Kids and I.Q.

Bah Humbug!

By Dorothy Nixon

Call me a màre of little brain, but I can't quite understand this obsession in the news media with stories about IQ and kids.

The latest: breast fed babies, it has been discovered, have higher IQ's, 5 points higher on average, than bottle-fed babies.

Now, there may exist a number of excellent reasons to breast feed a baby, but making him a smidgeon brighter shouldn't be one of them.

Take my 14 year old son, Andrew, whom I didn't breast feed, but who nonetheless, can perform complex mathematical calculations in his head. He's upstairs laughing himself silly in front of the TV as Chyna, the World Wrestling Federation's amazon-du-jour, breaks a chair over muscle bound hero, Mankind's, head. "Hmm. What might that five point IQ deficit mean in his case?" I wonder.

Will it cause him to miss out, by the skin of his teeth, on a scholarship to an Ivy League school?

Would he be watching the Three Tenors on A and E instead of Larry, Curly and Maureen on steroids, right now, if I hadn't botched up so badly when he was a mere suckling? Oh my God. What have I done?"

Then I meditate on my brother, Mark, a member of MENSA who is just as enamoured of WWF wrestling as Andrew - and he's middle-aged. "What's IQ got to do with anything?" I realize.

I thought the whole concept of IQ was debunked years ago. I thought that everyone agreed way back in the seventies that IQ tests measure nothing but the ability to do IQ tests, a skill that can be can be learned, by the way. Even an orangutan with a pulsating migraine could come to that conclusion. It's a no-brainer: there's got to be much more to intelligence (an abstract and subjective concept, after all) than the ability to solve problems on paper.

Anyway, it's what we make of what we've got that matters. Some people may be surprised to know that plenty of high school drop outs have very very high IQ's. Plenty of psychopaths too. Depressed people, dysfunctional people, even illiterates can have towering IQ's .

What is the media trying to do by focusing on the issue of IQ: are they feeding parents' fears that their kids won't make it in this complex, technology driven world?

Or, maybe it's just that the concept of IQ, being simplistic, makes for snappy news copy. Why bother to discuss the complex socio-economic conditions that influence human achievement when you have a handy sliding scale at your disposal? Why bother to change policies so that everyone can rise to his or her potential when "IQ theory," as it stands, implies that mothers, and only mothers, are responsible for people's success in life?

You see, according to another (conflicting) report in the media, (one where they studied twins separated at birth) only two factors are responsible for determining a baby's eventual IQ: genes and environment in the womb.

Studies have revealed that certain maternal bad habits, like smoking during pregnancy, can adversely affect brain development and birth size, thereby lowering a baby's potential IQ. So, it follows that I am a moron: my mother smoked like a forties movie star during her pregnancies. I was barely 5 pounds at birth. (My son, on the other hand, was a whopping 10 pounds, 6 ounces. OUCH!) Come to think of it, my mom didn't breast feed me either. It's a miracle I can walk and whistle for the dog at the same time!

I'm not a smoker myself, so I don't have to feel bad about that one. My son may miss out by a whisker on the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics, and all because of my lack of due diligence in the breast feeding department, but he's still bound to be much smarter than little ole me.

(Still, I worry that with all those colorful modern diversions at his disposal, video games to wrestling matches, he may not read a classic in his lifetime.)

And if he's really really smart he'll come to learn what it really takes to get on in the world: common sense, people skills, perseverance, confidence, and, above all, the ability to handle failure and to learn from past mistakes, and, oh, lots of faith.

Andrew, who is at the present moment throwing one of his smelly running shoes at the television screen and roaring, "Rip off! They can't even fake it well!" has other ideas on the subject:

"To be successful, you have to be in the right place at the right time," he tells me. "Like Bill Gates. It's all luck," he adds. "And it helps to be born to rich parents," he concludes, with a twinkle, or maybe it's a laser beam, in his eye. This only goes to prove my son's already nobody's fool. And I don't need the news media to fuel my motherguilt; no, not when I have a smart-ass teen around the house.

All rights reserved Dorothy Nixon