Battle of the brains: Daughters-3, Mom-0
As long as I can remember, I've always been smart. I got straight
A's throughout school, scored almost a 1400 on the SATs and was
at the top of most of my classes. I figured that my children would
be smart, too, but what threw me for a loop was that they can
outsmart me, and they're still young children. My daughters are
10 ½ months, 5 years and 6 ½ years old. You would
think that a grown woman with a high school diploma could be one
step ahead of them, but apparently not.
My oldest daughter, Kimberly, showed signs of her intelligence
early on. She learned to talk at a fairly early age and by the
time she could put sentences together, she could argue. No answer
was good enough for her and if you did come up with a finite answer,
she would have a reason why it was invalid. How can you reason
with someone who thinks she is the smartest person in the universe
(second only to God)?
When Kimberly was about five, she was eating grape tomatoes. She
had only heard of cherry tomatoes and when I told her they were
grape tomatoes she replied, "No, they're not, they're cherry
tomatoes." We proceeded to go back and forth "yes they
are" "no they're not" until finally I had the bright
idea of having her read the container they came in.
"See Kimberly, you can read. What does the box say?"
I asked her.
"G-r-a-p-e," she said slowly.
"I told you, they're grape tomatoes."
"Well," she said slowly. I could see the wheels in her
brain turning, "They're just wrong." And she walked
off to finish eating her cherry tomatoes, fully believing that
she had won the argument. I am a very good arguer and was not
used to losing an argument to someone almost twenty years younger.
My daughter Lauren is my wild child. She loves to be wild and
crazy and I have to choose my words carefully or they will backfire.
She takes things literally and unless I tell her exactly what
I want her to do, she'll figure out some way to get around the
rules. Lauren is sent to her room to sit on her bed frequently
and she has a habit of jumping on the bed.
"Lauren, go sit on your bed and no jumping!" I told
her. Thirty seconds later I looked in on her and there she was,
on her knees, jumping on the bed.
"Lauren!" I reprimanded in my serious mom voice. "I
said no jumping on the bed!"
She looked at me with her innocent face. "But, Mom,"
she said. "I wasn't jumping, I was bouncing. You didn't say
I couldn't bounce."
My mouth dropped and I started to reply, but what could I say?
She was right. I hadn't said no bouncing. I learned that day that
I have to say "no moving" just to cover all the bases.
Yet still I come up against little Miss Literal who keeps me on
my toes.
My youngest daughter, Emma, is 10 ½ months old. How smart
can a child under a year old be? Smarter than you'd think. I should
have learned from my older children, but it's amazing what you
forget in 4 ½ years. When Emma started crawling, I made
a barrier out of chairs to keep her in the front room. That worked
for about a month. Then she realized that she could crawl under
the braces in the chairs. No problem, smart mom turned the chairs
the other way so they were closer to the ground so her head couldn't
fit through. A day later, she learned how to crawl over the braces.
In a stroke of pure genius, I decided to use the coffee table
as a barrier. The opening on the bottom was only 3-4 inches. There
was no way she could fit under there. Or so I thought. One day
she was on the wrong side of the barrier. I was sure the only
way she could have gotten out was if one of her sisters moved
her. But both of them insisted that they hadn't touched her. So
I put Emma on the other side of the barrier to watch and see.
My brilliant, problem-solving 10 month old lay down flat on her
tummy, put her head sideways and slid under the coffee table.
It was official; all my children could outsmart me.
I've learned that there is nothing that is foolproof from my girls.
I suppose someday I will be glad that they're so smart.
Perhaps they'll get scholarships to college or invent something
that will make us rich. But today, they make me have to think
hard and then rethink even harder. And worse than that, they have
me questioning how smart I am!