I thought the TV show “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth
Grader?” was pretty intimidating. Who remembers the year Paul Revere rode his
horse waving a lantern, anyway? But
watching a season of “Child Genius” made me want to buy a one-way ticket to
Stupidsville.

For eight weeks, these little Einsteins crammed their
brains with everything from the Human Body and U.S. Presidents to, Zoology, Astronomy
and Logic. It was fascinating.
I gave up trying to play along early in the first
episode. This wasn’t Jeopardy and I’m no Mensa member. Heck, I’m proud when I
pass the first level of Brain Games on my Kindle.
However, it did surprise me to see the types of questions
that threw them for a loop. For instance, in the spelling challenge, one genius
misspelled the word accumulate, yet
breezed through a word like dehydroepiandrosterone (it’s
a type of human hormone…just in case you were wondering). For one fleeting
moment, I felt there was a chance I actually was a wee bit smarter than
a 5th grader. It didn’t last long—next came the math segment.

Watching the kids study was almost as much fun as
watching the parents trying to help (and sometimes hinder) their progress. One
little charmer quipped, "My daddy is not as smart as I am, because he has
a 135 IQ, and I have a 146." My
kids would have felt the wrath of Mommy Dearest with a smart-alecky remark like
that. Little Charmer’s dad just shrugged in resignation. Wimp.

I think I’m glad my kids weren’t geniuses. Helping with their homework would have been a
joke and I would have missed out on offering motherly pearls of wisdom when
they were having an adolescent crisis. Still,
knowing how many revolutions my car tires needed to make before I got to the
supermarket when the milk ran out in the middle of cooking breakfast might have made my
life a bit easier.
A great social commentary with a side of laughter. A ticket to Stupidsville sounds better than Wimp Dad or Tiger Lunatic, or Spoiled Socially Stunted Genius Brat any day. Makes me glad my kids had to do their own homework---now THAT'S real parenting!---raising kids that perform on their own without the adoring audience and camera.
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