LOOKS VS INTELLECT IN OUR FAMILY

My son is a professional writer. You would think I was exaggerating. Drake has been writing with me on Helium, and has been doing well. He gets paid fairly good rates and I would guess that he makes far above minimum wage, which is good for someone his age from just sitting around writing on the internet which is what most of them do at that age, anyway. I mean his articles do well initially and from readership clickthrus and so now he has two stars - their compensation scheme that determines how much money you get. I have four so he is seriously on his way. Anyway, he gets more money doing this than I think most young teens get by doing anything as comparatively non lawn-mowing-related.

I have watched him deal with this new way of being amazing but not been surprised by it, as he has had quite a few. His "gifted" trajectory makes me also wonder whether he got the gifts in life that he will be more glad he got. Because for all the value of intellect, many people do better in life if they are simply good looking. He is kind of the pimply teen right now, so he may be nice looking like his dad, but he has a ways.

To be specific, Slade and I have never really thought LOOKS were that important, because we valued other things. After all, looks are kind of like valuing something worldly and materialistic that doesn't matter in this life. So it would be hard to justify really caring about it too much. I mean it is always interesting to ask the question, which are more important, looks vs. intellect to a kids' life? And which one wins in a given family? Chances are the answer will be the same one depending on your family's values. Since we are the way we are, we obviously downplay looks, even if it would be nicer if we were better looking of course.

I mean, my husband is totally hot and gorgeous, so it is kind of funny saying that looks aren't his thing. At forty he has has boyish looks that make him look like he's in his twenties, beautiful thick glossy hair, and that is the envy of every woman in the ward and can wear torso-hugging t-shirts. Hot hot hottie. He always says the same about me, and I can wear torso-hugging ts to, but not quite the same I absolutely am convinced. Slade is nice enough to pretend that I don't look like a corpse, the reason I am thin, because I can't eat a decent meal. He pretends I don't look like a CORPSE.

We went to London a fewy years ago and a guy in a pub asked us how many kids we had, and said "You mean four, between you?" Meaning, that it looked like I had four kids and that he was just some guy in his twenties that was with me. I would have been embarrassed, except wow there must be something about a woman who could get a young guy that can afford to take her to Europe. So yeah, I will take being able to be escorted around London with a guy half my age, or whatever, it is probably a compliment about me in a way - since I don't care about looks, as I said.

I think I luckily bypassed the tendency to think that my kids are particularly cute. I really didn't want to be one of those parents that doesn't see in themselves what I am sure they all see in OTHER parents. I mean I am fond of my own, as we are partial to sleeping in our own beds though it is just familiarity and such, and am pretty sure that I feel average amounts of affection as I love them, but it never translated into an assumption that I would think they were ACTUALLY CUTER than other people's and it really seems that I am unusual there. Of course we expected we would THINK that our kids were totally gorgeous like everyone else does so we tried to ward it off because we didn't want to be one of those that says stuff that people feel awkward about because no one feels like other people's kids how their own parents do, etc.

So we were never tempted to tell people what knockouts our kids were because we didn't ever really feel that our kids were better looking than other people's. We always thought, particularly in Slade's family like everyone else's kids were much cuter than ours. It made us worry that they are actually hideous. But as I said we just don't value it, probably. It seems to be really unusual, anyway, so I know that I LIKE my kids, and I know that it is just parental affection, not any actual assessment that they are cuter or more likeable. I always wonder, in fact, how parents could really think that their kids were cuter since obviously they LIKE their kids and feel affection, etc. so it couldn't be that there was any particular reason, after all, the people actually believe that there is any chance that they have cuter kids objectively than others.

I know someone whose baby was born and he said oh man, I was so worried I would have a homely child, I am so relieved. And he said oh man Carol, seriously he is so smart, and then he said something that the kid did to make it sound like he was seriously challenged. And when we were leaving, we looked at each other like what do you think? We both said, well, pretty homely.

I mean I don't think they are actually hideous or anything but I think that I take how they look to me and apply a reduction factor that is about equivalent to making them equal to what I think that they probably are considering what parents of about equally attractive children say about their kids. And the number of photographs they take of their kids and the things that they say. Not that I don't think other kids are cuter than mine, usually I do and that is rare. I have never once had it pass through my head wow my kids are so much cuter than everyone else's kids are. NOT ONCE. We have asked ourselves whether that means they are totally hideous.


