American Idiot

It was inevitable that this day would come--to be honest, I've feared it since the day I discovered that I was pregnant the first time around.

But I envisioned the scene very differently than this. First of all, in my vision, my daughter was in at least middle school, more likely high school.

She'd approach me with a math book in hand, looking up at me with trust and earnestness in her sweet young face and say, "Mom, can you help me with my homework? Don't you just love quadratic equations!?"

(Those of you who know me are now gasping---you didn't think I could pull that term out of my ass did you?)

In this vision, I would calmly defer her to her father. Or a tutor. Or a neighbor I once saw getting the mail that looked pretty smart. Doesn't matter. Anywhere, with anyone but me.

Instead, here's how The Day My Child Proved Smarter Than Me really unfolded:

She's 6, very much not in high school, and her sister asks me to braid beads into her hair using the handy-dandy automatic bead braider machine thingy(marked ages 5 and up) .

I grapple. I test. I try. I fail. I read. I try again. I grapple some more.

I give up.

The 6-year-old then picks up the maddening contraption and proceeds to braid many brightly colored, decorative plastic beads into both of her sisters' hair, braid after braid after seamless braid....

She also figured out 10 times 10 is one hundred by just thinking about it for a second-- the day after she learned to count by tens. I think I was in 8th grade when that kicked in.

Oh, I'll be able to dispel the myths of early American history to her when the time comes. And I've done a passable job with phonics and reading comprehension tasks already.

But she won't be fooled for long. The look on her face when she told her sisters that she would help them as she picked up the evil bead machine was something just short of utter disillusion. It told us both all we need to know. When it comes to smarts, she's got me. But good.