Mothering Increases IQ!
By Charlotte Ostermann
No one could be more surprised than I was to hear that women who have had babies develop higher IQ's. We joke in our family that I give up a bunch of brain cells for each new baby, and better be getting close to the last baby as there's not much left to give. I am hopelessly forgetful during my first trimester hormonal shifts. Even when not pregnant, I am lost without my grocery list and flounder without my day-timer. I have only the vaguest notion of what's happened in Serbia, or where it is. I can't seem to refer to any one of my children without stuttering out the first syllables of at least three other children's (or dog's, cat's, husband's) names.
How exactly can a woman who has moved from being a college teacher (really - long words, complete sentences, no commands, complex thoughts - the whole bit!) to regularly saying things like, "Get that dinosaur out of the toilet" and "Tinkie winkie woo, I love you" be said to have increased her IQ? The answer hit me as I was attempting to read a magazine article during out home school lunch break.
This is a scene of happy chaos. The instant lunchtime is announced, all the morning's studious quiet and separated-children calm dissolves into a free-for-all of short order food preparation. I try to dissociate myself as much as possible - entrusting the peanut buttering or bageling of the youngest to the oldest, and redeeming the hour by trying to absorb intellectually challenging reading material through the din. Herein lies the secret of my sure-to-be-growing IQ. How many people do you know (besides mothers like me) who could mentally decode the following paragraph and take it in stride? Remember to add sound effects: eight feet in new hiking boots clomping all over the wood floor, baby in high chair alternately screaming with delight at his brothers' antics and galumphing the chair across the floor by throwing his body backwards repeatedly, chairs and stools scraping continually over the floor, phone ringing constantly with inaudible messages left to be retrieved during nap time, and a bird whistling constantly in emulation of the bird-song clock that was to have been a great learning tool.
In this way, not peanut butter again, can't I have something else, Therese anticipated, Mom tell him to stop looking at me like that, why do I always have to make the babies sandwiches, the nouvelle theologie, can I have the leftover pizza, no I get it, there's not enough, I'm older, you got it last time, water, water,water, of such great twentieth-century theologians, don't feed the dog, sit down, as Henri de Lubac, S.J., and Hans, he did it again, well she always does it to me, Mom why does he always get the pizza, don't put the jelly knife in the peanut butter, Mom don't we have any good bread, is this milk still good, Urs von Balthasar ( whose own book on Therese, come back to the table, don't fall off the chair, shows how much,
I spend my whole lunch making their stuff, I get the Tintin, no I was reading it, well I got it first, Mom would you tell him I had it this morning and, cracker, cracker, cracker, I want my sandwich, it's coming, just wait a minute, more complicated a great mind, stop hollering, sit down, get a rag and wipe it up, can be in expressing the pure and simple and, sit down, don't touch that knife, direct insights of Therese). I want my food, hey you didn't tell me we had grapes, why do I have to cut them for him - he never chokes anyway and then I can't read while I eat, For Therese showed, don't get down till we clean your hands, how grace- God's active, somebody's at the door, don't let the dog out, no you can't play now, get the dog, love - works in and, can't he get his own water I just sat down, through nature, not (as some have pictured it in recent, Mom can you tell him to scoot his chair farther away, don't read over my shoulder, no spitting, centuries) on top of it, like icing on a cake.
Folks, I did it and there were even foreign words in there! The new brain power I am developing must be sort of a hidden track overlaid by the obfuscating drivel of daily life. It is truly encouraging to think of this powerful undercurrent of intelligence developing beneath layers of toddler talk, interrupted speech and barked commands. And to think, each pregnancy ratchets up the old IQ!
My thanks to Crisis magazine for this paragraph. At this rate, I hope to actually finish the article by the year 2000. Now that I can see the benefits of this mommy method, that won't be so frustrating.