How I Lost 50 IQ Points

Subtitle: An Apology to My Mother

I know so many people who are just WAY smarter than their mothers. I thought it was a coincidence. But I had an object lesson in maternal intelligence this evening. I was cooking for Sydney and first of all, she was in a bad mood because there was all this raw food that looked like all the things she liked to eat and I wouldn't let her have any. (Because, you know, it was raw.)

But the last straw, I mean the absolute last straw, was when I started throwing away perfectly good food. Like the tops of a bell pepper, the ends of snap beans, and the like. Sydney made her angry noise and kept trying to open the trash can to fish out the food. Honestly, I felt like I could read her mind and all she wanted to say to me was: "Mother, this is food, I'm hungry, and you have no business throwing it away."

She thinks she knows so much better than I do, and she's only seventeen months old. I had no idea it started this soon.

So now I know, it's not that everyone is so much smarter than their mothers. It's that good mothers want their children to have confidence and intelligence and be affirmed in their reasoning.

I looked at my daughter and said, "You're so smart. That is food there in the trash can. And now that I know you want bell peppers, why don't I get you some." After I cook it.