I've always held (and recognized) that that kind of deep, deep love and appreciation of one's offspring and their inherent specialness reflects our own narcissism (of course!). It's probably something of an evolutionary necessity, too, right?
Anyway, before I bore you with Isabel the Wonderchild's recent accomplishments, a few words about Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Yale professor Amy Chua's recent memoir about raising her two daughters with a markedly Chinese parenting style: Yes, pushing your children to excel and raising the bar for them is good. We need more of that. And I completely agree with Chua's argument that a very profound happiness can come from excelling at something, be it piano, tennis, or skateboarding (you can also have fun being mediocre at something -- just look at my sketchbook!). Where we part company are her motivational methods. I don't care how well adjusted and sweet her daughters are today (according to Emily Baselon of Slate, who has crossed paths with them in New Haven); no good can have come from being locked outside in the cold, prevented from going to the bathroom, or threatened with having one's stuffed animals burned, even if that meant daughter Sophia would end up playing Carnegie Hall.
Anyway, all of this has been written and argued about endlessly, and much more eloquently, elsewhere. Fact is, the jury's still out on the impact of feel-good vs. martinet parenting (and there's obviously a healthy in-between somewhere that most of us hope to achieve). So, onward with the qvelling about Isabel. (Nuclear Family Members: you are obligated to keep reading; the rest of you are off the hook).
Her inventive and imaginary capacity is just amazing to me. She is, no kidding, working on 7 or more book and poetry projects simultaneously. There's Luther, the Unlying Robber; Max and Patrick and their Runaway adventures in Antarctica and Cuba; The Thirteen Boys (parented by Leonard the Dentist and Pablo the House-husband); The AMP (Absent Minded Professor) whose plot takes him into different classrooms around campus and he's such a genius he's able to teach anything from Aztec religion to Physics; a collection of illustrated poetry on different kinds of weather and food groups and their foods; her blog; a written journal; and a whole theology/cosmology called "future gods" she has created as her own personal religion with deities and temples and rituals (with spices!) galore.
It's not that she's a literary genius; I mean I think her poetry and stories in general are terrific for a 9 year old but I'm biased, of course (see the one she wrote on candy at the end of this post). What's more impressive to me is the dedication with which she pursues these projects. Her work ethic is incredible. She devotes hours of each week to conceptualising and writing, and even wants to compare notes about plot and character development as the two of us walk to the National Gallery to meet Ben on a Friday evening. This is always somewhat embarrassing for me since my (for-profit-not-art) romance novel is not only progressing incredibly slowly but it's pretty formulaic and cliche-ridden, not to mention undeniably racy in parts (I do not let her read it, btw).
Her appetite for narrative and description is seemingly unquenchable and this makes our long walks to meet Ben (we take a lot of long walks to meet Ben) really diverting as she has taken to having us weave stories and create characters as we go. A few weeks ago she had us create our own saints with their various attributes.
Lastly, I want to mention a game she invented for long or delayed journeys on the Underground. You scan the Tube map and then give three station stops, two of which are actual stops, one of which is fake, and the rest of the group has to guess at which is the fake one. So, for example, I might say "Chalk Farm, West Ruislip, and East Chipping" and she and Ben would have to identify the fake one. It's amazing how often we miss (a testament to the hilariousness of some London place names: "Swiss Cottage" "Cockfosters" "Tooting Broadway" -- I rest my case.
The Butterscotch Challenge
Sometimes my mom and I,
We have a test
At who is the very best,
At keeping the butterscotch in shape,
And making sure it won't escape.
As soon as it's in, I put it in my cheek,
And try not to make a peep.
But Mom she chatters on and on
And soon her butterscotch is gone.
Isabel Schmidt
Here's what Ben emailed me after reading this post:
i thought you were nicely attentive to her literary bent ... but you missed her other side: isabel the scientist and natural philosopher (which i find, if anything, more impressive, since this comes wholly from herself, you and i [and her teachers, alas] contributing nothing by way of model or directive). the list below is partial, no doubt--i made it one day while marveling, you did, over her fecundity--but it gets at the method of the madness: to know everything in the world and to put her creative stamp on it all. so, along with narratives and history, there is (as you note) religion and language (almost as inventive, i find, and equally ambitious), nature and experiment, geography and philosophy (her endless tinkering with lists, organization), and of course drawing and craft.
in january 2011, isabel is undertaking various projects, as follows:
* nature journals, including separate books to record birds, insects, mammals/reptiles/fish, respectively
* nature/observation journal: this one is dedicated solely to plants and their various dissections
* book of lists ('listography')
* book of inventions (which also comprises art ideas)
* a 'kunstkamer' (cabinet of curiosities, to hold specimens)
* books for publication, including:
1. unlying robber
2. absent-minded professor
3. mona and delia
6 a reference book on monsters (made-up monsters)
4. thirteen boys
5. runaway boys
7. a short story submitted to stone soup
8. a non-fiction book on conservation (ideas, mostly described in terms of things not to do, to preserve nature)
9. xkin, a play about a monster who falls in love
* she is also inventing a new religion ('future gods'), which is outlined in a folder
* she is inventing a language, also outlined in a folder
* poetry: a project to encapsulate the whole universe in poems (e.g. "fruit" poems)
* poetry: "eurasian bear" (submission to stone soup)
* art folder: collection of drawings, prep-work for future paintings
she is keeping several journals:
* london blog (online)
* london journal (prose and pictures)
* london scrap book (collage)
* travel journal (cf. london journal)
phew: it exhausts me just to think of it.