Well, obviously there wasn't going to be any question about Drake's ability to do stuff like this. I guess it has been something I expected. My kids are charmed intellectually. The only reason I feel comfortable saying that is that it isn't really a subjective thing. There are always various people and reports and programs that come to me to tell me this information. I mean, I would think that it was just parental bias, or that there was a chance of it. Except that I am pretty hard on my kids in general.



I mean, poor kids, they aren't going to have an easy audience even with their own parents. They have to wait until all of the objective data comes in like all of the things they do like win first place in state chess tournaments, have their IQs round up to two hundred rather than down to one hundred, all of those kind of things that someone will convince US about rather than the other way around. Because we are hard eggs to crack even with our own kids. They don't impress us easily. But seriously, Drake is more competent than we are and he is smarter than we are, even at his age. This writing thing is just the latest proof and interesting result of it.

Knowing about parental bias I have been suspicious and wary that I would think that my kids would be cute and everyone would say poor Carol thinks her kids are good looking. I never really seemed to be beguiled by my kids' looks, though. I have always thought that most other friends and family have better looking kids than we do, and I don't have any problem with it. I mean, some people are just not beautiful, and I think it would be a problem if I felt that people had to pretend that my kids were really nice looking. I would rather that everyone just be realistic, and no one have to pretend that my kids are gorgeous and we won't have to pretend that they're not smart, either. Cause both are awkard.

I was also suspicious that I would think that they were smarter than they were. So I waited to have them be really normal and average. Well, that never happened. They ALL said their first words when they were nine months. ALL of them. I remember that Drake said his first word, DUCK, when he was in the DAV we were with Grandma Morgan, when he was nine months old. She said he just said DUCK - he was pointing to one of those mix and match toy bags that they have in the back for 99 cents. I didn't believe it at first, but he obviously said it with that one word intonation that means he is saying a word, and he was pointing to a Duck and saying duck.

So I kept waiting for signs of averageness, and I was willing to accept that possibility, cause average looks came to our house - at best. But no signs of average intellect. Grandpa Morgan was holding Drake when he was too young to even crawl. Seriously, that's why he was holding him with the typical arm around the belly hold like most people hold non-mobile kids. He was holding him so that Drake could look down onto a counter where there were some coins. Grandpa Morgan said, OOOOH, look at those really shiny things! Drake said, "Money." And kind of with that actual INTONATION that would suggest uh DUH grampa, I know that those aren't just shiny things!

He wasn't even CRAWLING when he said this. Meaning he was eleven months, since I think it tends to go in my family that babies move really late but talk really early. REALLY early. Meaning he took two months to go from his first word, duck, to saying a few dozen words, including money. So Drake has kept up his milestones, talking in sentences way before he was two (when the twins were born, I remember he said "I am going to kill those brothers with a stick" which really concerned Grandma Morgan, but he never ended up having any violent impulses, it is just interesting that he said that when he was less than two years old.)

So the kids kept up their early verbal milestones anyway, talking early, and now writing professionally early. Drake's professional writing status as a young teen is fairly impressive to me, even, though I am hard to impress. A year ago I would have been impressed if I sold an article last year, but I have sold tons of them now, and I am not magic. I have more work than I can do. Flooded with it.

So it may not be that impressive. It may be that dreaded parental bias that I keep thinking will surface will at some point. I hope not. I have always feared it and not wanted to look like one of THOSE PARENTS. Who we all know who they are, they are mailing their SAT scores in the family Christmas letter. I am sure I do stuff like that, I mean look at my blog. I assume that everything they do is somewhat influenced by my bias. They are probably not as good at music stuff as I think they are sometimes, I just try to be supportive. And I am just SO HAPPY that the boys are willing to do music I can't even contain it. Probably their various engagements are embarrassing to people that know they are just average. I mean I KNOW they are average, but it makes me happy, and I thought they were cute singing, I mean the singing was cute not them, really, I mean I saw Sadie's gut, she's not fooling me. But she is happy when I put her on the blog. Unlike Archer, who I have to trick.

But a lot of the time other people are usually even more impressed than I am, and are even more surprised. People who run across him on H are shocked that he is only thirteen. His articles compete with adults' articles and whomp all over them. It is interesting to think about where he learned how to do that, obviously it is like everything else they do and it just doesn't take them much time or effort to get good at it.

Poor things.