Why do I need DS to be "smart"?

[Pepe]

My child is 4 and I am delighted to mother him. He's personable, curious, articulate, and imaginative. I adore him. However, with kindergarten coming up next year and his being on the young side, I have observed in myself a very strong desire for him to be intelligent. In fact, he does seem rather intelligent, but I want to let go of the need for him to be. I don't want to pressure him or convey even subconsciously that his worth is contingent upon his abilities or performance. I want to allow him to bloom on his own schedule.

I'm trying to figure out why I want him to be smart; I know it's not the most important quality in a human being. Since his infancy, I have had to make an effort to avoid (internally) comparing his milestones, etc., to those of others (especially his same-age cousin). Part of this is that one of my own shortcomings is a need for acknowledgment, and I am illogically looking for "returns" in my parenting. He's an only child (as am I), so there is also that pressure I'd like to avoid heaping upon him. I feel that I myself received a lot of attention for being a smart kid, so I suppose that was braided into my sense of what's important or good.

Can anyone relate to this? Thanks for feedback or thoughts.

[~Sarah~]

I absolutely relate to this. DD is in the thick of that "early development" stuff, and while I managed to really not care about how late she "achieved" her milestones for the first 9 months or so, I started really thinking and worrying about them when she became a later-side crawler. Now it's becoming an issue for me, for probably many of the same reasons as you----it has me thinking about "what if she's not as smart as I expected her to be?"

I've realized lately that when you combine hearing about "late development indicators of problems," with a million threads (and people) not-so-slyly bragging about how early their kid was in their development, you start to get the subconscious correlation of "early development=good parenting, late development=bad parenting." You hear things like "children who get less interaction during the day are proven to be later in their milestones" and so, in some part of your brain, you think you're not interacting enough (even if you do, all day long). So for me, at least, I'm battling the idea that all well-parented children are smart achievers, and all average/less than average kids must have bad parents.

For me, I "need" my DD to be smart because it's a direct reflection of my parenting ability. Or so my mind has come to believe. As well, there's the very deep idea (and desire) that if she's "special," then I must be too, because she came from me and has my DNA. I think, for me, it's all an expression of my own needs----to feel smart, special, recognized and accomplished. In my subconscious mind, if she has any of these qualities, it's proof that they exist in me; proof that I sometimes desperately need in order to feel good about myself. I'm working on that. She cannot be my validation or self esteem; that's not her job.

Maybe a good place for you to start would be to ask yourself "If he's not 'smart' then what does that mean, if anything, about me?" You might discover some answers that you know, intellectually, aren't correct but they still hold emotional power. Then you can explore those thoughts and put them to the logic test.

Hugs.

[FlyingGoddess]

I've found that how I relate to and think of my children have to do with *me*.

What is it about yourself that makes you feel like *you* have to be smart?

Have you read Your Competent Child by Jesper Juul? Awesome.

Also, How Children Fail by John Holt, and Giving the Love that Heals by Hendrix Harville might be of interest.

[griffin2004]

Originally Posted by ~Sarah~

For me, I "need" my DD to be smart because it's a direct reflection of my parenting ability. Or so my mind has come to believe. As well, there's the very deep idea (and desire) that if she's "special," then I must be too, because she came from me and has my DNA. I think, for me, it's all an expression of my own needs----to feel smart, special, recognized and accomplished. In my subconscious mind, if she has any of these qualities, it's proof that they exist in me; proof that I sometimes desperately need in order to feel good about myself. I'm working on that. She cannot be my validation or self esteem; that's not her job.

In all my years on MDC, this is the most honest thing I've ever read here. From someone who also struggles with these issues, I very much appreciate your insight and candor. Thanks.

[doubledutch]

his intelligence also opens up doors for him. a part of it may be that you just want the best for him, that you don't want his options in life to be limited in any way. otoh, i think it's awesome that you don't want to pressure him and that you want to accept him exactly as he is.

when you say he's going to kindergarten "next year" do you mean the next school year (fall of 2010) or the next calendar year (fall of 2011)? if you were planning to send him in 2010, you might want to hold off and send him in 2011. i suppose it depends on when his birthday is and when the cutoff is, but if you're worried about where he's at academically compared to his classmates, it would be better for him to be the oldest in the class rather than the youngest.

my 4yo will be 5 in september, but the cutoff here is sept 1, so he won't go to kindergarten until 2011 so he will 6 in kindergarten. it seemed weird to me at first, but then i realized it means he will be 18 when he graduates. otherwise he'd be 17 when graduating high school and for that whole following summer.

i know that's all slightly ot and more related to where our kids are developmentally, rather than related to intelligence, but it still seems related - he'd have less catching up to do if he waited.

[journeymom]

Originally Posted by Pepe

Can anyone relate to this?

Absolutely! I think it's pretty normal for parents to hope their kids are good looking and above average.

