My Five-Year-Old Genius

Think you have it hard? Try walking in my shoes for a day. I have a 5 year-old son and he is a genius. I know what you are thinking—that I’m his mother and it is only natural for me to think that he’s the smartest 5 year old who ever lived—but, I mean it. He really is a genius. Let me give you an example of his typical behavior.

One day I entered his room where he was playing. He was running around in circles, arms out stretched, and making sputtering sounds with his lips. I know what you are thinking, “all 5 year-olds play like that!” but, just listen to the conversation I had with him:

“Are you pretending to be an airplane?” I asked him.

“Yes, mother,” he replied, without stopping his imaginary play. “I’m flying stealth at Mach 5 over the Macedonian sea on a secret mission to rid the world of maccaboy.”

Maccaboy? What is that? I think to myself. How can my son know word I don’t know? Not wanting to appear, or feel, inferior to my 5 year-old, I leave his room to find a dictionary so I can find out what maccaboy is. As I was thumbing through the dictionary my son entered the room looking quiet serious.

“Mother,” he said, “are we related to the Machabees?”

“Machabees? How do you know about them?”

“I just read about them in a book and I wanted to know if I’m related to them. So, are we?” he asked again.

“Um…no, I don’t think so, honey,” I answered.

“OK,” he said, and ran out of the room. I sat there, stunned, wondering what books my son had been reading lately.

See what I mean? The boy is a genius, or are you still not convinced? Here’s another little story for you:

One night I was in the kitchen preparing the family dinner. My son came in and asked, “What are you making, mother? It smells good!”

“Thank you, dear, it’s baked chicken.”

“You know what would go really good with that?” he asked.

“What?”

“Macedoine,” he said, smiling up at me.

I just stared at him blankly for a moment until I snapped out of my stupor and asked as sweetly as I could without sounding as annoyed as I felt, “And what is that?”

“A fruit salad,” he answered, not noticing my surprise. “In fact,” he added, “if you flavored it with mace it would taste even better.”

“Mace?” I yelled, dropping the chicken. “Sweetie, we do not eat Mace, it’s bad for you!”

He just stared at me now, until a look of understanding came over him. “Not that kind of Mace mother, mace! It’s just a spice.” He was actually patronizing me and rolling his eyes now. “Just sprinkle a little of the mace on the macedoine and macerate it a bit, I think it would be good to try.”

He is always using words I don’t know when he talks to me. Take this for instance: one day he drew a rather elaborate picture of a house. When I asked him about it he told me it was a fort.

“See here Mother?” he said, pointing to the circles all along the outside of his fort. “These are the machicolations the people inside use to defend themselves. They are at war with the people on the outside who believe in Machiavellianism.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, trying to sound as if I understood what he just said, even though in reality I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

“What is this?” I asked, pointing to what looked like a large sword.

“That’s their machete. Don’t worry, Mother,” he added quickly when I started to frown at him, “They only hang it over their mantle as a decoration.”

After a minute of thought, I finally had to ask him what was on my mind for weeks now.

“Honey,” I said slowly, “Where do you learn about all these things?”

“From Dad,” my son answered brightly.

“Your father taught you all of this? When?”

“Every night when he gets home from work we go into his study and he reds me all kinds of books, like the ones he has on Machiavellian and machicolate.”

“So that’s what you two do in there!” I exclaimed, and my son nodded his head.

“I see,” I said, as I stood up straight and folded my arms across my chest. “I’m going to have a little talk with that man when he gets home.”