Prodigies and the push to excel

Being raised to be exceptional can cause exceptional problems; Alissa Quart should know. The 34-year-old author of a new book "Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child," Quart read at age 3 and wrote her first novel when she was 7. In her book, she argues that today's parents' need to enrich children with special classes, jammed-packed schedules and learning tools can leave a lasting legacy.

And not one the parents had in mind.

The pressures put on children, especially gifted children and prodigies, create debilitating perfectionism, performance anxiety and lifelong feelings of not being able to keep up, she writes.

"I think some of the parents right now wish they were hothouse kids," she said in a recent interview, referring to the term some have used for today's gifted kids. "They are trying to correct something from their childhoods with over-parenting, then neglect."

In her book, she takes on the pressure to excel in life early, with examples of a 4-year-old whose finger paintings sell for $300,000 to an 8-year-old professional skateboarder who already has nine corporate sponsors. She explores the world of baby "edutainment products" and visits children's intellectual competitive events, such as chess and Scrabble tournaments, as well as interviewing gifted children about their lives.

The book is "a wish for moderation and a correction of this privatization of talent. Childhood is a symbol of what is out of balance in our society, out of whack," Quart said. "What is childhood today?"

A lot of parents are wondering the same thing.

Phone lines were jammed with callers in September when Quart appeared in Pasadena for an interview on public radio station KPCC. A mother who worked at the station approached Quart and told her of the dilemma she faced in deciding how to best educate her gifted child. Quart, a slim young woman who looks younger than she is in dark jeans, gold open-toed shoes and toting a teal leather bag stained at the bottom, smiled and listened carefully.

"I'm never quite sure what to say. I'm just a reporter," she said later. "Parents come up to me all the time looking for answers, but there's not a right way or a wrong way."

Quart, a native New Yorker and a graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York, is the only child of two academics who prized education and intelligence. Her father especially was "hell-bent on bettering my lot -- and by extension our family's lot -- and keep me from languishing in what he considered the Blank Generation." To achieve this, he drilled her on the names of B-movie actresses, revolutionary movements and vocabulary.