Originally Posted by ~Sarah~

I absolutely relate to this. DD is in the thick of that "early development" stuff, and while I managed to really not care about how late she "achieved" her milestones for the first 9 months or so, I started really thinking and worrying about them when she became a later-side crawler. Now it's becoming an issue for me, for probably many of the same reasons as you----it has me thinking about "what if she's not as smart as I expected her to be?"

I've realized lately that when you combine hearing about "late development indicators of problems," with a million threads (and people) not-so-slyly bragging about how early their kid was in their development, you start to get the subconscious correlation of "early development=good parenting, late development=bad parenting." You hear things like "children who get less interaction during the day are proven to be later in their milestones" and so, in some part of your brain, you think you're not interacting enough (even if you do, all day long). So for me, at least, I'm battling the idea that all well-parented children are smart achievers, and all average/less than average kids must have bad parents.

For me, I "need" my DD to be smart because it's a direct reflection of my parenting ability. Or so my mind has come to believe. As well, there's the very deep idea (and desire) that if she's "special," then I must be too, because she came from me and has my DNA. I think, for me, it's all an expression of my own needs----to feel smart, special, recognized and accomplished. In my subconscious mind, if she has any of these qualities, it's proof that they exist in me; proof that I sometimes desperately need in order to feel good about myself. I'm working on that. She cannot be my validation or self esteem; that's not her job.

Maybe a good place for you to start would be to ask yourself "If he's not 'smart' then what does that mean, if anything, about me?" You might discover some answers that you know, intellectually, aren't correct but they still hold emotional power. Then you can explore those thoughts and put them to the logic test.

Hugs.

Oh my goodness, yes, to the bolded part. However, I've also noticed that as MDC mothers are getting older there is a dawning acknowledgment that we cannot take as much credit for our kids personalities as we thought. Our kids simply are what they are. And I don't know how to say that without sounding like that I'm dismissing parental influence. It's still huge. I still think nature and nurture are about equal. It's just that I, personally, am amazed at how strong my children's innate personalities are, regardless of my husband's and my parenting, and I've noticed other mamas here acknowledging the same.

[Pepe]

Thanks very much, everyone. You've given me a lot of food for thought--and I'm glad to know I am not the only person with this sort of thing on my mind (at least from time to time). I appreciate all your comments!

[kcstar]

Originally Posted by Pepe

I'm trying to figure out why I want him to be smart; I know it's not the most important quality in a human being. Since his infancy, I have had to make an effort to avoid (internally) comparing his milestones, etc., to those of others (especially his same-age cousin). Part of this is that one of my own shortcomings is a need for acknowledgment, and I am illogically looking for "returns" in my parenting. He's an only child (as am I), so there is also that pressure I'd like to avoid heaping upon him. I feel that I myself received a lot of attention for being a smart kid, so I suppose that was braided into my sense of what's important or good.

Can anyone relate to this? Thanks for feedback or thoughts.

My mom's side of the family... not only did my grandparents emphasize education as their ticket out of poverty, but the whole family emphasizes the "you're smart" idea. There is some truth to that, I mean I have an aunt with a Ph.D., an uncle who went to MIT, six of the eight have college degrees. But as I became an adult, my mom started pointing out that their cousins were just as smart. Most of those cousins went on to be farmers, not technology workers.

I think a lot of it comes to what we value. How do we define success? The culture around us usually defines success as having a lot of money, a lot of power, and/or being famous. Most people wind up somewhere in the middle of the pack on the first two, and not famous at all.

I had heard DH encouraging DS with "You can do this, you're smart", and convinced him the research shows persistence is more important than innate intelligence. Or rather, the kids who were told they're smart after an easy problem, gave up faster on hard problems. The kids who were told they worked hard after an easy problem, continued to work at and eventually solved the harder problems.

So we've been working on saying "You can do this, you're persistent" instead.

[blizzard_babe]

I struggle with the same thing. I do NOT want to be that mom, and I especially don't want DS to ever feel like I love him because of his abilities rather than because he's just all-around great, but when I see another kid DS's age, the mental comparisons happen. I feel giddy if he's "ahead," slightly worried if he's "behind" the other child. I want to feel that all my hard work is "rewarded."

Which is, of course, unnecessary. DS is a reward in and of himself. But it's what I feel and I guess I just have to be honest about it.

[journeymom]

Originally Posted by kcstar

I had heard DH encouraging DS with "You can do this, you're smart", and convinced him the research shows persistence is more important than innate intelligence. Or rather, the kids who were told they're smart after an easy problem, gave up faster on hard problems. The kids who were told they worked hard after an easy problem, continued to work at and eventually solved the harder problems.

So we've been working on saying "You can do this, you're persistent" instead.

Yes, I read this, too. It totally makes sense.

