severely as a consequence of the federal government's No Child Left Behind Act. She calls on those in the field to de-emphasize rote performance and look beyond the present narrow focus on precocious math, reading and musical skills to more broadly define giftedness. A challenging read for educators and parents alike.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Quart's follow-up to Branded shifts her focus from rapacious companies to parents, whose obsession with "creating" or "nurturing" giftedness, she argues, has led to a full-blown transformation of middle-class childhood into aggressive skill-set pageantry. While Quart wonderfully details the daily grinds of genuine prodigies (in everything from violin to preaching to entrepreneurship), the real force of the book is in showing how gifted childhood--relentlessly tested, totally overscheduled and joylessly competitive--is being created by striving parents of all stripes; such "enrichment" not only doesn't necessarily work, it can be harmful. A chapter titled "The Icarus Effect" presents child-prodigies as worn, depressed adults; "Extreme Parenting" and "Child Play or Child Labor?" show the bizarre (and often profit-based) forms prodigy-mongering is taking: "Phoenix has started her own knitwear business," one parent crows, "and though she is only 12, she can do it." Probing interviews (the kids are brilliant, robotic, frenetic, forlorn and every shade in between) are matched with educational and psychological data, with beautiful cultural riffs (particularly linking mathletes and Wall Street) and deep engagement: a former gifted kid herself, Quart interviews, interprets and assesses with a sympathy for her subjects and their caregivers that is emotionally profound. She turns in a remarkably evenhanded analysis and argues for "multiple intelligences" and enrichment for "strong learners" in public schools. Quart's second book is first-class literary journalism.
Library Journal
"Better baby" programs. IQ testing for the "severely gifted." Prodigy hunters who chase down star kids, like the eight-year-old skateboarder with corporate sponsors. It's dangerous to be a really talented child.