Evolution

My kids are smarter than me.

They are fourteen (almost) and fifteen years old.  And they are decidedly, absolutely, unarguably smarter than me.  Here's how I know:

I can no longer help either of my children with their math homework.  In truth, I had a hard time helping my son with his homework when he was in sixth grade and trying to teach himself algebra.  We got him a tutor, and that tutor was well worth the money.  That tutor saved me from having to say, over and over again, "Well, sweetie, I'm not quite sure how to do that one.  Is it an odd number, so you can look at the answer in the back of the book?"  Proud parenting moment #214: teaching your child that math books provide you with the answers to every other problem if only you know where to look.

Steven is currently in Calculus AB.  I never made it past Algebra 2, and quite frankly didn't do super great in that class.  One afternoon he was explaining some mind-blowing concept to me--something about a point on a graph disappearing but still being there, or getting infinitesimally smaller forever.  He was kind of excited about the idea (in a way only someone who actually understood what he was talking about can be).  At first I was really trying to understand what he was saying.  It quickly became clear that wasn't going to happen.  So then I was trying to just follow what he was saying.  Nope, lost that battle.  So then I was just trying to maintain the facade that I was understanding.  And then that degenerated into me just nodding my head vigorously and saying "uh huh" a lot so he at least knew I was listening.  That was all that was left for me to do at that point, just listen.  Even just doing that made my head feel like it was going to explode.  The kid is flippin' smart.

My eighth grade daughter is now in geometry, and working hard for her A, which she has maintained all year.  I took geometry (in the tenth grade), and I'm here to tell you that this is NOT the same geometry that I took.  I have no idea how something based on numbers and angles and invented by ancient Greeks could have possibly changed over the last twenty-five years, but it seriously has.  I have no idea how to do the proofs that she does.  If I had been placed in the class that she is taking when I was her age (or any age thereafter), that would have been the end of my mathematical education (it didn't last much longer anyway).  Yet she can spend hours reasoning out these equations that are pages long.  Even if I had the smarts to do that, I'm not sure I would have the patience.  She's got it all over me on both counts.

Another way I know that my kids are smarter than me is when they expect an answer from me when they ask questions like, "Mom, in MLA format, would that be situational or dramatic irony?"

Huh?

First of all, I have no idea what MLA stands for.  I can tell you what SLA stood for, I can tell you what MLB stands for.  MLA?  No idea.

As for situational vs. dramatic irony, what's the difference?  In my day (oh, my god, did I just think that?) there was just irony.  Again, how did something as timeless as irony change in the last couple of decades?

Both Steven and Olivia far surpass me in more than just intellectual smartness.  Watching them on the computer makes me feel like a dinosaur.  It's not that I can't do things on our Mac.  I can.  I can word process.  I can Google things.  I can make a playlist on iTunes.  I can even create a blog.  But I'm telling you, my kids can do things that never would have occurred to me were possible.

Yesterday, I was asking Steven for Christmas ideas.  We were browsing a website that he likes because they have hundreds of t-shirts.  Every time he would point one out that he liked, I would go up to the URL and copy it, and then paste it onto an email that I was going to send to my mom.  Silly me.  You can simply grab whatever icon is at the left of the URL and drag the whole thing onto your desk top, or into your open email.  Who knew?  Not me.  Never would have guessed.  How do you find out things like that?  How did he know to do that?

Just last week, I was about to buy a song on iTunes.  Olivia happened to be watching me, and told me not to buy it because she already had the song.  She then proceeded, in about eight clicks, to open her iTunes, open my iTunes, click open song libraries, drag the song from one place to another, and BINGO!  Her song was now my song, and I did not have to pay an additional $1.29 for it.  I realize that this isn't that complicated a procedure.  Nor is it that new a feature--song sharing between libraries.  I just cannot remember how to do it.  I will admit, a little embarrassingly, that I have, in fact, actually paid the $1.29 for a song that I really, really wanted (and that I knew one of them had already purchased) when the kids weren't home to conduct the transfer for me.

I realized the full force of my kids' surpassing intelligence (and simultaneously felt archaic and anachronistic) when I watched them operate their cell phones for the first time.  I swear, they never touched the instruction manual (got that from me!).  Yet they knew how to turn the phone on, how to enter addresses and phone numbers, how to assign ring tones, how to download ring tones, how to send and retrieve email, how to get to camera mode, and how to sync up their music and photos.  They did most of that in the first ten minutes of having their own cell phone for the first time.  It's taken me years of owning the iPhone, the most user-friendly, intuitive device ever invented, to figure some of that stuff out.  My kids do not have iPhones.  Their phones are, in my estimation, neither user-friendly nor intuitive, so much so that I have been unsuccessful just trying to answer their phones.  How do they know how to do that stuff?  Is phone technology part of their generation's DNA?

So there you have it.  I cannot even manage to answer my own childrens' phones.  I don't understand their math or their Language Arts.  They run circles around me on the computer.

I'm okay with my kids being smarter than me.  It makes me happy that they've eclipsed my IQ (although if they could have waited until they were past the age of 12 to do it I might feel a little better about myself).  Just like you want your kids to succeed more than you did, you also want them to be smarter than you are.  Mission accomplished.

Knowing how brilliant they are, I think it's only a matter of time before they figure out what the big chest of drawers in their rooms are for.  Or what the chute that leads to the cupboard right above the washing machine is designed for.  Or why that long, silver bar is hanging on the bathroom wall.  Or what those plastic triangles hanging in their closets are there for.  Or that if you pull on that handle on the dishwasher, it actually opens up, and you can put things inside...