Gifted Child?

As a new second-time mother, I have found recently that I have developed a new pet-peeve: the doting parent that thinks their kid poops golden bricks. You know the ones... "My child has been holding her own head up since the day they were born", "Our pediatrician says our baby is unusually alert for his age" (apart from anything else, why do adults need pediatricians??), "Our baby started walking/crawling/sitting up at least three months before she was supposed to", "My child started reading at two", "My child knows sign language and can communicate everything she wants to me - and she is only 6 months old!". (From Evan: My child has retractable wings that pop out of its butt and it can fly!)

Ugh. Shut up already!

There was a poll that came out recently on Parenting.com that showed that 70% of parents think their child is in some way gifted. 'Gifted' has become incredibly overused in the parenting lexicon, especially when you consider that only as little as 2% of children deserve the label, according to the real experts. Even if we substitute 'above-average' for the word 'gifted' in that poll, more than half of those parents would statistically still be wrong.

Whats more, there is an increasingly abundant amount of research that suggests that the 'edu-tainment' tools (the flash-cards, the educational DVDs, the brain-building computer games, the baby sign-language stuff...) that are all the rage now have little to no effect on improving a child's intellectual ability. What they do, however, represent is a skillfully crafted marketing campaign designed to dig ever deeper into the pockets of well-meaning parents and intentionally spoiling grandparents.

OK, I admit it... with Lena I was totally insensitive to the pervasive talk of gifted children amongst parents. Heck, I was/am even guilty of it. But with Oliver, seeing how not-so-different he is compared to Lena at the same age, I am beginning to notice, and get irritated by, that whiff (stench?) of elitism.

I, personally, am convinced that the parental bragging that makes me want to vomit on a regular basis is a socially accepted form of narcissism. "My child is a genius. My child is my flesh and blood. I taught him everything he knows. Therefore, I am a genius. Look at me." Or to look at it another way, especially in light of our competitive and result-orientated society, "My child is superior to your child, therefore, I am superior to you". I call it the Transitive Superiority Parenting Complex. TSP for short.

In a similar way, with the number of times I have heard parents say that their child is in the 95th/96th/99th percentile for their height or weight, I am beginning to suspect that either the charts are woefully inaccurate, or all the physically above-average kids live in the Provo-Orem area. Although, I guess if I had been told that my beloved baby was only in the 25th percentile and was, therefore, a runty weed, I wouldn't want to brag about it either.

So, with all of that in mind, here are some pictures of my darling little boy holding up his head.





And he is only one month and one day old! He is so talented!