As the nerd–off rages on (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) I turn to the sprogs as evidence of my madly nerdy parenting skillz.
Elder offspring (whose mousing skills my better-half feared might not be on track, developmentally, when elder offspring was about a year old) has joined Game Boy Nation since turning 7. This has led to frequent use of Froogle (to investigate prices of games and platforms), as well as use of Google to locate game “cheats” (whose very existence were revealed to elder offspring via a Google search on the name of the favorite game).
This all was probably inevitable.
But here’s the recent sprog development that has me bursting with nerd pride: Younger offspring worked out the inverse operator for inside-out pajama tops!
“See, you take the inside-out top and put it on. Then you take it off, and look! It’s right-side-out again!”
Did you point out to them that this was an example of a group of order two?
A finite simple group of order two, in fact…
Is that a better example of nerdy parenting or nerdy genetics?
Oh yeah, well I do this:
http://xkcd.com/c85.html
And understand this:
http://xkcd.com/c149.html
Oh yeah, and my nerd score is 96.
Oh, and one last thing: I only make passes at girls who wear glasses.
Hmmm, I don’t know if this is an example of nerdy parenting or child abuse but the only “punishment” I’ve found effective w/my 7 3/4yo son is “if you don’t finish picking up your legos in the next 15 minutes, no chemistry lesson (he and my dh are using the same textbook for basic college freshman chemistry. He’d go to class w/dh but it runs too late in the evening. Plus my dh doesn’t want to be shown up by his son.) for you today.”
Works like a charm.