I have an 11 year old who never remembers where he left his cell phone, forgets his backpack half the time, doesn’t remember what he did with his pencil in the middle of his school work, writes like a first grader and can’t tie shoes with laces.
Yet he sat at a table with a 50 year old college graduate and talked Quantum Physics, black holes, parallel universes, light speed, Quarks and some weird stuff called neutrinos. He can debate Einstein’s theory of relativity and how it applies to life today and explains; without batting an eye, what would happen if parallel universes crossed paths.
My brain almost exploded.
I flunked math in college…twice! And I’m talking basic Algebra 101. I passed the third time by the skin of my teeth.
Almost didn’t graduate high school because I flunked math then too. Basic simple math!
I still need to use my fingers and sometimes my toes, to add odd numbers, never learned my multiplications, and can’t figure out what 10% of 15,000 is!
And yet all three children are math/techno whizzes.
My daughter was in honors/AP calculus in junior year and finished all her math credits before senior year. Huh? How does one finish all ones math credits before senior year?
She built a computer from the shell up for her science fair project in third grade, with two different operating systems and actually knew what she was talking about when she explained how she put it together!. Way cooler than a paper-maché volcano with vinegar and baking soda exploding out of it!
My 14 year old can calculate how many pieces of 4 x 4 tiles are needed to cover a 5 x 7 area. He talks “computerese” to me and knows I have no clue what he’s saying when he talks HTML, ANSI REXX, (I had to look that up), or when he explains to me how he managed to draw a 3-D movable design on that thing that he uses to draw his designs on his laptop.
What I hear when he talks computer: “Linux=Microsoft=Apple=Canonical=Bill Gates=Steve Jobs=Ubuntu”….ummm, yeah, Button?
.
My 11 year old knows better than to ask me “how do I turn such and such number into a decimal?” He goes to one of his older siblings. He doesn’t even bother with me.
And to think I home schooled those two boys for almost 5 years! I got as far as first grade math with them and then my brain fizzed so I used the internet, Teaching Textbooks and tutors. The boys took it upon themselves to read more, learn more and discover more math/technology.
And they LOVE math! Lord have mercy on my pea-pickin soul! Are these my off-spring?
My little guy started walking at 7 months and would walk over to the computer and know what he was supposed to do. He can actually NAME the different programs he has on his computer.
“So mom, you know that OS that Bubba, (his nickname for his brother), put on my computer the other day?”
“I’d like to buy a vowel please Pat?”
Let me see you sit with an 11 year old and have him explain to you that he just read that “the newest debate in the physics world is that the neutrino can move 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light, but it’s still up for debate because physicists were not announcing a discovery but simply recording measurements they had made”.
Oh, and by the way; I had to ask him to repeat what was that thing he was talking to me about the nanosecond-speed of light thing he told me about the other day. I had to write it out word for word as he repeated it for me because I was getting glassy-eyed and dizzy as he spoke.
I’m thinking, big, fat freaking deal he can’t tie his shoes.
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