Homegrown Smarts

My child is so smart! I cringe every time I hear those words. In most of our circles, you'll be hard pressed to find a parent who (at some point in time) doesn't think that their child is an unadulterated genius. And so, it's with great strength and will power that I fight the urge to roll my eyes when parents use words like "incredible" and "advanced" to describe their 3 year olds. No, little Johnny is not going to be the next Tiger Woods just because he made 2 putts in a row with his Little Tykes golf kit. And yes, little Sally can spell STOP at the age of 2... great... but mind you, she's only watched that big red octagon go by her car window about 8 thousand times over the past 6 months. Get back to me when she can spell yield, no left turn, and pedestrian crossing.

It's because of (my own) cynical thoughts like these that we've been mum about Justin for so long. For me, to become that parent that I just wrote about would be to live a nightmare. I think it got to the point where Venesa and I absolutely refused to talk about Justin's aptitude to anyone else besides each other. His ability to conceptualize numbers, and read and write two years above his proper grade level somehow became our "dirty little family secret." While part of our denial was due to simple humility, I think that part of our silence has also been out of some irrational nervousness that he would regress the instant we said anything aloud about it. Also, in truth, neither one of us wants the pressure of raising a gifted kid. While raising a smarty pants may sound like a wonderful thing on the surface; when you're homeschooling your children, thinking that your child could potentially outsmart you before they hit double digits in age is cause for panic. And if, at 4-years-old, you're already worried about challenging your child at a satisfactory pace... that's kind of scary. But after attending this past weekends homeschool conference and having his somewhat bizarre aptitude level confirmed by a number of different sources... I thought it was finally time to break the silence.

Is Justin a genius? Not even close (if you ask me, anyway). With his boatload of idiosyncrasies (hypersensitivity to loud noises and certain texture foods, just to name a couple) I'm more inclined to call him borderline autistic than the g-word. But either way, it's becoming obvious that there's something different about the way he thinks. He baffles me on most days with simple stuff like his spelling and writing abilities. But more than that, he's got a thing with numbers. And so all I can say is, let's see what happens. From what we've been told by his pediatrician and a few other sources, if we were "that parent", we could probably shut down our summer, shun our lives and other two children, get him ready to start 2nd grade in the fall, and turn into one of those obnoxious families you'd see on CNN pushing to get their kid into college by the age of 14. But he's 4. And he has plenty of time to develop his academic inclinations. For now, we're content to let him dictate his own learning pace... doing what we can to not push him too hard, but also trying not to get in the way of progress. He's having fun, and life is way too short to disturb his tranquility with a premature entrance to the rat race that the rest of us endure. We enjoy watching (and being a part of) how interested he is in the whole process of learning. And for now, that's plenty.

So there... I said it. My child is so smart. Now excuse me while I roll my eyes at my own blog entry. Ha.