[LROM]

Originally Posted by Pepe

Thanks very much, everyone. You've given me a lot of food for thought--and I'm glad to know I am not the only person with this sort of thing on my mind (at least from time to time). I appreciate all your comments!

I think this is WAY more common than you have any idea. Although I don't think it's "smart" for everyone. Some people feel this way about how cute/pretty/handsome their kid is. Some feel this way about how articulate (as opposed to non-verbal problem-solving) or how athletic.

No matter how you cut it, I think most parents have a bit of this in them SOMEWHERE, me definitely included.

But you know what I notice that I find kinda intersting? If people are complimenting my child, I honestly usually don't feel like it reflects on me so much - I'm usually overwhelmed with feeling "lucky" and "blessed". BUT if I notice another kid who's the same age and seems somehow more advanced in something? Oh, then it's definitely a reflection on me and something that me and DH aren't doing! And I know that's ridiculous but that's what usually happens iin my brain.

I also get worried and then worry about my worry! I also don't want to pressure her unduly or send any harmful messages that take away from self-esteem instead of contributing to it.

It's great that we can all be honest about this though, because we all know that noticing it and accepting that this is how we are is the first and most important step towards curbing it or changing our behaviors.

Best of luck to all of us!

[Viola]

Originally Posted by Pepe

I'm trying to figure out why I want him to be smart; I know it's not the most important quality in a human being.

Basically, it just seems that people think that being smart is better, just like being pretty is better than being ugly, but there is less of a stigma in judging based on intelligence. We can usually prize intelligence with impunity and not suffer judgment for being superficial in a way we can't do with many other things. My husband will admit that feeling that he is intelligent is pretty much his only egotistical thing about him.

A high intellect or high aptitudes in certain disciplines is definitely prized in our current culture. We use as common insults terms that used to refer to a specific IQ level. People have no problem being quite open about the fact that they thing being intelligent is a sign of superiority. Even in LLL, one of the advantages of breastfeeding is a higher IQ, but have any studies been done to show that the IQ differerences they are talking about lead to a qualitatively or quantitatively better life? And am I even making sense with that sentence? Probably not, it's all so subjective anyway.

[Tuesday]

I think it's human nature to want the best for our kids and subsequently "best" is equated with being "smart". But I've finally started to realize that being smart and materially successful are not necessarily the same as having happiness and/or peace of mind.

I also think in today's society it's become almost a bourgeois obsession to be smart, healthy, attractive, sexy.

[K-Mom3]

I can totally relate! I really want my kids to be smart and it makes me feel great that my son is reading so well, talks better than other kids his age, etc. Like the OP described, I try to restrain myself, but it is hard to not think this way.

Research on literacy and math in elementary school kids has shown that a lot of kids decide at a certain age that they are "not good" at math or reading or something else, especially if they are falling behind their peers and then they kind of give up on doing well in that area. So, I try really hard to emphasize, as other posters mentioned, that it is hard work and persistence, not being smart, that makes us successful. I try to praise my children the MOST when they work long and hard at something that is especially difficult for them.

[kcstar]

Originally Posted by Viola

A high intellect or high aptitudes in certain disciplines is definitely prized in our current culture. We use as common insults terms that used to refer to a specific IQ level. People have no problem being quite open about the fact that they thing being intelligent is a sign of superiority. Even in LLL, one of the advantages of breastfeeding is a higher IQ, but have any studies been done to show that the IQ differerences they are talking about lead to a qualitatively or quantitatively better life? And am I even making sense with that sentence? Probably not, it's all so subjective anyway.

Michael Gladwell, in Outliers, presents evidence that there are thresholds in IQ. It's like, below ~70 there's usually a struggle to get by in society. Between ~70 and ~130, the range for "normalcy", I don't recall. It may be that a few points matter, or maybe not. But that ~130 is like another threshold, of "smart enough".

Gladwell tells the story of this young man who has an IQ of like 198, but he never really learned how to deal with people, and so he never finished college. He also relates the IQs of some Nobel Prize winners for science, and some of them are somewhere around 135.

He goes on to explore college admissions, too. And basically shows that GPA is less telling of future success than the simple act of graduating. It's like, if a person is "good enough" to graduate (and I could be wrong, it could simply be "good enough" to be admitted), then they have the intelligence to be successful.

Sorry, it's been a rough six months since I read the library book, so I'm a little fuzzy on details now. In general, Gladwell indicated that a few points here or there are less relevant than where a person is in relation to those "thresholds". And I'm not even sure I'd call those thresholds hard numbers either. At some point, the overall life skills and opportunities are more important than IQ.

[jeteaa]

my dd1 is 5. By ps school standards she is not smart for her age. She is no where near reading, still can't count to 20 w/o skipping numbers.... but there are moments when she asks the most intelligent questions... the other day she was describing how she though cancer spreads, and SHE WAS CORRECT. They are little sponges and true intelligence can not be measured by any conventional methods used by schools. (we HS/unschool)