Do you ever look at a child and just say, "Wow"? Kids are amazing little creatures, really. My great-nephew, Eli, is probably the picture they put beside the word "child prodigy" in the dictionary. He is crazy smart. When he was a year old, he was talking...by eighteen months, he was not only saying his ABC's, he was identifying letters. He knows colors, shapes, numbers, how to spell his name in sign language, the periodic table, all the states, Portugese...okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a touch, but the point is the kid is smart. And the reason Eli is so smart is because Eli loves to learn. But he also loves to dance and scream and fish and go to Chuck E. Cheese. He's a normal 2 ½ year old kid ...who will probably make his first million before he's 21.
I tell you about Eli because my son, Jackson, is five months younger than him. He and Eli are great buddies, and the way they communicate with each other is just fun to watch. Their greatest adventures are ahead of them, and it seems like every time they're together, they have just a little more fun than the time before. But when Eli was a little over a year old and started showing signs of genius, my first thought was, "Is this normal?? Because if it is, boy, is Jackson in trouble." I sort of had this idea in my mind that your child was a direct reflection of your ability as a 
parent. And if that were true, I was not going to be winning the mom of the year award any time soon. I kept telling myself that my boy had five months to learn all the stuff Eli already knew...but the truth was, Jackson had no desire to be read to, no yearning to know his colors or letters or Portugese (getting him to say "mama" literally took a year of begging and pleading!!). He wanted to slide down his slide, play in his car, eat Oreos, and watch Blue's Clues. 
But I've learned something about my son in the past year. He's an observer. He's also extremely cautious and hates to fail. So, instead of jumping headfirst into something new, he watches everything going on around him, takes it in, turns it over and over in his mind, and when he's good and ready, he'll let you know what he's learned. He walked at 14 months, even though he'd been pulling up on stuff and walking with help long before that. Why not sooner? Because our boy doesn't do anything until he wants to. Until failure wasn't as likely as succeeding. He had absolutely no desire to fall, so sure, he could take steps, but only when he could walk more easily than he could crawl did he have any desire to step out on his own. And once that moment came, he hasn't slowed down (which is evidenced by the fact that it takes about 15 pictures to get one good one of him standing still)!And one night when he was playing in the bathtub, he started saying his ABC's (if you can translate two year old)...and his colors...and spelling his name. Turns out my kid actually does know quite a few letters by sight. And shapes. Who knew? Every day he shows us something new that he's picked up apparently by osmosis. He also has an amazing caregiver during the school year, and I know much of the genius he is currently unveiling came from her (Thanks, Tanya!).
Will Jackson ever be as smart as Eli? I don't know, but it doesn't matter. Eli is Eli, and Jackson is who he is, and he will be smart enough...I'm sure Kevin and I will consider him a genius no matter what. Every day it seems he learns some thing new. He is happy, healthy, funny and polite (three of his first words that he could use appropriately were "please" and "thank you"). And if those four things are the only things I can ever say about him, that's okay by me. 
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