My first inkling
that my daughter knew how to count was when she was about 20 months old. Most
mothers would be impressed by their child’s intellectual prowess. I, however,
was shaken to the core. Let me explain: My daughter, who was dressed in an
adorable pink dress with a matching bow in her hair, was standing on the couch
snuggling up next to me. We were reading a book, or at least, I was reading a
book, when, all of a sudden, she yelled, “1-2-3.” The next thing I knew, she
rushed to the edge of the couch and tried to leap off. The book went flying
into the air as I lurched forward to grab her a moment before she tumbled face
forward onto the floor. To this day, I have no idea what precipitated her
desire to leap tall couches in a single bound. What I do know is that, thanks
to her proficiency with numbers, I was able to save her from physical harm.
Now, not all
counting is a precursor to dangerous behavior. Sometimes, it’s simply a way of
informing your friends and family of information they really have no interest
in. For example, when someone has a baby, we often feel compelled to provide
updates as to how old the child is. This information is usually given in
months. I had a friend who took this to a new level. She used to send me
pictures of herself and her child in the mail (this was back in the 1900s). On
the back, she would write “Rivky, eight months; Mommy, 287 months.” I guess she
felt that , in addition to keeping her family and friends in the loop, she
could also encourage them to keep up with their math skills.
Math
skills do, in fact, play an important role in these updates. As your child gets
older, you drop the monthly report and move on to a quarterly report. For
example, you meet your friend at the supermarket, and she asks how old your
child is. Your response of, “Yitzi is three-and-three-quarters” is met with
smiles and further questions regarding his academic career, such as what
playgroup he’s in and where he’ll be going to school next year. Although most
parents don’t realize this, due to our new obsession with fractions, we are
unwittingly teaching our children that the world is not made up only of
integers. At this age, however, a child’s concept of fractions is still a
little shaky. Sometimes, a child will tell you they are four-and-seventeen-elevenths.
Although their answer might not make sense, there is nothing to worry about.
They will eventually get the hang of it. Here’s how I know this: The day before
my daughter’s 20th birthday, she said, “Guess how old I am today?”
Since I had forgotten that her birthday was in less than 24 hours, I was at a
loss. I mean, I knew she was 19, I just didn’t know what other information I
could add to that. Fortunately, due to her enthusiasm about her upcoming
birthday, she failed to register the blank look on my face and quickly
announced, “I’m 19 and 364/365.” This time, her proficiency with numbers was
able to save me from a parental faux pas.
Numbers
also play a role in the frequent negotiations between parents and children.
Think bedtime. One of the main goals of childhood is to “stay up just a little
longer.” The good news is that, when children are little, they can’t tell time.
The bad news is that it doesn’t matter. When they are really little and have no
number sense at all, the conversation might go something like this: “Okay
everyone, in ten minutes it’s time
for bed.”
At
this point, the spokesperson for the group, who doesn’t understand that bigger
is better, might counteract this by insisting, “No, seven minutes.” Now, unless you want to make this a teaching
moment, I say grab the opportunity for the three-minute reprieve and agree with
the negotiator.
As
children get a little savvier, their ability to negotiate becomes more
accurate, but not necessarily more reasonable. This was made abundantly clear
to me one Pesach when my kids were little. At two o’clock in the morning, after
the Seder was finished and the table was cleared, I realized my children were
still awake. I guess between all the wine and the carbohydrate-induced mental
fog, I had lost track of time. I hurried over to them and said, “Okay everyone,
it’s time for bed.” Of course, the cries and pleas to stay up “just five more
minutes” began immediately. I told them, in what I thought was my best
no-nonsense voice, that they had already stayed up six hours past their bedtime
(you can do the math). Quiet ensued for the better part of 10 seconds, before a
tired voice piped up, “How ‘bout just three more minutes?”
As
with many things, when it comes to these little tikes, we don’t realize how
good we have it until, one day, their childhood innocence disappears, and you
realize you are dealing with the next generation of financial analysts. This
came to my attention when my son was about six years old. In a moment of
desperation, I offered him one dollar if he would clean up the toys in the
living room. Keep in mind, they were mostly his toys, not mine. He thought
about it for a moment, and just as he was about to agree, he added, “Can I have
the kind of dollar that has the two zeros after it? Fortunately, my intuition
that he wasn’t quite ready for a job on Wall Street kicked in, and I countered
his offer with, “How about two quarters instead of one dollar?”
This not only did the trick but also afforded me a 50% discount on my original
offer. As they say, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!”
